The Stage is Set

My grouse with plays has always been that they are in 'long shot'. I crave for the quality of omnipresence that a film camera bestows on the audience by shifting from long to mid to close to extreme close, and so on. It, somehow, lends a feeling of intimacy with the characters for me, the viewer. Not to mention that size of the frame also acts as a punctuation. 

But at the same time, I have found myself fascinated with films that resemble plays—in the sense of their setting. The single set of 'Rope' to 'Sleuth' and 'Deathtrap', resembling the 'stage' in more ways than one has kept me rooted to my seat every time. The other commonality among these three aforementioned films is that they all deal with crime—murder, to be precise.

Like any other fans of murder mysteries, I, too, have been an avid reader of Christie, Doyle and the masters. A common trope in these murder mysteries—from Christie, to our own Satyajit Ray's Feluda stories is the climax, where there is this room full of individuals connected to the 'case', and one of them, is about to be revealed as the culprit.

In David Greene's made for TV film of 1982, 'Rehearsal for Murder', we are plunged headlong into this scenario very, very early into the film. A playwright (Robert Preston) named Alex Dennison, who lost his fiancee, Monica Wells (Lynn Redgrave, sister of the legendary Vanessa Redgrave) a year ago, has assembled a group of individuals for a reading of this new play that he is working on. 

Behind this apparently innocuous invitation lies an ulterior motive—that of unmasking the truth behind his fiancee's death. Alex firmly believes that Monica was murdered, as opposed to what the police believe that she committed suicide after her first leading role generated a 'mixed response'. Not only that, Alex is also sure that one out of those who he has invited for the reading is the murderer!

A murder mystery is very much like an act of prestidigitation. In both cases, the audience/reader allows the author/illusionist to indulge in an act of misdirection and happily follows, knowing in the end they will realize that they were betrayed, in the sense that the truth (identity of the culprit/how the magic is done) was always being kept hidden.

But there is a sense of enjoyment in this betrayal (though there are some novelists and films where the identity of the criminal is unraveled right at the beginning. Those are the 'whydunits' and 'howdunits', and not the 'whodunits'). That is because we are all aware that we are being led down the garden path, so to speak. What makes the journey worthwhile is the expected surprise at the end.

What makes films like the three aforementioned ones and even the less somber examples like 'Clue' and 'Murder by Death' a treat is that we are all kept guessing till the very end, and the fact that, invariably, the writer throws us red herrings along the way. 

A similar premise of eliciting a confession about a crime is not an original idea. 'Chase a Crooked Shadow' had a similar plot. But while that film depended on logically questionable and at times quite incredulous artifices, 'Rehearsal for Murder' has taken a totally different path.

In the first scene of the film, one of the minor characters says '...that's where it all starts—words'. In 'Rehearsal for Murder', words is to Alex what 'the little gray cells' is to Poirot. After all, when a playwright plays sleuth, his magnifying glass will inevitably be words. 

On stage is the microcosm of the theater world. Besides the playwright, there is a heroine (Karen, played by Madolyn Smith), a director (Lloyd, portrayed by Lawrence Pressman), a producer (Walter, enacted by William Daniels), a leading man (David, played by Patrick Macnee) and a struggling actor (Leo, a lanky Jeff Goldblum). What is missing is the critic. 

But as Alex says in the film, 'Never confuse the audience with the critics'. The play within the film is not being staged for the critics, of course. Here the actors are the audience.

In every murder mystery the detective is always the same. It is the author, because from the very beginning s/he knows   who has committed the crime. 'Rehearsal for Murder' brings this truism to the fore. 

And that very last shot, where Alex raises a toast is actually the audience clinking the glass, appreciating an aspect that seems to have been overshadowed by the over-dependence on CGI today—the role of the writer. 

It is also a reminder for those of us who missed what Greene told us at least twice during the film—once in Monica's bedroom, and then in the 'third act' of the film—via a poster of 'La Revue Blanche', the late 19th century periodical that is synonymous with the modern 'literary' movement.

