Pearls at Random Strung

Just a place to jot down my musings.

Sunday, August 1, 2010

"Inception"

As I mentioned to a friend recently, Inception is likely to be the That Movie of this fall: the movie that sparks off intense, passionate 2 am conversations in college dorms. I'm still trying to digest the movie, but for now, let me just ask the big question: Is the whole movie a dream?

Possible responses:
  • Yes
  • No
  • It doesn't matter
  • insert-some-other-response-here
For what it's worth, I thought this graphic was incredibly helpful in organizing the different levels of the movie. (It need hardly be said that you should only open this link if you've already seen the movie. If you haven't seen it yet, go see it!)

Posted by at 1:48 AM
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1 comment:

  1. Devina DivechaAugust 1, 2010 at 3:53 AM

    Hellooo!
    I saw Inception a couple of days back. I'm *still* trying to figure it out. I mean, I was fine till the last 30 seconds and when the totem didn't stop... ARGH.
    Is it a dream ... I don't know. Even if it was, whose dream was it? Cobb's? Was he dreaming about the world he created with Mal too? IT BOGGLES THE MIND!

    ReplyDelete

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Why pearls, and why strung at random?

In his translation of the famous "Turk of Shiraz" ghazal of Hafez into florid English, Sir William Jones, the philologist and Sanskrit scholar and polyglot extraordinaire, transformed the following couplet:

غزل گفتی و در سفتی بیا و خوش بخوان حافظ

که بر نظم تو افشاند فلک عقد ثریا را


into:

Go boldly forth, my simple lay,
Whose accents flow with artless ease,
Like orient pearls at random strung.

The "translation" is terribly inaccurate, but worse, the phrase is a gross misrepresentation of the highly structured organization of Persian poetry. Regardless, I picked it as the name of my blog for a number of reasons: 
1) I don't expect the ordering of my posts to follow any rhyme or reason
2) Since "at random strung" is a rather meaningless phrase, I decided to go with the longer but more pompous "pearls at random strung". I rest assured that my readers are unlikely to deduce from this an effort on my part to arrogate some of Hafez's peerless brilliance!

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Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
—W.H. Davies, “Leisure”