2010

Sat, Aug 28

<15:58 EEST> It is again that time of the year when there is so much to write about that there is little time to sit down and write. My first few weeks of teaching with full qualifications have passed at the nearby Viitaniemi, without any huge culture shocks. As I try to imagine and recall the confusion I had when starting my teaching career at Voionmaa, I think the basic confusion is still there, but naturally I also feel more prepared. In fact, one of the key lessons from teacher training was that it is a good idea to be prepared, even when you know you can improvise. How to prepare is somewhat secondary to actually feeling prepared.

Once again, most of my classes are with the smaller (and should I say, more engaging) groups of English-speaking students. For me, the benefits clearly outweigh the extra work needed to prepare certain materials — a lot of which I already wrote at Voionmaa, though they do deserve some updating.

Last night's movie Inception has left me with mixed thoughts and feelings. In a way, it is just the kind of story I would have liked to make, at least until a few years ago. It is a brilliant sci-fi construction, a wonderful treatise of philosophy, psychology and physics, flawlessly implemented in Hollywood fiction. Yet it leaves something to be desired on an emotional level.

You could say the movie is overwhelmed by its technical complexity, leaving too little room for the sense of wonder. Strangely enough, while science is often blamed for killing the mystery of things, good SF is always supposed to evoke a sense of wonder. IMHO, this sense exists somewhere between a religious denial of facts, and a meticulous explaining away of details. At times, the movie seemed to elaborate its technical workings a little too much to my tastes. On one hand this is a good thing, as it makes excellent educational material, and possibly makes the story more palatable to mainstream audiences.

This is a problem I have encountered before with similar stories. After decades of first-hand experience with science fact and fiction, lucid dreaming and other weird and wonderful phenomena, such a film must struggle to offer anything new. On the other hand, recent years in the amateur theatre scene have opened my eyes to the power of simple and emotionally engaging stories.

Nevertheless, the movie ended up an enjoyable, entertaining and educational experience. But these are not the qualities you use to describe a true classic. This is just my personal issue though, and it would be nice if a movie like this would achieve classic status for many others.