Great book, terribly banal title.

Overview

Nick Hornby’s A Long Way Down begins with a simple, almost high concept, premise – four radically different people meet on the roof of Topper’s House, a popular London suicide spot, on New Year’s Eve. Shenanigans ensue. It’s a ridiculously neat concept that is almost screaming out to be slapped onto the back of a yellowing paperback, along with a handful of superlative quotes on Horby’s finesse as a writer and a pricetag that’s too small to turn down. You’d never guess that inside is a novel of incredible weight, humour, depth, wit and magnitude, which only adds to its charm.

The book is divided into three parts, and is narrated in first person alternatively by all four protagonists. The beginning of the book reads like a pre-title sequence of an indie film. We open scenically (and ironically so) on the roof of Topper’s House with Martin, a wise-cracking middle-aged British man who is loaded with shameful past. There he meets Maureen, a soft-spoken old woman who sounds like she’s never been outside her parish. Next up is Jess, a sweary and petulant teenager to whom nothing is ever serious. And to round up the four we have JJ, a disgruntled American in London, filled with righteous anger at his lot in life.

Elements of each protagonist are drawn from stock characters, which at first helps the reader to acclimate to these not-entirely-likable bunch. But before they can get boring, Hornby quickly combines usually disparate character traits, and then adds in dashes of flavour to each personality. The genius in his writing, though, is in how well he embodies each character. From the simple and funny (Maureen puts in dashses to bleep out swear words) to almost unnoticeable (at one point about two-thirds in, I realised that Jess’s bits read faster and snappier simply because of Hornby’s deft use of punctuation), his writing adapts to each character seamlessly. It’s as if we are being told this story by four actors rather than one writer. It’s a simple technique, but it works brilliantly. It also guarantees that any insight we as readers receive is insight that one of the characters has gained, which adds a great deal to both the realism and weight of the novel.

But this is no mopey book about suicide, filled with dark brooding and essential life lessons. It often plays out as a comedy of errors, and Hornby doesn’t hesitate to play with clichés and expectations for laughs, shocks, or both. From page one, there is a refreshing frankness to how these characters speak, reflecting their desperation and sense of loss.

There’s a lot more to be said about this book, but I don’t think I could do it justice without talking about the way it ends, so I’ll have to put in a spoiler section for this one.

Arbitrarily Decided Grade: A-

Spoiler-filled discussion

A Long Way Down‘s ending demonstrates the nuance and honesty with which Hornby’s handles its themes. There is no neat, clean ending. It’s not even a question of whether or not the ending is happy, something which Martin mocks Jess for expecting. It’s an ending for the book, and for us, but not for the characters. And that alone says so much about what these four have been through. All we need to know is that no one is going to be killing themselves that night. For all intents and purposes, we’ve known this at the very least from the end of part one. The drop in exhilaration as we end the rush of part one and fade into the slow meandering of part two was a little disappointing at first, but as we got to know the characters more and more, it made sense. It’s not really about plot;, and thinking that is a mistake that leads some of the characters to the roof in the first place.

The world of this book is one in which people aren’t afraid to halt the flow of the narrative by going “what the fuck?” when something they’re not accustomed to happens. And it works perfectly. Because people don’t learn from each other through kindness and caring when they are as different and despondent as these four. They learn by arguing, fighting, clashing and being forced to see themselves in a different light – not because they want to, but because they have to. Hornby manages to convey the drama that goes on in these people’s heads without overdramatising their lives, because he realises that they are the last people who have any idea how their heads work. Some of these characters are fairly mundane, and some have frankly stupid reasons for trying to jump off the roof of a tower block, but a wider perspective isn’t really part of this deal, is it? They don’t really know why their lives are unworthy of continuing, or worthy of ending. And that’s the journey they’re on, not to solve all the difficulties of their lives in heartwarming stroke, but to try and understand themselves a little better. And that’s the journey we’re on, too. Convenient coincidence, that.

This is the kind of stuff that should be studied in high school literature classes. The Great Gatsby is great and all, but this is exhilarating and exciting literature. It’s accessible, but never talks down to you. It almost reads like four different books, but hangs all of its threads together as a singular, powerful and downright funny idea. It walks so many tightropes and hardly makes any missteps, and yet it breezes by so fast. This isn’t one of those books that makes you slow down in the last pages because you don’t want it to end; this is a book that you want to burn through, partly because you’re enjoying it so much and partly because you find yourself in the predicament that these characters are in. In short, it’s damn good writing, and it makes for damn good reading. And all of this in an honest and lighthearted book on suicide.

Also published as On Love: A Novel.

The back of this book categorizes its genre as “Philosophy/Novel”, and strange as it may sound, there’s really no other way of putting it. In Essays in Love, our unnamed protagonist examines the various aspects of being in love through tracking his relationship with a woman named Chloe.

Chapter titles range from “The subtext of seduction” through “Marxism” to “Intermittences of the Heart” and “Psycho-fatalism”. Each chapter is divided into point, each point being numbered and generally consisting of a paragraph. The whole affair has the air of philosophy, but at the same time we are still following what is essentially a standard love story. And this is Botton’s brilliance – using a simple man-and-woman-fall-in-love scenario to dig into how we think and feel about love, from the perspective of a philosopher (in the very traditional sense of the word).

Most people, assuming you’ve been in love, will find something that they can relate to here. This book had been making the rounds with most of my friends before it fell in my hands, and to be honest, it didn’t strike anywhere near as personal a chord with me as it had with them. But this is not a criticism; Essays in Love is not the kind of work that requires you to have experienced what it is talking about to enjoy it or find it enlightening. The last chapter is entitled “Love Lessons”, and really, the whole book could have been called that. Although Botton  speaks of love in broad terms and often takes the protagonist’s experiences with Chloe to create generalizations, his discourse on love is still rooted in this one relationship. You can still learn a lot from it and sympathize with the emotions Botton explores, even if you’ve never experienced them yourself. This level of engagement is both a credit to Botton’s way of structuring the book and a result of his incredibly skillful and witty writing.

