Illusion

I am a great believer in the power of the motion pictures. For a number of years now, it has replaced many a great work of art in the eyes of the modern beholder. Presently, it may very well be making good its final conquest on the epic novel and winning over the snootiest geeks of our generation. Like these great masterpieces which it has dethroned, it moves us; and what's more, unlike them it moves too. Personally, movies have defined and moulded me in a big way and gifted me with arguments to defend any of the opinions that they allowed me to form.

The concept of reality and freedom explored in three of my favourite movies have helped me while away my time by writing this blog today, so I am thankful and dedicate this post to them. The first movie is The Matrix, which talks of the human race awakening to a reality of being slaves and trying to regain their freedom. Memento on the other hand is about a man hiding behind a lie that gives him a purpose to live and frees him from his guilt. Lastly, Fight Club talks about a man who creates an illusion for himself, so that he can be free.

What is freedom, I ask myself sometimes. Is it like any other state of mind or does it have to be backed up by physical freedom. If it is a concept that exists in our mind, was it really wrong on the part of the traitor in Neo's gang to choose the disembodied illusion of the matrix over physical reality? The matrix gave him a happy life and in return used him as a battery. So should he consider it his benefactor or an evil ruler? Guy Pierce's memory kills his wife, but he later uses it as a shield to create a false sense of reality and protect himself from the pain. So should he hate his memory or thank it? And why was it all the more important for Edward Norton to fight against the ideals and rules of fight club, when he realized that they were his own creation? Which brings us to the question of defining reality, which is slightly ironic, since this post started out by talking about movies in the first place; a make-believe world that some people take too seriously. Ah well, then I better get back to reality. Heroes Season 3 episode 11 awaits. The movies can't always win now, can they?

Is it just me?

I sympathize with Tyler Durden. The man may have been crazy but he was in the right when he defined our generation as an uneventful blip in the history of mankind. What mark will we leave on this world, I wondered once. How could we be content with the spiritual war he described? But I believe we may have the answer now. So I ask the question: Is it just me or does anyone else also believe that we are finally on the verge of a historic event? - a great depression to overcome the unimportant personal ones that our lives have become. So pardon me when I can't help grinning throughout the day when the Sensex crashes by 1000 points. Excuse me when I feel a weird sense of excitement bubbling inside when I hear the news of another bank going broke. It is not masochism; neither is it a sense of denial, because its not personal. It is a sense of being a part of something much bigger; a social churning where everything breaks down back to the lowest common denominator and starts building up again, an upheaval where we all find ourselves waiting for the starting gun once more, hope of a pain that will be an inspiration for bluesmen to write real blues once again. Its like Orson Welles put it, 'In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace. And what did they produce? The cuckoo clock.' The irony is that the cuckoo clock is actually from Germany.