“If we could just stay awake, perhaps we might see our way to living our dreams”
“Aren’t you worried”, my grandmother once asked me,
“that with all the films you watch you’re going to lose your grip on reality?” The comment incensed me though with
hindsight, I’m prepared to concede that she may have had a point. Indeed, her remark held special significance
in light of the film I watched on Sunday afternoon.
Inception is the ludicrously successful sci-fi film which
tells the story of a team of con men who infiltrate the world of dreams to
influence outcomes in the real world.
I’d resisted watching the film because it seemed so ridiculously over-hyped. On Sunday however, I gave in and, after
viewing it once, took the dogs for a walk and then watched it again. It was that good. But you probably know that already.
Not since The Matrix and Fight Club have I been so
preoccupied with a movie – I daresay I could write several posts about it (and
may yet). I left for work on Monday
utterly stupefied by Inception’s brilliance, troubled by its subtle warnings
and even mildly paranoid with the prospect that I might not have as firm a grip
on reality as I’d once thought.
Though I may exist in the “real” world, do my dreams
and (as the Apostle Paul calls them) “vain imaginations” inveigle me into a
world that is somehow alien and at times even at odds with the world I am
called to live in? As T.E. Lawrence
wrote in the 7 Pillars of Wisdom:
“All men dream: but not equally. Those
who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find
that it was vanity…”
One of the film’s haunting sub-plots deals with the
failure of the hero’s wife to adjust to reality after a blissful 5 decades of “building” a dream world with her husband.
And what a world it is! We get
glimpses of it in the movie’s final throes as we are literally washed up on the
shores of Cobb and Mal’s subconscious – and then carried away on a sweeping
bypass of a vast and impossibly magnificent cliff-side city. As the camera turns inland, we behold a skyline
quite unlike any other we have ever known or even dreamt of. This cityscape – though thoroughly gossamer
and without foundation, is Mal’s reality.
It is here she must return to – even if it means jumping from her
hotel window to achieve the “kick” that will jolt her back to that place.
Yet this world and all its beauty are caught in the
relentless undertow of decay. The great canyons
that separate the fantastical skyscrapers are a moldering ruin of cracks,
debris and floodwater. In one dramatic
sequence, we see the palisade condominiums peeling off in vast chunks into the
swirling ocean below. “For this world in
its present form is passing away,” warns the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians.
In the “Great Divorce”, C.S. Lewis ambitiously tackles
the challenge of describing the landscape of heaven. Thought by many to contain his best use of
fable and allegory, the book invites us into a spectacular world whose very
foundation is Absolute Truth. Here, at
least to the unsanctified visitor, even a tiny blade of grass is as hard and
sharp as a shard of high tensile steel.
In this uncompromising world, even the raindrops of a brief summer downpour
have the shredding power of a million machine gun bullets. The message is simple: reality and Truth are as hard as nails. They are Unyielding, uncompromising and
oftentimes stoically inconvenient.
While I believe that having dreams is an essential
part of living out my purpose, is there perhaps a fine line which, when crossed,
gives way to indulgent and aimless fantasy?
When I have crossed this line, am I still able to face reality and its frigid
insistence on the facts? Lawrence of
Arabia appears to have felt strongly about this. Having dealt with what he called “the dreamers
of the night”, he turned his attention to the “dangerous men” of reality:
“… but the dreamers of the day are
dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”
What checks and balances to do you use to keep your
grip on reality?
No comments:
Post a Comment