A Joy Ride

In 2005, National Geographic magazine conducted a photography competition. There was one particular photograph (which won a Merit Award) that kept on recurring in my mind as I reclined in my seat while watching Robert Zemeckis’ ‘The Polar Express’.

The photo depicted a group of men in an airport. Most of them were operating their mobile phones (texting or attending to calls), while a huge gap yawned between all of them. So, technology has actually drifted us apart while attempting to bring us together!

It is an irony similar to this one that resides deep in the heart of this wondrous joy ride of a movie. Based on Chris van Allsburg’s children’s book of the same name, it raises some very pertinent, albeit dated, issues which are universal in their scope; and, hence, the film touched hearts the world over.

Zemeckis, according to me, is one of the most versatile filmmakers of our times. His filmography includes adventure (Romancing the Stone), mythology (Beowulf), animation (Who Framed Roger Rabbit), sci-fi (Back to the Future), drama (Forrest Gump, Castaway) and horror (What Lies Beneath) among others.

What is fascinating about Zemeckis is his grasp of both the storytelling as well as the technological aspects of filmmaking. Many of his films have acted as the harbinger of newer avenues of technology in Hollywood, be it compositing in ‘Forrest Gump’ (remember, Gump shaking hands with Kennedy?) or motion capture in ‘The Polar Express’.

In its essence, the film is about faith, belief, and trust. With Christmas as a background (a theme Zemeckis will revisit, but with lesser success in last year’s ‘A Christmas Carol’), it has woven a tale that has a much broader latitude and an inherent message that is disconcerting, if not alarming. 

The story in a nutshell deals with a boy who does not believe in Santa or the spirit of Christmas. On Christmas Eve, while his suspicions that Santa is nothing but a figment of adults’ imaginations get fortified, a magical experience occurs in his life. A train (the titular Polar Express) chug-chugs in front of his home and takes him on an adventure of a lifetime to the North Pole to meet Santa and his elves. While discovering Santa, he finds himself and understands the meaning of life in general.

There are several child characters in the film. And in each, Zemeckis has portrayed a trait that many children all over the world suffer from—doubtfulness, lack of confidence, shyness, insecurity, loneliness, and the all-pervasive feeling of not belonging. The train journey itself is an allegory of self-discovery.

The Polar Express plunges, zips, skittles, careens, stops, and swerves. The boy is skeptical, suspicious, unconvinced, dubious, and incredulous. Then, he starts believing. He starts believing only when he has seen the unbelievable.

There are moments in almost all of Zemeckis’ films when the spectator is delighted with a visual feast that takes the breath away. There was the feather prancing in the wind in ‘Forrest Gump’, here there is an amazing journey of a fluttering train ticket. But all special effects aside, this film is about life and the life of children, to be precise. Hence, our hero learns as much from the train ride that takes him to elf-land as he learns from his fellow travelers, mainly from an Afro-American girl (the spirit of joie-de-vivre and decisiveness) and a shy kid (the true meaning of happiness and friendship).

Today’s children have at their disposal a host of material amenities. However, one factor that is missing is imagination. Thanks to films like ‘The Polar Express’ and this year’s monster animation hit ‘How to Train your Dragon’, the role that imagination plays in the lives of children is getting reinstated. It is films like these that restore our faith in the fun one has when one allows one’s imagination a free rein.

In some ways Zemeckis came full-circle with ‘The Polar Express’ from his 1988 eye-popper of a film ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’. In that film, he separated animation from the human actors (repeated later in films such as ‘Space Jam’); while here, he merged them beautifully together.

This very feature of completion is demonstrated in the fact that the film, too, comes full-circle. It begins its journey with the whistle and ringing of bells of the Polar Express. It ends with the ringing of another kind of a bell—a gift from Santa, and the most precious gift of all, faith.

Color, Contrast, and Commonality

If one closely examines Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s body of work, one can’t but fail to notice certain common threads that run through his creations. In all his films his protagonists suffer and its cause lies within them.