At one point towards the end of Essays in Love, we read an emotionally-loaded letter written by Chloe to the protagonist. This is a stark removal from the course of the novel, reminding us just how detached the reader has been kept from the dynamic of the novel’s key relationship. And yet the story remains compelling, not because we are necessarily have any investment in the characters, but rather because we are engaged in Botton’s philosophical inquest into love. There’s a certain magic to the wit, insight and humility with which he approaches the topic. He takes a down-to-earth approach in his analyses, freely and deftly using metaphors, diagrams, folk wisdom and a vast philosophical heritage alike to illustrate his points.

Arbitrarily Decided Grade: B+

Looking For Alaska by John Green (2005)

Overview

I can’t think of a better book to have started my summer reading spree with. John Green’s Looking For Alaska is packaged as a categorically “young adult novel”, but as any good book about teenagers and for teenagers, it has no place within those strict boundaries. The novel follows Miles Hunter, who goes to boarding school for junior year in search of “the Great Perhaps”, and finds much more than he could have imagined.

Miles narrates the story in first person, and his character is fascinating enough to justify this. In his home in Florida, he lives in voluntary isolation from the world, absorbed in reading biographies and learning famous dead people’s last words. He is searching for something without knowing what it is, and in the course of the book he finds it in Culver Creek Preparatory School in the most unexpected ways. The book is divided into two halves, “Before” and “After”, pivoted around an experience that is as traumatic to the reader as it is to the characters. I’ll leave the discussion of that to the spoiler section.

John Green has an uncanny ability to get into the head of a loner teenager who experiences life for the first time. On a superficial level, Green adopts many of the clichés of coming-of-age stories – first cigarette, being hazed by seniors, getting caught up in petty high school feuds, being attracted to a girl for the first time, etc etc etc. But there’s a reason these clichés exist; they’re an integral part of teenage life in a context like this one. But Green takes those tropes and makes them an honest part of Miles’ life. He avoids the easy trap of trying to create characters and a context that are vague enough for anyone to project themselves into. He captures the feeling of being in a consciously formative stage in life; wrestling with the invincibility and vulnerability of adolescence with startling sincerity.

So give this book a go, especially if you went to boarding school or are going to boarding school. It is a powerful and honest coming-of-age tale, the likes of which I haven’t encountered since I read The Perks of Being A Wallflower, and it has instantly become one of my favourite books. I will most definitely be revisiting this one many, many times in the years to come.

Arbitrarily Decided Grade: A

Spoiler-filled discussion (MAJOR spoilers)

First of all, I must admit a ridiculous amount of bias for this book. Miles’ story in its framework (at least in the Before section) uncannily parallels my own life. If you haven’t been to boarding school, I promise you, the description of boarding school life here is pitch perfect. And beyond that, it understands a very strange niche of teenagedom – smart kids who go to school with lots of other smart kids, studying their asses off while simultaneously experimenting and breaking rules and trying to be badass. The feeling that this book captures better than I’ve ever seen captured is what it’s like to find what it’s like to feel at home because of the people around you after years of being comfortable in perfect isolation.

There are some moments of pure genius in Looking For Alaska. The bit about Miles kissing Lara for the first time is a great piece of writing. The rapport that the Colonel and Miles build up is another great example. And then there’s Takumi and his “Nobody catches the motherfucking fox”. Or Alaska’s education on how a blowjob is given. I could go on and on. The entirety of Before is this awesome.

And then there’s After. Oh, the After. When I first realised that she’d died, I was so angry and so betrayed. There was no rhyme or reason to it, it felt like cheap emotional manipulation. But as I went on, I realised that that must be what the Colonel and Takumi and Miles felt like. I grew so attached to these characters without even realising it. I can almost hear their voices even now, with banter so comfortable and relentless that I feel as if they were my friends.

I don’t know why Alaska died. But I also know that it doesn’t matter. It matters that her friends tried to find out why. But in the end, this is not a book about growing up quickly in the wonderful world of adolescence. It is not a book about grieving the death of a friend. Well, it is about those things, but it is not exclusively about those things. What brings Before and After together is the essay Miles writes at the end. Realising that when you love someone, you seem them as more than the sum of their parts. And that is beautiful. And channeling that idea so perfectly makes this book beautiful; makes it something to be cherished as if it were a living, breathing thing.

Kenneth Branagh’s Thor is a film that doesn’t have very much going for it. Its plot developments are so predictable that the film skirts the line of being dry and businesslike. It replaces subtlety with exposition that would be laborious if it weren’t so damned simple. And yet Thor manages to be Marvel’s best Avengers film to date and the most effective, straight-up morality tale found in superhero movies since Spider-Man.

The film’s shifting between two locations – Marvel’s version of Asgard and a middle-of-nowhere town in New Mexico – reveals its greatest strength. In Asgard, Thor and his friends are the picture of moral simplicity. The entire machinations of the politics and power-play of Asgard are so simple that they are laughable on paper. Characters frequently waltz around declaring what they’ve just done, or what it is they are about to do. Every now and then, the grandfatherly but commanding Odin will explain the difference between right and wrong and how people should generally behave. The conflict is simple  and in-your-face – Thor is too immature to take the crown and Loki is jealous that he’s not even considered. Done. Insert plot here.

But not so fast. When Thor finds himself in New Mexico, the film becomes more than just eye candy. On Earth, Thor acts as if he is still a god – why wouldn’t he? His basal charm and simplicity both dumbfound and appeal to Jane Foster, the film’s Obligatory Romantic Interest™. We know exactly why Thor is on Earth; Odin explicitly told us two scenes ago that he would have to learn his lessons in maturity as a ruler by being banished to this godforsaken, CGI-lacking world. The fish-out-of-water scenario is classically executed well as Thor begins to pick up pace, but it is also here that the film begins to set itself apart.

