Last week, Father Barron saw the summer sci-fi blockbuster which has recently been the subject of many an interpretive analysis, Christopher Nolan's Inception. Read his review below.
The sleeper (pun intended) hit of a rather weak summer for movies has been the Leonardo DiCaprio vehicle
Inception. One reason that it has done so well is that many people have been returning for a second or third viewing, most likely so that they can get some inkling of what’s going on. The film is, to say the least, confusing. It has to do with a team, led by DiCaprio’s character, Cobb, who specialize in the invasion of people’s dreams so as to extract hidden information from their unconscious minds. As the movie opens, a wealthy client approaches Cobb with the novel request that instead of extracting an idea, he implant one in the mind of one of the client’s business rivals: hence the “inception” of the title. If I were to rehearse the details of the plot, we’d be here all day; suffice it to say that in order to pull off this implantation, without the subject’s being aware of the ruse, Cobb has to open up an entire series of dream worlds: dreams within dreams within dreams. As the film unfolds, the characters move back and forth between these universes and it’s never entirely clear to the viewer (at least to this viewer) precisely where they are and, to riff on Aretha Franklin, “who’s dreamin’ who.” ...
Rozann Carter explores the spiritual dimension of the poetic philosophy of former Poet Laureate, Billy Collins, comparing it to the writing of St. Bonaventure in The Journey of the Mind to God.
From time to time, within the continuous cycle of the typical daily emails that flood my inbox, I receive a random, well-timed gem of an e-mail from a good college friend containing nothing but a single poem written by a man by the name of Billy Collins. With titles like “Snow Day”, “On Turning Ten,” and “I Chop Some Parsley While Listening to Art Blakely’s version of Three Blind Mice,” my poem-of-the-day emails provide for that lighthearted, epiphany-type recognition that makes a story memorable, a joke funny, and a poem worth memorizing. While a sector of modern poetry prides itself in its elaborate and convoluted strangeness, Billy Collins writes in such a way that his poems refresh and draw the reader in rather than confound and force him or her to walk through some sort of maze of the subconscious or find a seemingly impossible key to unlock the poem’s meaning. And, upon reading more about Billy Collins and his poetic philosophy, I would conclude that his invigorating style, while undeniably effective upon first reading, reveals a depth and technique that is beautifully reflective of the spiritual life...