From the deaf-mute couple in ‘Khamoshi’, to the love-triangle in HDDCS and the self-destructive ‘Devdas’, Bhansali has crafted pathos as a leitmotif.

Add to this the fact that with every film his vision has grown more lavish, more opulent, and more grandiose. So, his work has grown in scale, but what about the growth of the filmmaker as an artist, one might ask? 

In several of his interviews, Bhansali himself has mentioned that he had given this point a thought. And the response that he has come up with—‘Black’—is a piece of work that has continued his growth curve by taking the opposite route. 

It is like two ends of a string that point in different directions, but come together to attain completion. So, from the atrociously meretricious, he has resorted to the sublimely minimalist to complete a circle—the circle of evolution, life, and vision of an artist.

In its essence, ‘Black’ is a spiritual film. It deals with confinement, freedom, and miracles. (Notice the cross symbol on the car window towards the beginning of the film and the same in the asylum room towards the end). It deals with two characters who share commonalities by being perfect opposites in the same manner as two ends of a string. One is the deaf-blind-mute Michelle McNally (Rani) and the other her tutor Debraj Sahai (Amitabh).

Throughout the film, Bhansali has fused together apparent opposites to evolve a similarity, and, sometimes, a third aspect out of them. It is this sense of dualism that lifts 'Black' to the domain of a classic. Hence, Michelle is a child, while Debraj is at the twilight of his life. But both are equally arrogant, obstinate and headstrong. 

The similarity between the two is made even more apparent in the sequences when we see Debraj and Michelle for the first time. A now adult Michelle, accompanied by her sister Sara, finds her tutor seated at the fountain near her house, his back turned towards the camera. (This is also the exact place where Debraj, albeit in an unorthodox manner, led to Michelle’s first tryst with the joy of a spoken word). That is precisely the manner in which we first see the baby Michelle, with her back towards us, being cajoled by her mother Catherine (Shernaz Patel).

Both had turned away from life. But in doing so, they faced each other.

Our first meeting with the child Michelle (Ayesha Kapoor) is accompanied by the jingling sound of tin cans tied to her waist. When we meet Debraj, he is lighting a bulb which is ‘dying’. Their connection is bound that moment on—they bring back in each other’s lives the light of life and the sound of recognition.

While Michelle spends her life in eternal darkness, Debraj is equally blinded by a white room with white walls and streaming light. Michelle’s parents tied a bell round her waist to know of her whereabouts; an Alzheimer’s ridden Debraj was bound by chains. One was lost in eternal darkness from her birth; the other lost his way in the same darkness when he was old. The circle is complete.

The film has a predominance of black, grey, blues, and browns. The first few endeavors that Debraj makes to lend a hand to the disturbed child at communicating from his dark world all deal with white—be it eating rice with a spoon or trying to understand what a napkin is. Later on they both dance ecstatically to celebrate a snowfall.

But Bhansali has not stuck to these hues; he has deviated and done so on several occasions. From the red wine when Sara makes a heart-wrenching speech about her sister, who she admits to be more than envious of; to the red flowers that Michelle brushes against, when she utters her first ever word; the red dress that she wears the night she encounters passion; and, finally, the red ribbon on the certificate that bore testimony to the realization of her life-long dream—Bhansali has masterfully used red as a harbinger of change in Michelle’s life.

The dualism continues in the usage of water as well. What was feared once becomes the source of wonder—'water' happens to be one of the first words that baby Michelle learns. Towards the end of the film, when Michelle opens a new world for Debraj and stretches out his hand, he feels and learns the same word. There are tears of joy welling from his eyes as he retraces one step to the world he once knew. There is an indescribably poignant wordless sequence between the teacher and the pupil, each in a world that are eons apart, but they still connect—through the language of touch.

Black is generally associated with negativity, sorrow, and loss. But from the very first sequence itself, Bhansali has rendered banal such a significance. In fact, he turns it into a color pregnant with promise, just as the darkest part of the night is right before the crack of dawn. It is the color of success and achievement, as made clear in the graduation uniform that Michelle wears with pride. It is also the color that we emerge from and the color that we disappear into. Hence, the beginning and end are one and the same—they are similar by being opposites. 