Although the characters may not be very complex, the contrast between how they function in Asgard and on Earth demonstrate the key themes of the film. In Asgard, everything is cut and dry. Often the bland and outward motivations of the characters go so far as to make them seem stupid. On Earth, Thor finds a world where the good guys squabble with each other, and where power doesn’t seem to be organised as logically as it was in Asgard under Odin’s watchful eye. He doesn’t exactly learn subtlety, but Thor learns to see the world as more than just right and wrong, good and bad. Meanwhile, as Loki learns of his origins as a Frost Giant child; the deceit and lies he finds in his own past make themselves manifest in his selfish actions of the future. He manages to deceive even himself, while Thor learns to see beyond the mask of Asgard’s blunt warrior morality.

The central moment in the film occurs when Loki and Thor battle upon the latter’s return to Asgard. Loki mocks Thor for his admittedly clichéd changes during his experience on Earth, demanding whether “the girl” was responsible for his newfound kindheartedness. Loki mistakes his silence for affirmation, but the audience is aware of how untrue this assertion is. It isn’t Jane Foster who creates the fundamental change in Thor, although she is a symbol of how he finds that change. His transformation begins when Thor is unable to pull Mjolnir, his hammer, out from the rock Odin has lodged it into. In this moment, Thor loses the only thing which gave him his clear sense of moral judgment – his power. To fill this void, Thor finds, silly as it may sound, love. But not through Jane Foster or his friends, but through himself. When Loki (literally) sends giant hulking fire-breathing armour to find and kill Thor, his powerlessness becomes a problem. As his friends, both new and old, stand ready to retreat, Thor finds a solution by sending them off and marching towards the monster, ready to make the ritual sacrifice we’ve all been expecting. But what is important here is not necessarily the fact that he is willing to die for his friends, but rather that he has managed to find a solution that does not require power. He is left with only one option to save the world around him from further destruction and suffering; his life is the only bargaining chip he has left. And so he offers it – because losing power has shown him that being good doesn’t just mean deciding where and how to exert power for a good cause, but to do what is right when it is demanded of you. And when he learns that lesson, his power is returned to him.

Amidst all of the pomp, that lesson is what Thor is all about. The rift between father and sons, the political maneuverings of Asgardians, and the conflict between Jane and SHIELD all underline the same messages. In essence, Thor boils down to a simple story about simple people and simple gods. It demonstrates an idea that permeates mythology and modern fantasy – the gods are just as fallible as us humans, which means that what is important about power is not having it, but knowing how to use it. In telling us this story in a manner so straightforward it could almost be called a fable, Thor does not mark itself as a particularly sophisticated or innovative film. What it does exceedingly well, however, is using its imagination, rooted in ancient tropes, and its unashamed simplicity to create a powerful and entertaining modern morality tale.

I don’t remember the last time I kept wanting to go back to see a film at the cinema this many times. Every ticket I buy for Inception is worth the price, though. And the box office returns, while they’re not as high as I would hope, are very encouraging. As Inception ticks closer and closer to a worldwide gross of US$400 million, it’s clear that there is a significant portion of the mainstream cinema-going audience that enjoy intelligent cinema. I highly doubt that films like Synecdoche, New York or A Serious Man will ever be mainstream. Yes, there is a place for independent cinema, but that doesn’t mean that mainstream cinema has to be patronising. In a year of shoddy remakes, poor sequels, and story-less effects-driven extravaganzas, Inception stands as an all-too-rare reminder that films don’t need to insult the intelligence of their audience to be successful. Let’s remind studios of that. Go see Inception at the cinema, and then go see it again. Take this from someone who has seen it three times and counting – it’s worth it.

[Once again, SPOILERS for Inception follow]

A Brilliant Architect

Creating a world as rich as the one in Inception is always hard to do without forced exposition. While the loose structure of a heist film does allow for a lot of exposition to take place, that is not where the film’s sense of completeness comes from. Rather, it constantly hints towards ideas that will become relevant later in the film through seemingly offhand comments by characters and minor plot points, allowing the viewer to get accustomed with the rules and nuances of the world before they come into play.

One of the delights of watching this film over and over again is to realise just how well plotted it really is. To say that the writing is taut does not do the brilliance of Nolan’s script justice. Not a single line is wasted here – and I don’t mean that as hyperbole. Literally every single line of dialogue in this film is imperative to advancing the plot, developing the characters or exploring the story and its themes.

Take the scene in the third level of the dream where Cobb is systematically taking out the guards that surround the ice fortress. A shocked Ariadne asks whether Cobb is destroying parts of Fischer’s subconscious, and Cobb reassures her that only the projections are being attacked, that the elements of the subconscious creating them remains unaffected. This happens in a matter of seconds, and our attention is more focused on the urgency of the crew’s attempt to get into the fortress than this brief exchange. A few scenes later, Cobb is facing Mal in limbo as he urges Ariadne to take herself and Fischer out of limbo. While doing that, Ariadne unexpectedly shoots Mal. This arrangement of moments is a masterstroke on three levels. The first is in how it informs the audience. While the shooting does have momentary shock value, the audience has just moments ago learned that this wouldn’t destroy her – so the fact that Cobb still has to face Mal doesn’t strike us as a continuity issue with the plot. Second, it allows the story to continue moving forward at a breakneck pace – Ariadne knows shooting Mal won’t destroy any part of Cobb’s subconscious, so she does it without hesitation, giving Cobb a jolt and forcing him to face the events in front of him. We know exactly what the consequences of her action are, s0 the story doesn’t need to slow down and lose its momentum for the sake of exposition. The third level on which it works is the most brilliant of the lot – the fact that Mal doesn’t die from the gunshot reminds Cobb (as well as the audience) that she isn’t real. We are finally in the world that Cobb’s projection of Mal insists is the real world; if she were right and Cobb was dreaming all along in what we thought was the real world, then that gunshot would have killed her. The set-up and execution of this happens so quickly that you’d miss it in the blink of an eye.

