A few days ago I walked into a movie hall to watch a Christopher Nolan movie. My past experiences with The Prestige and Memento ensured that I was fully certain about not “grasping” the movie at all at first go. So, it was more like a walk in the park – just the freshness of the dew clad green grass replaced by the spit stained red carpet of Movietime. A bit of me rued the fact that there were no subtitles. Subtitles have become an essential part of my movie-watching experience. Without them, I feel a bit lost. When I can’t bother to pay attention to detail, I just read the subtitles to get a gist what’s going on, just like flipping through the pages of a really bad-ass book in order to complete it. At the Mahaquizzer three years ago, Q87 went like,

Complete John Updike?s famous poetic lament: ?I think that I shall never view  A French film without _______?.

I vividly remember answering the question with “subtitles” as the answer. The person who evaluated my sheet had a huge bout of laughter when he read that. The answer was in fact Gerard Depardieu.

So, it was a huge surprise when the initial few exchanges were in Japanese with English subtitles to boot. I quipped that the entire movie be this way, in exchange for which I received desultory glances. The movie caught pace as expected and Nolan tried to weave the entire universe into a ball of yarn. The plot was convoluted, garbled with non-linear narration and then the spinning totem right at the end, dwindling and waiting to fall at the blink of your eyelid. A friend had warned that there might be people wanting to stand up and applaud the movie once it got over, but thankfully nothing of that sort happened.As expected, once out of the hall, there was buzz about whether the totem fell or not. Patrons jumped back and forth with consummate ease. There is no merit in trying to take sides as Nolan’s movies are best left not deconstructed. I tried it once with the Usual Suspects – though not a Nolan movie. Eons of writers do it to earn their bread and butter. Here is a piece on Inception and yet another one on Memento.

The world around us wants answers. Answers to questions as part of our annual exams, answers to the malaise of global warming, answers to problems of better housing and sanitation in third world nations, answers to combat issues of terrorism and fanaticism. Companies hire individuals who have answers to their niggling problems, pay them handsomely and pamper them to no end. In this day and age, where the need of the hour and simplify constructs and help disseminate knowledge as far and wide as possible, it is a bit surprising to see junta willing to swear by a concept which poses nothing but questions and makes no attempt to demystify.

To come to think of it, it’s a lot like marketing. The marketing jargon forces to believe that the product is much more sophisticated than it actually is. Slim milk as a friend puts it, is nothing but a legalized way to mix water in milk. Then there are products with “organic” farming. A lot of uneasy prefixed and suffixes are tagged onto products making them Tata Photon+ or Musli Power Xtra or Bharat Petroleum Speed. By adding these syllables or jargon, the marketer is nothing but creating a Nolan-like construct as it is easy to “sell” complexity than simplicity.

When marketers make things complicated or fabricate a “Unique Selling Proposition”, they are looked down upon with a degree of scorn and contempt. When done under the pretext of something more acceptable like a movie, plaudits are not too far. As Raj Kapoor remarked once, “Fellini’s nude woman is considered Art but when I show a woman’s beauty on screen, then it is called exploitation.” It’s a war that marketers and consultants will never win. They shouldn’t try to. Just that it would be better if somehow both parties tried providing answers. Simplifying things. Sealing this post with a KISS – Keep it simple, silly!

Loved the movie. Very detailed. Immense amount of research must have gone into it. Should get nominated to Oscars and all. But I couldn’t bring myself to heap praises over it. And no, if you haven’t watched it yet, you  have not done any irreparable damage to your karma cycle. Come to think of it, inception of the idea in the viewer’s mind that inception of an idea during a dream in real lives is a possibility could be Nolan’s actual motive behind the title “Inception”. Now, that is what you call thought within a thought, motive within a motive