What brings the two ends together is the story of our lives. And 'Black' is an extraordinary story.

Someone once said that the blind are those who touch words and feel words touch them back. 'Black' happens to be a film that shares the same trait. 

P.S. Even though I own a VCD of this film, I have watched it only once, in the theatre, when it was released in 2005. This piece was written the day after. I have never watched the film again primarily because I was apprehensive that the feelings it evoked will get diluted when my analytical prowess (which was bound to appear during a subsequent viewing) superseded the strong emotional connect I felt the first time round. Sometimes, emotions need to be treasured.

'Duel' in the Sun

It is said that 'Psycho' (1960) gave birth to this new genre called 'slasher' flicks. And with slashers was born the concept of the relentless, merciless killing machine, a la Leatherface (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), Jason Voorhes (Friday the 13th), Michael Myers (Halloween), Freddy Krueger (A Nightmare on Elm Street), to name just a few. Even the T1000 from Terminator 2, the eponymous Predator and Alien fall under the same category, though they did not feature in films which can be termed slashers, in the purest sense of the term.


What interests me most about these characters is the weapons they use: Leatherface uses a chainsaw; Jason, a machete; Freddy has needles for fingers; Predator has an arsenal at his disposal, while the alien’s biggest weapon is its intelligence. 


The other similarity I have noticed among these movie monsters is the fact that you do not often get to see their faces. Most of them wear some kind of a mask—ice hockey variant, or even made of human skin; while some have their visages burnt beyond recognition. 

Now, imagine a director by the name of Steven Spielberg creating a killer of the same nature, and I am not talking about Bruce in ‘Jaws’. In 1971, Spielberg made a film for TV called 'Duel', which had one of the most innovative weapons of death ever used—a 40 tonne trailer truck!


The stage is set with a brilliant point of view shot of a car being driven out of a garage. That moment on, we, the viewer, become one with the ironically named Valiant, a red Plymouth.


Like all great horror films, this one, too, has a very simplistic, everyday premise – a businessman while traveling for an appointment makes the biggest mistake of his life – overtaking a trailer truck. What ensues is one of the most skilfully composed elongated duel between man and machine.

What elevates this film to the level of a classic is the deft touches to it. The protagonist is 'David Mann'(Dennis Weaver). His surname is an obvious reference to every ‘man’. His car has a license plate number PCE 149. Those three initials can be interpreted as short for 'peace', but during his journey to meet a client along a long stretch of road through the desert, he encounters anything, but.


Throughout the entire running time of the film, we never get to see the truck driver’s face, neither do we get to know why he was trying to run down David at every opportunity. Spielberg simply does not provide us with a back story. This makes the experience, both for the viewer and David, all the more harrowing. Then again, when we see that the truck has numerous number plates from various states stuck on it, like trophies on a mantle piece, Spielberg does tell us a lot.


What makes ‘Duel’’s trailer truck stand out is how Spielberg has rendered ‘life’ to that mammoth made of metal. The words ‘Inflammable’ painted at the back—has there ever been a more apt one-word description of a character in the entire history of film making? The whistle of its horn is akin to any blood-curdling scream; the engine, an angry growl; while the headlights take on the shape of unblinking eyes. And in the end, it’s the wheel that stops turning first, before we see droplets of blood.


Selecting a trailer truck was a stroke of genius. No, in this case size does not matter that much. The element of surprise when one notices how fast it travels for its girth; the slithering, serpentine way in which it moves, all hark back to some of the most feared predators of the animal kingdom. In one particular sequence, Spielberg makes this bit amply clear, when rattlesnakes and spiders take a backseat in the minds of both Mann and us, while we are face-to-face with a charging truck.

And the innovation doesn’t stop at that. Spielberg knew at the tender age of 25 that what all of us are really afraid of is the ‘unseen and unknown’. But the master in the making that he was, he weaved  a twist in that bit. While most horror films rely on darkness, ‘Duel’, in its entirety, is shot in broad daylight.