Moments like these are riddled throughout the film, and they are created with such subtlety that it took me repeat viewings to notice a lot of them. Even after you’ve noticed them, the unmitigated craft with which they are made makes them a delight to watch. (Another one of these moments that I love is when the crew is planning on how to do the job, and Cobb asserts that “I think positive emotion trumps negative emotion every time.” There is a wonderfully tragic layer to this sentiment that pierced through me when I noticed it.) On both plot and story levels, Nolan’s writing is seamless. Despite its structural complexity and subtlety, it is brutally straightforward in its execution – this film plays by its own rules, and it makes those rules very clear to us. Every scene is meaningful, every plot development is crucial; Inception‘s plot is fully self-contained.

From the tiniest seed, it spreads like a virus …

Like all great sci-fi masterpieces, the ideas contained in Inception‘s story are bursting at its seams. Its plot might be tightly self-contained, but that doesn’t mean it has to follow that route thematically – indeed, the firm foundation of the plot makes it easier for the film to explore a plethora of different ideas. At the heart of the story is Cobb’s journey and his struggle with guilt and regret, which I talked about extensively in my previous post. Alongside this, we have the story of Fischer and his relationship with his father. These are our main storylines, running side by side, feeding off each other, but sprinkled throughout Inception are the seeds of various other ideas – the ethics of dream-sharing, the value placed on truth, and the need for privacy exercised in our mental faculties are a few that I found particularly interesting.

One idea that is explored quietly but in a manner integral to the central plot is the seductiveness of the dream world. Time and time again, we see people being seduced by the world of lucid dreaming – Cobb and Mal before her death, Ariadne as she experiences the rush of creation, the recurring visitors under Yusuf’s chemist shop. When Ariadne storms out after her first encounter with Mal, Cobb assures Arthur that she’ll be back, that reality won’t be enough for her anymore. She is absorbed by the thrill and joy of pure creation, as are all the members of the team, to some extent. This seductive power reflects the temptation of living within one’s own imagination. Digging deeper, down to the nature of limbo, it also reflects the temptation of living in a world where, for all intents and purposes, one is god; a world where life has meaning because we can make it have that meaning, a world where we are more than just one among billions searching for purpose among chaos. A tempting proposition for most, to be sure, but especially so for Cobb, a man who lives a life defined by regret and guilt. In a world entirely of his own making, Cobb is understandably convinced that he can escape those feelings. No wonder his subconscious wants him to stay in limbo so badly.

Much like the ideas of Inception, many of its characters are only hinted at, but they end up being incredibly defined. Much of this can be chalked up to the acting; the entire cast does a fantastic job of defining themselves very clearly regardless of their amount of dialogue or screen-time. Masterful performances make even the characters who are little more than plot devices entertaining to watch. Little moments like when Eames tries to knock Arthur over in his chair or when Ariadne reacts to Arthur’s sneakily procured kiss go a long way to defining their characters’ personalities. We get hints every now and then as to the who these people are, and those hints compound subtly into something more. By the time Arthur tells Eames that he will “lead them on a merry chase”, we are sensitive enough to the nuances of those two characters to appreciate the moment (this sensitivity obviously compounds on repeat viewings, when our attention is devoted less to the mysteries of the plot); we only ever got the slightest of ideas as to who these characters are, but from those tiniest seeds, ideas spread to define whole characters.

Let’s take a deeper look at some of our characters. The dynamic between Eames and Arthur is a particularly fascinating one. As Eames tells Cobb in Mombassa, he finds that Arthur lacks a certain flair. Whereas Eames plays to the fancies of his irrationality, Arthur acts strictly within the parameters that he sets for himself. A lesser film would easily turn these characters into caricatures; a traditional dichotomy of Apollo and Dionysius. But true to the complexity of people, Eames and Arthur each possess both Apollonian and Dionysian characteristics – it’s just that they choose to manifest them differently. Both of them possess extraordinary imaginations that reflect their personality. Eames is wilder, he can imagine himself into other people, or he can imagine himself a bigger gun. Arthur, on the other hand, thinks more rationally, which lets him navigate paradoxes and excel in zero-gravity fights – watch those fights scenes carefully; Arthur doesn’t succeed just because he’s good at fighting, he succeeds because the rational basis of his imagination helps him understand the gravity shifts around him, giving him the ease with which he gains control in that environment.

We see that dynamic paralleled somewhat between Cobb and Ariadne, taken to more extreme levels. Ariadne thinks rationally and mathematically; while it would be easy to characterise her as lacking imagination, Nolan deftly stays away from creating unrealistic exaggerations of personality types for his characters. The first couple of times Cobb tests Ariadne, she creates typical mazes that he solves with ease. Frustrated, she shows her true potential by thinking outside the box (in an amusingly semi-literal fashion). Constructing the world of a dreamscape for the first time, she acts innovativtely – by recognising the laws of physics, she bends them; by focusing on the wonders of the natural world, she creates in opposition to it. This is her anchor to reality; her barrier against seduction. Cobb, on the other hand, increasingly succumbs to creation based on pure emotion, something which he tries to prevent by not letting himself design dreams for the job. He is slowly losing his anchor to reality, which is reflected in his use of Mal’s totem, an issue I discussed at length in my previous post. It is fitting that Ariadne is the one who clearly sees Cobb’s growing surrender to temptation and helps to draw him out of it.

Non, je ne regrette rien

“Do you want to become an old man, filled with regret, waiting to die alone?”, Saito asks Cobb. Little does he realise that Cobb is already filling up to the brim with regret, and it’s destroying him. Consider the sequence in which Ariadne enters Cobb’s personal dream uninvited. “You don’t understand,” he tells her, “these are moments that I regret. They’re memories that I have to change.” Cobb is racked with guilt, plagued by regret at his actions that eventually led to Mal’s demise.

