Disclaimer : This post is not about the typical reviews of movies mentioned in the title. Neither this post is about the technicalities involved in the concept of Inception, nor I am comparing these two movies. This post is just one of the days out of my diary entries, published publicly !
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Going out for a movie is kinda special occasion for me. Consider this fact – I have been in NCR for past two years but till this Monday, the number of movies I had watched in these two years hadn’t touched the double-digit number, just like India’s GDP growth rate !! In most of the hollywood movies I can’t catch the english accent easily and being a victim of OCPD ( Obsessive compulsive personality disorder), it irks me like hell to miss even the single dialogue in the movies. So I better watch them on my laptop with subtitles. And in bollywood movies there is hardly anything NOT-to-miss kind of content, so its better to miss the whole movie ! Having said that, there are definitely many holly/bolly-wood brilliant movies which are if watched on laptop, that too downloaded from some pirated torrent, it would be a dishonour to the hardwork behind the movie. This year till now I had only watched ’3 Idiots’ in hall. And being a fan of Christopher Nolan, I was waiting for Inception since its first trailer came out last year and going by the so ‘convincingly’ written little status messages on FB about the awesomeness of this movie, I had to go for this movie.
So there I was with three of my friends holding excitedly the ticket for the morning show of Inception. But George Ritzer was damn correct when he wrote about ‘The McDonaldization of Society’ and since we had about some 10 minutes before the movie had to start, we decided to have a quick breakfast at the restaurant with famous ‘M’ its mark ! Despite the warnings of my OCPD compulsions that I need to watch the movie right from the first scene, in which they show film producer’s logo, Warner Bros in this case, still we entered the hall when Leonardo was already in conversation with some old man and by the time we were on our seats the conversation between them was completely over. Nevertheless movie drama was so gripping that until that same scene came again in the end of movie, I had completely forgotten about it ! The movie ended and if somebody had looked at my face at that point, then surely would have noticed Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream’ on my face and like the painting, I was too mute. I wanted to scream “wow” but it just didn’t come out. I thought its better to make sure first that if I had understood the movie plot atleast or not. And that irkness of missing the first scene pinched me hard as it was also the last crucial scene of the movie and I thought definitely my understanding is missing something very crucial point about the plot. I didn’t dare ask any of my friends that if they were in the same state of mind as mine or they too were going to update their status msg’s with spectacular ease – “awesome movie” ! Nevertheless, we soon were in a discussion regrading whose dream, whose subconscious it was, what was limbo, how can Saito be so old in limbo while Fischer was young, was there actually a fifth level of dream and many more such technical aspects of concept. And I managed to pretend successfully as if I had got this much enough that I can understand their doubts, while my own subconscious was lost somewhere in the limbo of movie. By the intensity and enthusiasm of the debate among us, for a moment I thought that was I actually there to ‘enjoy’ a movie or I had come into some brainstorming sessions on the time-dependent perturbation theory explaining the lamb shift of fine line spectrum of hydrogen atom using theory of quantum electrodynamics !!!
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But thankfully, we soon took a break from all this and two of my friends left for home. But I was determined not to be an example of famous Hindi idiom “ghar ke buddhu, laut kar ghar ko aaye”. I thought if not Inception, I can definitely understand Udaan. I had seen its trailer and I found it pretty interesting. And Amit Trivedi’s music along with the really beautiful lyrics after a long time, was simply awesome. Plus most of the reviews had given this movie a high rating. And I had never watched two movie back to back, so that was another bonus for me.
Soon we had the tickets and my OCPD this time made sure that I happen to be in the seat, right from the beginning of the movie. And then I waited, and waited, and waited, and still waited for next 2 hr and 20 min, for finding out what was there in the script in addition to what I saw in 2 min 20 sec trailer of the movie. I agree that it was not meant to be a typical masala bollywood movie but then if not much, atleast justify my 160 bucks. As it turned out, it proved to be the ‘Intellectually Stimulating movie# 2′ of the day for me. I seriously had to think hard what the movie was trying to show me but I simply couldn’t match the level of director and script writer. Except a few cute scene of the small kid Arjun, there was hardly anything I could get in the movie. Back at home I read all the reviews of Udaan again, whether the writers were sarcastic in their writings or there is some problem with my comprehension abilities. Nevertheless the music was still enjoyable. To pick up a favourite will not be easy. But just quoting few lines from two songs -
Nadi mein talab hai, Kahin jo agar, samandar kahan door hai,
Damakti garaz hai, sone mein agar, To jalna bhi manzoor hai !
and
Subah ki kirno ko rokein jo salaakhein hai kahan,
Jo khayalon pe pehre daale woh aankhein hai kahan,
Par khulne ki deri hai parinde udh ke jhoomenge,
Aasman aasman aasman
But the day still had something really special for me. Twarit, my college friend, was in transit of his journey to home and it was more than about 18 months, since we had met. So I rushed to the New Delhi railway station by 9:30 PM and had a good one hour bakar session with him. The day ended on a positive note and so should this post !
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Before saying the last word about these movies, first honestly tell me do you get anything out of the next statement I am going to write – statement 1: “The commutation relationship of position operator along an axis with linear momentum operator in same axis, gives you iota times h-cross” ? And what if I tell you its nothing but our simple old dear Uncle Heisenberg’s Uncertainty principle, which many of us have already read – statement 2: “The product of uncertainty in position with uncertainty in momentum is equal to h-cross by two.” Both statement 1 and 2 are true, but then I would like the one which puts little pressure on my nerve cells ! The artificial difficulty introduced in the statement 1 has killed the actual beauty of this beautiful law of mother nature. Something similar has been done in both the movies I think. Both the movies were far different than the usual stuff. They tried to show something really interesting, but presentation was more difficult than required, something like statement 1. Some beautiful examples of statement-2-kind are – The Dark Knight – pretty much interesting but simple enough as well. Another example – Taare Zameen Par – somewhat similar kind of basic plot as of Udaan but brilliant treatment of issue.
Definitely, Inception is not ‘The Dark Knight’ – not even close to it. But if you haven’t watched Inception yet, go and enjoy this one for its visuals and thrills, even if you don’t understand ‘precisely’ whats going on in the movie ! Afterall people can still dance to the Punjabi beats without even understanding a single word of the song !
PS – Can somebody explain me the concept of ‘Limbo’ in details – any mathematical derivation explaining this shared space-time phenomenon is the most welcomed !