As far as the identity of the driver is concerned, here, too, Spielberg literally toys with the viewer. There is an extended sequence inside a cafe, when both David and us, the viewer, know that one of the individuals in there is the driver of the trailer. But, which one, we both wonder!


Even after 39 years, this film has not aged a bit. And there are reasons for it. If movie watching is a ‘ride’, then this is the film that buckles the seat belt and keeps us rooted, first frame onwards. Technically sound, amazingly shot and superbly edited, the ‘classic’ nature of ‘Duel’ actually lies in its ageless topic. Who hasn’t encountered road rage?


Is the truck a manifestation of the pent up anger inside Mann, whose married life isn’t exactly hunky dory? Is it simply a hallucination of a man traveling a really long distance in desert conditions (except on two occasions, no one seems to notice the truck or the driver, besides Mann himself)? Is the mind game between the truck and Mann actually a game inside the mind of Mann to make him feel like the ‘Man of the house’? This apparently simplistic film, actually has a lot beneath its bonnet.


The ‘man vs machine’ premise of ‘Duel’ has been seen in many a later film, from ‘Christine’, ‘The Terminator’, to 'The Matrix', ‘I, Robot’, ‘Stealth’ and ‘Death Proof’, to name just a few. However, what separates ‘Duel’ from these is how it makes the ‘common, uncommon’. From the shrill whistle of a truck that has an ominous feel; the red traffic lights that seem to warn of impending danger; the level crossing gate that suddenly becomes a cage; the pipes underneath the truck, which resemble the innards of a hideous monster—‘Duel’ does to driving what ‘Jaws’ did to going swimming in the ocean.


Pity, ‘Duel’ remains for Spielberg the road traveled only once.

Following Nolan

It is an interesting coincidence that the first six letters of Christopher Nolan’s name spells the son of god. And just like the Almighty, it seems this man, too, at present, can do no wrong.


One cannot but also help notice if deep down the surface of his latest offering Nolan has somehow depicted an inverse allegory (if such a term exists) of today’s Hollywood—a filmdom where remaking, rehashing, and recycling rule the roost. In the microcosm of Nolan’s universe that is portrayed in ‘Inception’ any foreign idea is rejected by the mind. Exactly opposite to what Hollywood is known for today. Originality seemed to have exited, stage left.


With the diminishing box-office returns of superstars such as Hanks, Cruise, Roberts, Washington and the like, Hollywood seems to have resorted to the tried and tested technique—importing from foreign shores or simply imbibing its own. Well-known classics, not-so-well-known B-flicks, TV shows, even action figures have not been spared. In such a scenario, where every other week a film that is released is actually a 're-release', one wonders what Nolan had in mind when he presented his spec script about stealing ideas for ‘Inception’ to the studio guys.

There were many who, after ‘The Dark Knight’, had exclaimed ‘What next?’ There was a tone of incredulity underlying that exclamation-cum-query. It, indeed, is beyond the dreams of most of us to even ponder upon a thought of following up a film that is almost unanimously considered the best superhero film ever made. But Nolan has succeeded. Simply because each of his films fit into his universe as seamlessly as Ledger slipped into the character of Joker.


From ‘Following’ in 1998 to ‘Inception’ 12 years later, the total of seven films that he has made fit into a pattern—a pattern that is as labyrinthine as the plots of his films. The most obvious similarity is the questioning of reality. In ‘Memento’ short-term memory loss caused Leonard (Guy Pearce) and the viewer finding the line between what’s real and what’s not starting to blur. In 'Insomnia', the protagonist suffers from the titular disorder and to solve a crime lands up at a place where the sun does not set. With loss of sleep, the grip on reality loses as well.

Widely touted as the weakest of all his films, ‘Insomnia’ had quite a few interesting aspects to it. The name of the protagonist for example—Will Dormer (Pacino). In what could have been so easily relegated to corniness in other—less confident—hands, the use of a word associated with sleep (‘dorm’ of ‘dormitory’) as part of a surname actually became some kind of a foreboding for eventual occurrences in the film.