The problem with inception, as Arthur is quick to point out when Saito first proposes the job, is that the mind needs to think that the idea came from within itself. “We all yearn for reconciliation”, Cobb observes at one point in the film. Fischer needs reconciliation of his relationship with his father if he is going to accept the idea Saito wants him to. The idea comes not from himself, but Fischer has to create the seed of it himself if he is to truly accept it. Similarly, Ariadne guides Cobb back to reality, but he must seek reconciliation by facing himself. When Ariadne first learns of how Mal died, she flat out tells Cobb to face his guilt. Later on, she shoots Mal, reminding Cobb of what is real and what is not, giving him that anchor which is he rapidly losing. But Mal leaves only when Cobb himself faces his guilt, when Cobb himself decides to let his regrets go.

Let’s take a look at the quote again. “Do you want to become an old man, filled with regret, waiting to die alone?” – Cobb and Saito repeat it to each other as they encounter each other in limbo. Note that the concepts of regretfulness and dying alone are tied together repeatedly in the film. Cobb’s regrets and guilt make him draw deeper and deeper into himself, trying to fix those cause of those feelings within his mind, which is what makes limbo so tempting for him. But read that quote again. They say it to each other when they are in limbo. Superficially, limbo seems like the world in which you can shed all your regret. And yet Saito has become that old man filled with regret, waiting to die alone. In a world of pure creation, Saito still retains regret from his existence in reality. Alone, the mind cannot deceive itself; folding into its own unconscious, it has to live with its regret. Cobb was falling headfirst into that state, trapping all his regret within his mind, allowing it to manifest as Mal, allowing it to deceive him and tempt him to succumb into limbo. Cobb has to shed his regret, and he could not do that alone, as we’ve previously discussed. Once Cobb moves beyond being that man filled with regret, he is able to help Saito, being the Other who draws Saito out from that very same state.

In other words, to lose yourself in your mind, to your own demons, is to live with regret forever. To escape those demons rather than facing them, falling prey to the seduction of limbo, is to become an old man filled with regret, waiting to die alone.

A Leap of Faith

“You keep telling yourself what you know, but what do you believe? What do you feel?” Mal asks Cobb. Cobb continuously claims throughout the film that he has a grasp on reality, and to a certain extent, it’s true – he knows what’s real on a purely rational level. But his guilt and regret won’t let him truly believe it.

There are several times in the film when Cobb is asked to take a leap of faith. Let’s look at them chronologically. First, Mal asks Cobb to take a leap of faith as she jumps off the ledge from the hotel, plunging to her death. Cobb, at this point firmly entrenched in his convictions of reality, is unable to follow her. This is where his guilt begins, manifesting the idea in his mind that his faith would have been rewarded if he had followed her. Second, Saito asks Cobb to take a leap of faith and a believe that Saito can clear all of the charges against Cobb. In desperation, Cobb agrees. In the third and most crucial instance, in Saito and Cobb’s exchange in limbo, they remind themselves of that pact to take a leap of faith. They both find themselves able to do so now; not only do they know from memory that their faith will be rewarded, they believe that it will be, each because of the other.

When Cobb returns home, he finally believes in the reality that he knows to be true. The spinning top doesn’t matter. The faces of his children do, because he has finally reached a point where he accepts reality, he has found his anchor back to it, with help from outside himself and reconciliation borne from within himself.

Welcome Home, Mr. Cobb

The first time I watched Inception, my eyes were welling up as Cobb saw the faces of his children. As someone who very rarely cries at films, this was a pretty big endorsement of the film in and of itself. But it was more than just that. Each time I’ve seen Inception, I have been overwhelmed with emotion as it ended. This has become a deeply personal film for me, but I also do this to try and explain the merits that I see in this film to others in the hope that I will provide new and interesting perspectives to them. By explaining my thoughts on it, I don’t seek to deconstruct its cohesiveness and remove that personal connection. Rather, I do this to explore the film better in my own way. This film astounds me on many levels, the most intense of which connects to me on a very deep, emotional level.

And that is why I love this film. To me, Inception is art at its finest.

Troy: That dude makes a lot of announcements.

Abed: I like it, it makes every ten minutes feel like the beggining of a new scene of a TV show. Of course the illusion only lasts until someone says something they’d never say on TV, like how much their life is like TV. There, it’s gone.

Señor Chang: Hasta leugo! Come on, hands are 90 percent of Spanish!

The second episode of Community introduces us to a new character, Señor Chang. The first time we see him, he demonstrates himself as a quintessential anti-stereotype, in true Community style. He simmers with rage that better befits a WWE persona than a community college Spanish teacher. He is terrifyingly hilarious. And he only gets more intense, on both counts. We’re also introduced to Starburns, the man with sideburns shaped like stars, aka the walking sight gag (+10 points to the writers for establishing a backup recurring joke way early on). The A-plot of the episode revolves around Jeff and Pierce having to work together for a minor Spanish project that Pierce wants to take to a whole new level in an attempt to be as “cool” as Jeff, while the B-plot focuses on Shirley and Annie’s newly discovered enthusiasm for the political activism that Britta claims to love but keeps on the down-low to hide her insecurities. Also, Abed says some crazy shit. This is the best part of this episode’s plot.

A lot of this episode is spent establishing Community‘s comedic style and distinguishing it from the traditional sitcoms’ styles while still paying homage to them and its other inspirations. The most striking aspect of the show’s mish-mash of gags is their frequently self-referential and self-aware nature. Embodied primarily by Abed (who, for example, at one point in the episode says “Conflicts like this will ultimately bring us togther as an unlikely family”), this humour not only acknowledges that the audience knows exactly where the more overarching plot elements are going, but further allows the show to embrace those tropes wholeheartedly and add its own quirks, quiet humanity and realistic lightheartedness to them. Combined with equal quantities of wordplay gags and sight gags, this gives Community a distinctive style that it will grow and maintain throughout the first half of the season.

