Movies that spawn Cults

Its been more than an year since I last wrote about Chris Nolan. At that time I was admittedly still under the Dark Knight hangover having scoured the internet for trivia, back stories, sub plots, allegories and in-movie references and homages that the epic contained.

Yet again I find myself at the same place I was at that time, obsessed with finding anything and everything related to the movie ‘Inception’. I am sure as I write, a million others are furiously penning down their own thoughts on the idea that it is based on and their own personal takes on what was what and what not. I am not going to give away any plot spoilers for those who are yet to see it. Although you must really hate Cinema if you are yet to watch it. This post is about how two movies with radically different box office fortunes managed to generate a cult following around them, spawning intense debate and discussions with far reaching implications and consequences.

For the purpose of this post and keeping it to a readable length, I will limit myself to ‘The Matrix’ and ‘Donnie Darko’. When ‘The Matrix’ released in 1999, moviegoers were treated to a never before seen digital masterpiece with techniques like time-freeze photography and bullet ripple effects taking sci-fi physics to a whole new level. After the initial euphoria over digital wizardry died down, slowly there emerged significant amount of discussion that concerned itself with the alternate realities, re-interpretation of eastern philosophies, over-dependence on machines, a genuine concern over AI and such. The more they discussed, the more they discovered….. leading them from obvious in-movie references to ‘Alice in wonderland’, Marx, Kafka, Jean Baudrillard’s “Simulacra and Simulation” to more transcendental issues like illusion and reality, rebirth cycle and perhaps even oppression of a certain section of beings (Zion vs the machines). So much so, that the second and third installments of the franchise had to come up with satisfactory explanations to so many questions the first one had raised. The point is, apart from the groundbreaking digital imagery, ‘The Matrix’ spawned a whole lot of intense debate and discussion in popular culture, which was copied, spoofed and adapted many times over.

Another movie that did the similar was ‘Donnie Darko’. About a teenage boy with seemingly minor mental problems, the film explored the realm of ‘Time warping and alternate universes’ in a sleepy american suburb. Coupled with sub-plots of a popular motivational speaker who is also a paedophile, a mysterious old woman and Donnie’s sister’s boyfriend the film revolved around the concept of  ‘rewinding time to set things right’. But unlike the college romance ‘The Butterfly effect’, this story mostly takes place in a school setting without the cliched set-pieces about plastic beauty queens and awkward proms. Though garnering mainly critical acclaim sans any box office returns, over the years the film has managed to find its own audience.

The most recent Nolan offering ‘Inception’ explores an interesting concept of overlap between dream and reality and the perceived notions of what exactly is real. And without going into more details I believe its safe to say the cliffhanger ending ensures the popular debate does not die anytime soon as zealous followers analyze and tear down multiple explanations and interpretations of the concept. Some that I heard are really weird though not implausible. Its safe to say that there is new member of the Cult-movie phenomenon.