Reviews

This comedy didn't really work for me. Let's generalize that: comedies don't really work for me.

Those that (kindof) did include The Proposal, White Chicks, Pulp Fiction, Zombieland, The Devil Wears Prada and Three Idiots. I have no idea where are the lines that divide the comedies that work for me and those that don't. Although this film was tightly packed and well-paced, the humour was a tad too ridiculous and the satire a little too forced. (But then again, satires were never meant to be realistic.)

Originally a stage play, Welcome Back, Mr. McDonald dramatises one night in a radio station. The radio station plans to stage a radio play based on a housewife's melodrama script that won (and was the only submission of) the radio station's contest. However, when the lead actress throws a tantrum and demands her character's name to be edited from 'Ritsuko' to 'Mary Jane', the floodgates open. More and more changes are made as the script succumbs to the demands of other actors, realities of the radio station and plot inconsistencies caused by initial changes. Amidst the chaos and the deadlines, a wholly new narrative emerges (though the happy ending is preserved).

There are three satiric points that the film makes. First, the film criticises the Japanese work place convention and its rigid corporate hierarchy. Second, the film mocks the Japanese social practice of being polite at all costs. Third, the film ridicules Japanese' obsession with the West.

More subtle is the subversion of the creative process. The author, conventionally seen as omnipotent in his own creative universe, is relegated to a mere gatekeeping role (and not even an effective one at that) by the corporate institution's demands. Her script is a meticulously crafted tear-jerker set in a Japanese fishing village. In the end, it becomes an action-fantasy set in Chicago where the hero is lost in space and the heroine is a high flying trial lawyer. Ironically, some of the film's most epic scenes arise precisely from the attempts to make the radio play more epic – a vacuum cleaner imitates the sound of a rocket launch; a flushing toilet is a dam breaking.

But all is well that ends well. And our housewife asks and receives only one thing at the end – a happy ending. And everyone, including the radio play's audience represented by a single truck driver, is happy in the end.

Inception is a diamond in the rough of this year's movies. The brilliance of Inception lies in its many facets. And as we shed light on it and peer into its depths, the light just seems to bounce off the facets more and more, giving this diamond a dazzling glow.

The first facet is immediately apparent at the end of the movie, as the screen cuts to black before we see the spinning top fall. We are brought to stark awareness that we did not see the top fall; the top could very go on spinning forever and the 'reality' that the events of the movie are based upon may very well just be another layer of this dream within a dream.

What many people don't realize is that this doubt (that we feel so intellectually gratified at realizing on our own) is the true brilliance of the movie. The very fact that we can draw a conspiracy theory doubting the entire veracity of the movie just based on the ending scene of a slowing down top that we did not see stop completely shows how successful Nolan's inception (I refer to the action of implanting the idea here, rather than the movie) has been. What this means is we ourselves are part of this dream within a dream within a dream within a dream. We ourselves are part of the inception. As Cobb and his team go deeper into the layers of consciousness, we too go with him. And at limbo, that very deepest layer of dream, we are incepted: emotionally, as the drama between Cobb and his wife unfolds; intellectually, pounded into us by shifting of scenes between layers; but most importantly, subconsciously, as the movie begins with limbo.

From the beginning of the movie, we are struck with the question that defines a dream; the very same question that Cobb asks Ariadne: how did we get here? We don't know how things started, even though we are in the thick of action already. We don't know how dream machines come about. We don't know what year it is. We don't know the genesis. Right from the beginning, as we watch Cobb getting washed up upon the shore, our own dream begins. Of course, beginning with the end is a method of inception in itself. By showing us the end, Nolan gives us tainted glasses to watch the movie through. As we watch the movie unfold, we watch it with foreknowledge and prejudice and stereotype. Nolan does to us exactly what he does with the characters in the movie; he infects our tabula rasa with the virus of an idea. He incepts us. And thus, we become part of the dream.

The power of the idea is amplified when we internalize it and when we start to find implications for it. For the danger of an idea is not the idea in itself, but in its repercussions. And if we assimilate these ideas and start to question... do I know my beginning? Do I remember being born? How did I come into this world? We realize, alarmingly, that we don't know. We are as dumbstruck as Ariadne and we realize with chilling possibility that we might be living a dream. That nagging doubt, that gnawing suspicion, that tainted lenses; that is the power of Inception.

Another facet of the movie is the theme of faith. Saito asks Cobb early on in the movie, "Dare you take a leap of faith? Or become an old man, filled with regret, waiting to die alone." And at the end, while we are caught up in figuring whether things were real or not, Cobb has already gone beyond us. He has left the top behind without bothering to see if it stops or not. He cares more about hugging his children then he does about checking whether he is in a dream. He has taken that leap of faith. He has come full circle, despite rejecting Mal's words - "You're waiting for a train. A train that will take you far away. You know where you hope the train will take you, but you can't be sure. But it doesn't matter because we'll be together." It doesn't matter any more whether things are real; what matters is they are together. And in taking that leap of faith, Cobb has taken one step (or leap) further than us, for we are still stuck with our doubts. Cobb, the character in the movie, has gone further than us who are in the real world. The fiction, the fantasy the dream; they have gone further than reality.

And the last facet that I'm going to talk about is that the whole movie being just Nolan's dream. It's a paracosm (credit to posef for this idea) that he created for himself to showcase his sick special effects and awesome directing skills. And from his distinctive non-linear storyline style, multiple levels of meanings and explorations of a myriad of themes at the same time, this movie is somewhat a microcosm of his own mind as well.

And there are many other facets I'm sure; many other ideas spawned by this movie that I have not covered, which other critics will expound on in greater detail. But that's the point, isn't it? Ideas beget ideas. They are viruses, after all. They multiply and consume. That's another facet =)

This film is impressive for how much meaning it manages to capture in it's small scope – two main sets and two main actors, with hardly any special effects. Set within the narrative frame of a censure review process, the drama unfolds from Day 1 to Day 7 as a playwright's (Goro Inagaki) script is rejected time and time again by the censor (Koji Yakusho). As the censor demands more changes each day, he finds himself caught up in the creative process.

Herein lies the film's starkest satirical point. On an individual level, a censor aids, rather than stifles the creative process. While he begins as an inhuman personification of the institution and/or the state, he is humanized by his developing friendship with the playwright. This 'humanization' is depicted through scenes of his daily activities (eating at a sushi bar, traveling, outside his uniform etc) towards the end of the film. On a structural level, the narrative frame – the censure review process – is contrasted against the end result of that process: the playwright produces a brilliant comedy, and we too, enjoy a brilliant comedy.

The film culminates in the playwright confessing his true intentions, which meets the censor's own philosophy head on. What was previously ignored or forgotten because of their growing friendship can no longer be, and the censor is forced to issue an ultimatum. The buildup in poignancy was not overdone, though it could have been more subtle. Nevertheless, this development threatens to derail the entire buildup in plot, for it rendered all other changes to the playwright's script nugatory. But the risk paid off, and the result is, instead of being left with an unsatisfying cop-out of a friendly agreement to disagree, we get to watch a true transformation of character.