While it succeeds brilliantly on a comedic level, this episode falters in its telling of the show’s greater story. Jeff and Britta are the only characters explored with any real depth. Jeff’s a selfish douchebag who uses his friends and Britta has a shield of self-righteousness to hide her insecurity. Refreshingly, they don’t do away with those problems in the space of the episode, but rather come to accept a little bit more that they have those issues, taking the first steps to developing as characters, an integral element of serial storytelling that most television comedies neglect entirely. However, the other characters don’t fare so well. Abed is brilliant in his pop culture-centric humour, but at this point in the story, that’s all he’s good for; or at least that’s what everyone else sees him as – someone with an inability to separate reality from fiction. The depth of his character doesn’t show at all in this episode, which is a little shocking after having become so accustomed to it through the rest of the season. All the other characters merely bounce off our central three at this point, aiding their stories and their humour.

This episode also spends too much time explaining itself. Characters seem to do an awful lot of going around to each other and explaining the nature of that character’s arc in the episode to them. While it’s great to see television characters that aren’t oblivious to the personalities of the people they interact with every day, this really goes overboard here, making the whole proceeding far too simple and clear cut for the plot to have a decent flow. Besides, a little more focus on developing those character mini-arcs rather than explaining them would help us get to know the characters better.

Spanish 101 stays afloat on its fantastically-paced humour, and while Community‘s other most powerful feature – its development of compelling character-based stories – is only taking its baby steps here, it’s still a blast to watch. The montage of Jeff and Pierce’s performance at the end of the episode is a pitch-perfect demonstration of the show’s excellent sight-humour that is apparent but still subtle enough to not seem overdone. And who can ever forget Troy and Abed’s rap at the end of the episode that beings their epic duo of priceless non-sequitur-filled friendship?

7/10

If you live in the United States and were old enough to read the news in the 90s, then chances are that you know who Jack Kevorkian is. For those of you who don’t, a short introduction: Dr Kevorkian is one of the world’s most vocal activists in favour of euthanasia; he practised physician-assisted suicide in Michigan during the 1990s before an escalating series of events ended in him being imprisoned for eight years. You Don’t Know Jack follows his life from the beginnings of his campaign and rise to the national stage to his eventual conviction.

Every film that dramatises a real-life story brings up questions of  bias towards or against the people and issues it documents. This is particularly the case here, what with the huge controversy surrounding Dr Kevorkian’s actions. You Don’t Know Jack presents a biased view – but there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s a film about Dr Kevorkian’s life, and it takes a look at its subject from his perspective. The film presents the man through his public actions and his interactions with the handful of people who were a part of his personal life, and it does so in a balanced manner. The film doesn’t make judgements about the man, nor does advocate Dr Kevorkian’s views – but being a film about Dr Kevorkian, it presents the views that were so integral to his life. Is this film biased? Yes. Unfairly? Not at all.

The driving force behind You Don’t Know Jack is its performances. Al Pacino immerses himself in the role of Kevorkian completely, becoming him in the way he speaks, the way he walks, and the erratic passion he displays. Rather than merely imitating one image Kevorkian, he shows Kevorkian as a man who grows and changes over time. The low-key nature of the film, especially in its first half, allows the actors time and space to slowly embody their characters. The resulting power and force of their performances give this story’s emotional core a great authenticity.

This is a film that expresses the opinion of a man by examining his life unflinchingly and wholeheartedly. Its tone is complex and layered, as any one person’s life is. It never lets itself slip into the common biopic schtick of trying to focus solely on one emotional aspect of their subject, which inevitably shows them as caricatures, undermining the point of the whole exercise. You Don’t Know Jack is a gripping tale, and an important one. It brings with it the full emotion of one man’s personal journey, and the incredibly pertinent issue he fought for. In other words, this is essential viewing.

9/10

A few minutes ago, I finished watching Inception for the second time in as many days. I’m not one for rewatching films at the cinema, but this film, like most of Christopher Nolan’s work, almost demands it of me. Inception is a film that engaged my imagination, a film whose ideas took hold in my mind, a film that dares to tell a story with no holds barred. In this dreary year for English-language cinema, Inception reminded me of why I came to love this medium of storytelling in the first place. I have no qualms in calling Inception a masterpiece. A perfect combination of spectacle and intelligence, it is bursting with imagination and layered, complex storytelling that maintains a simple core. I don’t know yet if it is my favourite Nolan film, but at the very least it is on par with Memento and The Dark Knight.

Ideas, Imagination and Originality

Inception is a highly original film. These days, any film that’s not a based on an existing property can make a claim to that phrase, but Inception is more than just that. Its ideas are fresh and bold; we’re seeing things in this film shown to us in ways that we’ve never seen before. But to say that the concepts of Inception sprung forth newborn from Christopher Nolan’s mind would be a laughable claim. The concepts of dreamscapes, literalizations of one’s subconscious and the cathartic navigation of labyrinths are all concepts that have been explored before. On a more superficial level, Inception‘s framing of its plot is essentially that of a standard heist film – complete with the “one last job” impetus and the gathering of a crew of individuals each skilled in a different field – only here, the heist takes place in the mind, and rather than stealing something, our crew is planting something.

What makes Inception original is its imagination. The film doesn’t deny its inspirations through artistic self-indulgence – after all, all stories are influenced by other stories that came before them. This film is powered not by individual concepts, but like all great storytelling, at its core is a story; a story developed and explored with an abundance of imagination. From their central ideas, Nolan & Co spawn a world of inventive imagery and plot, magnificently exploiting the vast range of technique that the medium of cinema offers.

