The new movie “ACIM” is brilliant in several ways. First, the cinematography is gorgeous, the special effects, highly impressive and the plot line, the plot line is wild-a lucid dream within a lucid dream within… well, to the 3rd degree-so that poor Mal, (Marion Cotillard), Cobb’s, (Leonardo DiCaprio) wife- or rather the projection of his deceased wife, doesn’t know anymore which reality is true, and believes an encounter with death will wake her up. Cobb has a only a slightly stronger grip on which dream they’re in and for how long, and the cast of characters who elect to participate in the shared dreaming do it splendidly as we admire their acuity to stay on mission. Of course, this seems all too fantabulous to believe, and though the film is breathtaking to watch, and an action fan, I am not…
I will yield to a “magical” premise, and this film delivers play for the imagination hook, line and sinker in all that is magical about our minds, our intentions, our wills. Still, that’s not why it engaged me so intensely. I kept having this vibey thrill that writer/director Christopher Nolan may have downloaded from the collective unconscious of contemporary humanity in this day and age, time and place, the challenge that we’re all facing, that is, to understand that so-called “reality” is indeed not real. That we create it and can change it.
As a course in miracles fan-addict (no pun intended), I subscribe to the daily task of looking straight into the face of television, into the tragedies that spread and leak and draw us into instinctual empathy, rage and hand-wringing all over the planet, and remind myself that all this is a shared dream. Yes, even the physical pain may just be a phantom limb.