Is it a coincidence that Leo’s character is called ‘Dom’ Cobb? Knowing that almost everything in Nolan’s universe is interlinked, chances are it most probably isn’t. However, while the first name of Pacino’s character’s name was quite benign, Leo’s character’s surname harks back to Nolan’s second film—‘Following’. In it, Alex Haw played a character named…Cobb. And his profession? He was a burglar! In ‘Following’ Cobb’s interest is in the personal belongings of his targets. What the Cobb of ‘Inception’ steals is truly personal, possibly the most personal of them all—an individual’s ideas.


The Nolan universe just completed one revolution round its axis!

Quite obviously, in a film about inimical illusionists, reality and illusion will blend into one another. Here, too, Nolan’s predilection for names and meanings came to the fore. The two rival magicians named Robert Angier (Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Bale) had no semantic interplay hidden in their names. Instead, their initials spelled ‘AB-RA’ as in ‘Abracadabra’.


If so much can be hidden within the names of characters in films that Nolan remade (‘Insomnia’ from a Swedish film) or based on previously published material (‘Memento’ and ‘The Prestige’), it goes without saying that a screenplay that he had worked on for over a decade will have the same traits. After all, it belongs to the same universe!


So, we have Ariadne (Page). In Greek mythology, Ariadne was known for creating a maze. In ‘Inception’ Page plays an ‘architect’—she designs dream spaces. Then there is the disruptive force named ‘Mal’ (Cotillard)—a more obvious and less subtle reference to a French or English prefix. Since we are on the topic of names, it might be mentioned that in 'Inception', one of Cobb's employers is named Cobol. That was the name of one of the earliest programming languages of the world in the 'domain of business, finance, and administrative systems for companies and governments'. Cobb and his team program people’s minds so that they can steal ideas.


If one thought it’s easy to ascertain Nolan’s characters based on the pointers provided by their names (where applicable), one needs to think again. That, possibly, is the single-most important contribution of Nolan as far as cinema is concerned. He has singlehandedly brought the cerebral aspect back in cinema.


While in most cases, Hollywood urges us to leave our brains behind, Nolan’s universe is set in the mind. And for that reason alone he should be christened as the first ‘thoughteur’ of this millennium. There were others—Bergman for one one, Fellini, and Goddard. But what separates this recent entrant in that Ivy League is that his films somehow interweave the brain with box-office bravura.


Duality is another motif in Nolan’s cinema. He himself holds a dual citizenship—of the USA and the UK; and supposedly carries both passports on his person all the time. It is thus of little or no wonder that his characters, too, have a sense of duality ingrained in them. A short-term memory loss patient who in fact might be the very killer he is looking for; a cop who allegedly murdered his partner for selfish reasons; Bruce Wayne/Batman; the ‘two faces’ of Cobb in ‘Following', the secret harbored by Borden, and the master thief in 'Inception' whose 'life' has been stolen.


At a more broader level, in ‘Batman Begins’ and ‘The Dark Knight’, Nolan has molded a superhero who is lot closer to reality than his characters in other films who always seem to teeter on the precipice of hyper reality.


Moreover, in his films, the method of recording reality is always questioned. Borden and Angier’s diaries in ‘The Prestige’, the veracity of Polaroid photos in ‘Memento’, the eponymous insomnia, and the layered dreams in 'Inception' are cases in point.

Another common thread linking all of Nolan's protagonists is guilt. Beginning from 'The Young Man's' guilt at rummaging through strangers'  personal belongings, Leonard's guilt propelling him towards finding his wife's killers, Will's subconscious knowledge that the shooting of his partner might well have been intentional, Borden's guilty secret, Wayne's feelings towards his father's beloved Gotham turning into a crime-infested area, to Cobb's belief that he caused his wife's death—guilt encompasses all his protagonists, and act as the main motivation for their actions.