The honed craftsmanship in this film also gives it an additional layer of freshness. We’ve seen zero-gravity fight sequences before, some of them fairly similar to the one here, but those scenes in Inception set themselves apart out of sheer artistry and workmanship. Nolan’s vision coupled with Wally Pfister’s intuitive cinematography set to the powerful, pulsating rhythms of Hans Zimmer’s score give the scene (and the film as a whole) a grand scope that expands from and develops out of its core, the story.

Dimensions of Time and Space

There are layers upon layers in this film, both literally and figuratively. On a plot and structure level, the world of Inception is ingenious in the way it creates tension and suspense. Compounding time as our characters go deeper and deeper into their minds, Nolan deftly manages to keep the chronology in check, giving a sense of urgency to the proceedings of the plot while still allowing the central emotional journey of the film time to grow.

The film strictly follows the rules it has set up for itself, but if the simple constructs that Ariadne learns from Cobb and Arthur turned out to the basis of the entire film, it would definitely not have the impact that it does. What does death mean in a world where you just wake up when it happens? In one swift move, Nolan solves that problem by creating complications during the “heist” itself. The natural, growing complexities of the job allow not only for more exploration of Cobb’s psyche and the film’s various themes, but they’re a simple, ingenious way to create tension. The rules that we’re told in the first hour of the film help us understand and formulate the world of the film, but based on them alone the main act of the film would play out merely like a game.

Cobb’s Journey

What makes Cobb’s emotional journey in this film more compelling than it may seem on the surface is the simple fact that his character isn’t just represented in Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance. With the exception of two brief flashbacks, the character of Mal is a projection of Cobb’s subconscious throughout the film. The spinning top that Cobb keeps checking is Mal’s totem, not his, so why would he use it? Cobb believes on a deep level in the possibility that the Mal who he sees as a projection of his subconscious is real. The spinning top falls to show that he is in reality, but what if Mal actually was still real? Then the totem wouldn’t work, because she would know the intricacies of the totem. If reality was a dream and Mal was still real, then the totem could very well fall. The top convinces Cobb that he is in reality, but it also keeps alive the hope that there is a reality where Mal is real.

When Mal keeps sabotaging the mission, it shows that on some level, Cobb doesn’t want the mission to work. When she draws him into limbo, it’s because part of himself wants to go there. Remember that limbo is the unconstructed dreamscape of all those sharing it. When Fischer slips into limbo, it’s not because Mal takes him there. Mal only enters limbo when Cobb enters limbo. When Cobb enters limbo, the world he has constructed is there, falling apart, because it is only half of what he constructed with his wife when he was first there. The fact that Mal is hiding Fischer means that Cobb is hiding Fischer. His subconscious doesn’t want Fischer to leave, because it doesn’t want the mission to succeed. Part of Cobb, the part that is wrapped in guilt, wants him to stay in limbo, where he can construct his own reality, one in which Mal is alive, and he didn’t give her the seed of the idea that killed her. When Cobb faces Mal once and for all, Cobb is facing his guilt – literally. When Cobb winds up on the shore of the world created from the unconscious of Saito, there’s an implication that the world he created in limbo is gone. The world where he could lose himself is gone, because he finally faces the guilt that kept bringing Mal back. As Mal leaves, so does his limbo, leaving him to wind up on the shore of Saito’s limbo.

Puzzles, Mazes and Storytelling

It is tempting to treat Inception as one very elaborate puzzle, a maze for the audience to figure out. But I feel that to make the film into that would be to undermine its powerful storytelling. Ultimately, Inception ends with a fascinating meditation what reality is and what it means. Our characters escape from limbo into reality always through the help of another person who is real. Cobb draws himself and Mal out the first time by giving her a negative emotion. But the inception he gave her takes root in her and ultimately destroys her. Ariadne draws herself and Fischer out before either of them have a chance to create their own world in limbo. Cobb himself causes his limbo to fade away, but where was the inception of the idea that allowed him to do so? Ariadne drew him out of his compulsion to trap himself in a world where Mal is real – she entered his unconscious uninvited, and she accompanied him throughout the mission, reminding him of the difference between true reality and the seductive power of the alternate reality that our minds can create. For it is only the Other that can bring the Self into reality; without the Other, reality has no meaning for the Self. And thus it is that Cobb faces Saito as an old man, and they remind themselves that they are each an Other to the other’s Self. And through that, they bring themselves back into reality.

Is Cobb still in limbo when he finally meets his children? Perhaps. Perhaps him winding up on that shore and facing Saito was a construct of his own mind in order to create a reality which mirrored his own, one without Mal but with the impetus of his existence, his children. The final shot lingers on the top as it spins and spins – it looks like it’s about to falter, but we don’t find out. Cobb isn’t looking at the top anymore, though, we are. To Cobb it doesn’t matter anymore. Throughout the film, he is obsessed with convincing himself he is in reality, refusing to accept that his failure to face his own demons and guilt refuses to let him truly live in reality. When he sees his children’s faces, when he experiences love once more and is truly aware of others in his world rather than just himself, Cobb knows that he is in reality. He doesn’t need the top anymore. To me, it seems clear that Cobb is in reality.

Will the top ever stop spinning? Well, in the end, it doesn’t matter.

The pilot episode of Community opens with the sound of a classic schoolbell as the Dean of Greendale Community College prepares to make a start-of-term speech, only to have the shot pan out to reveal that the bell a recorded sound-bite coming from a CD player. This simple sight gag reflects much of Community‘s humour throughout its first season, one that is based on setting up expectations with the sole purpose of defeating them (as the show goes on, it makes that quality an expectation in and of itself, and then goes on to subvert it, forming an inexplicably successful loop of biting wit). There’s no pause or laugh track to follow up the gag; everything moves swiftly onwards; any reactions to the joke are dispensed with instantly in order to keep the plot moving swiftly onwards in a fashion reminiscent of Arrested Development.

The plot of the pilot itself is fairly simple. Jeff Winger’s career as a lawyer is abruptly put on hold when his fake college degree is discovered, forcing him back to a community college. While he attempts to get an easy way out of this situation by exploiting his connection with a former client who happens to be college’s psychology professor, he inadvertently creates a study group in an attempt to hit on a girl from his Spanish 101 class. As an introduction to the show, this episode does a fairly adequate job. It introduces us to our cast of characters, giving them enough time to showcase their individual idiosyncrasies and their group chemistry. In the course of the episode, we get brief glimpses of each character’s schtick, and we follow Jeff as his plan to obtain all the answers to every test he will have to take in the next four years fails. The episode achieves its goal as a pilot in creating the impetus of the show – Jeff has to get through community college somehow, and there’s a whole cast of wacky characters who will do it with him.

But it also does far more than that. Pilots of TV shows, regardless of their strength in introducing and setting up a show, are generally weak as individual episodes of television because they cannot find the balance between being a self-contained story and the first chapter of a much longer one. Community manages to achieve that, and more. It does give a very good indication as to the structure and style of humour of the show, but it’s isn’t too ambitious; much of the character and plot setup will occur in the next few episodes. Nor is it too introductory; Jeff’s attempt at cheating his way through four years provides enough fodder for a story that has a beginning, a middle and an end – all within one half of a twenty-minute episode of television.

Let’s take a moment to look at our group of misfits. Apart from Jeff, Britta and Abed get the most screen-time in this episode. Britta is instantly set up as a foil to Jeff, but she is also given enough material later on to establish herself as a character in her own right. While she’s genuinely likeable throughout, we still get glimpses of her self-righteousness and the many shields she has put up between herself and the rest of the world. Abed’s insular but eager nature is established early on, although the full effect of his character will take many, many episodes to unload. We also get to see Annie’s youthful insecurity, Pierce’s pompous inappropriateness, Shirley’s doting nature that masks her various pent-up issues, and Troy’s overcompensation for his loss of star high-school-jock status. But rather than reducing its main characters to caricatures, the episode presents these qualities as quirks by sliding them subtly into continuous witty banter. The cast also deserves much credit for carrying a very complex dynamic by bouncing off each other effortlessly, responding to each other in a very natural, understated manner.

The show’s brilliant use of pop culture references begin with a huge splash here, with such lines as “I’m sorry, I was raised on TV and I was conditioned to believe that every black woman over 50 is a cosmic mentor”. Community also establishes itself as very self-aware without turning itself into a complete pop culture satire, as the various references to The Breakfast Club demonstrate. The show rides a very fine line of explaining the overt references to people who aren’t familiar with the material being referenced while throwing in subtle references that only the initiated will get. For example, after Abed quotes The Breakfast Club in a scene during which our characters each expose their personal baggage in a library, Jeff responds with “Well, that was actually from the Breakfast Club”. What could easily be an awkward line of dialogue that exists merely to explain a joke to the audience is done well enough to be a good comedy moment – the scene lingers on that line for barely a moment, and that moment is used to full effect with a brilliant reaction shot from Jeff. Meanwhile, at the end of the episode, as the study group wanders back into the library, the song Don’t You (Forget About Me), which is famously associated with its use in The Breakfast Club, plays in the background.

The pilot also acts as a mission statement of sorts for the show, starting off one of its most integral themes. Consider this duologue between Jeff and Duncan, through whom he hopes to get the next semester’s test results:

Duncan: I’m asking you if you know the difference between right and wrong.

Jeff: I discovered at a very early age, that if I talk long enough, I can make anything right or wrong. So either I’m God, or truth is relative – and in either case, booyah.

Duncan: Oh interesting; it’s just the average person has a much harder time saying ‘booyah’ to moral relativism.

Adorned with irony it may be, but at the heart of Community is a moral journey. It is not, however, the straightforward moralising that one would expect from an average sitcom; we’re not here merely to watch Jeff go from an arrogant asshole to a “good guy”. There are quite a few times in this episode where Jeff demonstrates his ability to make anything right or wrong by talking long enough, and although Britta does chastise him for it, the episode does not end with a simple “you were wrong Jeff, now apologise and let’s all hug” moment. It leaves threads open, and it allows for questioning of how much of what Jeff does is right and how much is wrong. This show understands then even in a setting as lighthearted as this, there are grey areas in the ethics of day-to-day life. As the show goes on, it ends up exploring the moralities of its entire cast, resulting often in both hilarity and a genuine exploration of how people grow and act in a group.

In the first scene of the episode, where Jeff meets Abed for the first time, he ends the conversation with the offhand comment “Abed – I see your value now”, to which Abed responds “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me”. Those lines are flipped at the end of the episode in a well-executed classic comedy move, but they also reflect the dynamic of the show that gives it so much potential. Its core premise is very simple and very common – a group of vastly different characters are lumped together in a journey and learn about each other and about friendship on the way (hence all the Breakfast Club references). But as this pilot demonstrates, Community makes that premise work by giving us three-dimensional characters and exploring their relationships honestly without sacrificing storytelling for jokes and without being patronising or moralising to its audience.

9/10

Why does this blog exist? Well, the primary reason is that my ego would not allow me to not have a blog. But this blog also exists because I feel like I have things to say about something that’s very close to my heart – storytelling. As far back as I can remember, stories have been central to the way I think and the way I live. I’ve always connected to people and to the world through stories. Stories can be wonderful things – they can distract from the tensions and stress of real life, but they can also attack the psyche on much deeper levels; they can be engaging, thought-provoking, or even life-changing.

So I’ll be writing about stories, storytelling and storytellers – the good, the bad, the lot of them. I hope you’ll join me for this journey. My writing isn’t all that good, so I always appreciate any constructive criticism you may have.

And thus it begins.

Oh, and if you subscribe, you’ll make me a very very happy young lad, and I shall give you plenty of virtual cookies*.

*virtual cookies aren’t real. You can’t actually eat them. But it’s the thought that counts, right?