Coming back to 'Inception', if the dreamscape created by Nolan ever has a map, then one has to say the map is in flux. It is like the mirror reflections of Eames (Tom Hardy). The image does not correspond to the body.


In fact, one might even say that Eames' character, who plays a forger (at two levels—the literal one where he can forge documents and references so that he can become anybody; and another at a more metaphysical level, where he actually can become an image of anybody, aided by the memories that others have of that individual) embodies the film itself. Just like Eames, the film can take any form based on individual perceptions. And it is this ethereal quality that makes each and every film by Nolan so debated, dissected, and demanding to watch.


One of the basic demands a viewer has while watching a film is getting ‘closure’. Possibly, that is the reason after watching ‘Inception’ I was hanging on to two scenes in the film. In the first, while explaining to Cobb why a group of people visit a clandestine place everyday to be heavily sedated, an elderly man says 'They come here to wake up. The dream has become their reality. Who are we to say?' It indeed is true. One man’s dream can become another man’s reality, and vice versa. Especially in Nolan’s universe.


Then there was the scene where Michael Caine’s character tells Cobb to 'come back to reality'. This foreboding statement and the fact that Caine returns in the last sequence of the film might posit that Caine's character was not a fringe one as appears. He might have had a role to play—a very important one, in fact, that of planning an inception on Cobb. Planting an idea that there can be one last job that could bring him back home to his children. Possible, since it has been shown to us that information can be hidden from the ‘best extractor’ (the redacted document in Saito’s (Watanabe) safe). Also, the very fact that Caine introduced Ariadne to Cobb.


Those of us fixated with this idea will find many more clues that point to this very direction. Why did the name of the film, for example, appear at the very end? Is it because the inception has been accomplished? After all, most films have their name displayed on screen right up front, at the beginning. Is it Nolan telling us something concretely, as against his cutting the shot at exactly the point wherein it would have been apparent to us, via Cobb's totem, if he was in a dream or back to reality?


One might even want to refer to 'The Dark Knight'—another film of Nolan where the name of the film appeared at the very end—when via Gordon's (Oldman) monologue one understands why the caped crusader has become a vigilante, the ‘dark’ knight.


But this theory of mine can be disproved. And that is the fun of watching Nolan. One of the first dialogues by Cobb talks about how an idea is the world's most resilient parasite. After watching the film, when we frame our own theories, one experiences how those words leap right out of the screen and engulfs us with its veracity.


As a side note, I would like to mention that Nolan has named his production company 'Syncopy'. 'Syncope' as we know is loss of consciousness. It also is 'loss of one or more sounds from the interior of a word'—the trope of something amiss is a recurrent feature of all his protagonists.


It is said that the life of a film is dependent on how much debate it can generate. Considering how abuzz the Internet has been since July 16, possibly the most apt description of the impact of 'Inception' was made by one poster on IMDB forum, who predicted that in a few years' time the film might become a religion (was he, by any chance, referring to the first six letters of Nolan’s name, one wonders!)


Cynics amongst us might want to pause and freeze the frame during a particular scene in 'Inception' shot in a hotel lobby where characters in movement are positioned in such a manner within the frame that only the 'Con' of 'Concierge' is visible. They might think of that frame as embodying what Nolan has done to the audience.


The more positivists among us would say that the film itself is Nolan's way of implanting an idea into Hollywood that there is hope for originality. The jury is out on that debate, as well.


To those who did not like 'Inception' (there are many, NY Mag's David Edelstein is one; Roger Ebert, one of the most renowned film critics around, has put in his riposte—both are marvelous reads) I want to point out one thing. Watch 'Inception' again, if not the whole film, just two sections. Both have the same dialogue spoken by two different characters. Saito (Watanabe) and Mal talk about a 'leap of faith'. And on both occasions they speak directly to the camera.


P.S. I couldn't help but notice how the posters of 'The Prestige, 'The Dark Knight' and 'Insomnia' all have a distinct blue-black tone to it. Then I stumbled upon something on the Internet. Possibly, this is what IMDB's trivia section meant when it says every film of Nolan somehow refers to his previous film.