Inception

[elfprince13]

Just got back from seeing it. I'm not entirely sure what to say about it, except that it was pretty excellent. Anyone else have any remarks (brilliant or otherwise)?

[Gravity Defier]

I'll be going with "otherwise."

*****SPOILERS*****



I'm angry with, though not surprised by, Cobb at the end. He knew to check whether or not he was out, "up there," but couldn't resist seeing his kids and I'm afraid it's going to result in him not being able to escape this time.

Fantastic cast, music was brilliant, visuals stunning. I need to see this again.

[locke]

Inception

The caveat, of course, is that there is no ‘right or wrong,’ just the experiences of tens of thousands of readers. Reviewers, like the rest of the species, reflexively universalize their judgment: they evaluate the book rather than their idiosyncratic experience of reading it. They say this is the best/worst book ever, always dropping the all important ‘for me,’ partly because their half of the book-brain fusion is largely invisible to them. All I do is send out a string of code: the trillions of neural transactions that follow belong entirely to the reader. – RS Bakker

So, in order to write a review for a movie that is about so many things, in particular a movie that came across, to me, as a meta-movie about the nature of storytelling and memory—particularly idiosyncratic to the nature of filmic storytelling and its strange ability to expand and contract time as well as the conception of filmmaking as a sort of shared dreaming of an impossible, deeply constrained world—one has to be aware of the fact that the fusions this film made in my brain were all strongly skewed towards the filmmaking world.

Inception delves into the problematic nature of both memory and self perception. It fills frames and scenes en passant with all sorts of dense and fascinating characterization, such as Arthur, the stoic one who doesn’t gamble, carrying loaded dice. Or how Cobb structures his constrained memories in floors with a rusted out elevator carrying you from contained memory to contained memory, and rather than locked away in a safe, the worst memory is locked away in a basement that’s fifty floors up and the top floor heaven is actually what the bottom of limbo looks like. The film doesn’t directly comment on these aspects, though it points out when related elements are important in other respects, such as pointing out a locked safe, or pointing out that the heavy top meant something (and note that Ariadne fashions herself a pawn, fascinating). Even in how they structure their token anchor-to-reality they are creating a version of themselves that’s not quite true, Ariadne is not a pawn, Cobb isn’t stable, Arthur isn’t a gambler or a cheat, but it tells us about how they want to see themselves when they’re in “reality”. Their self-perception, and the stories and formulas they use to tell themselves who they are is something invisible to them, but transparent in the inappropriateness of the symbols they use.

Because the first thought I had as the movie started, and the thought uppermost in my mind as it ended was that the entire movie was still within a dream. And this get backs to the aspect that a dream as described by a movie is so much like the experience of a movie itself. “How did you get here.” Well the movie just CUT there. Notice how they just bounce from location to location without ever a traveling shot? They’re just there. Or even in the real world no location is expansive, everything seems to lead back to the same place, “Meet back here?” “It’s the last thing they’d ever expect.” Why circle back to the same place unless you’re in a closed loop anyway? We need a new architect? Why no problem, CUT I’m in my father’s classroom, he gives up his best student with no protestation CUT the student agrees and throws herself in with barely a moments hesitation. Problem solved with the ease of dream logic and dream time. In fact the oft mocked ingenuity and overly convenient machinations of bad movies is utilized throughout Inception again and again to enhance the central question and thematic metaphor of dreaming and reality. You can’t call it a bad movie because the characters are undermotivated, it’s likely they’re undermotivated because its intentional to make Inception internally consistent with the larger metaphors and philosophical undertones of shared dreaming.

But this would be a tremendously cold movie if it was just self-reflexively about the shared dreaming experience of watching a film. It is not, it’s relating the concept of shared dreaming as a sort of shared solipsism. Paradox intended, btw. Is the whole world asleep and we just need to wake up? To go up above. There is NO QUESTION that the use of loaded terms such as “Limbo” for the further you go down, and “Up There” for returning to the children and real life is tremendously significant. We are supposed to be thinking not just in terms of heaven and hell but in terms of how heaven and hell may not be quite so opposite as we are inclined to think. Cobb and Mol built a heaven for themselves in hell, but it wasn’t heaven, it was only their imitation of it. And it wound up destroying them. And in a sense Cobb’s attempts to manipulate his wife with a spiritual epiphany just led them to an even greater doom. But is their doom all that tragic when they did, in fact spend a lifetime together, did, in fact get to grow old together, even if only in a dream?

And what is Heaven if not a shared dream by our discorporated spirits? The metaphor extends as expertly (if much more vaguely) upward as it does downward. Though there is certainly more apprehension and spiritual angst and fear about going up. In a sense, Mol had accepted death in a way that meant it was no longer real to her because she believed she would only ascend to a higher reality, and isn’t most of human language about heaven (since the Jews invented it about two hundred years before Christ) about ascending out of this plane of pain into a more real plane of greater joy and reward? Damn, I love how deep and twisting and ouroboros-like the concepts of this movie are, how following the elevator up takes you right back down again. The apt comparison would be to the Matrix, and it’s fake reality, but Nolan never fully pulls back the curtain to reveal whether or not we ever see a true reality (in which case, Mol may have been right) or are always within another layer of the Matrix. And it seems to me, that its not that Cobb kicks himself and Saito up and out, but that Saito kicks Cobb and him up, or possibly they share dream down another level. They dream down to a level where they’ve dreamed up, and only the world Cobb returns to is not a world in which he’s been struggling for years to return home, but they return to a more perfect altered memory of Cobbs past, a world where his children are still the exact same age they were when he left them and ran.

Inception is the dream of the film's creators so in a very objective sense the characters ARE trapped in a closed world dream. Where does a character in a story go when the character dies? Almost every author talks about how their characters come alive for them. Yet another texture that Nolan is manipulating. I love it.

And I also need to point out that Inception seems to address the experience of life itself as a limited blink of time. In fact, the radio was playing Kenny Chesney’s “Don’t Blink” as I was driving away from the theatre, and considering how the movie plays with time, and the way that life can literally be experienced in the blink of an eye within the layers of dreams, I felt that was entirely appropriate, [/i]Don’t Blink, cause just like that you’re six years old and you take a nap. Wake up and you’re twenty-five and your highschool sweetheart’s become your wife. Don’t Blink, you just might miss your babies growing like mine did; turning into Moms and Dads, next thing you know your better half of sixty years is there in bed, and you’re praying God will take you instead, Trust me son, a hundred years goes faster than you think, Don’t Blink.[/i]

[^^Graff]

It is intelligent, has a great story, brings up fascinating concepts, and has a great cast and great special effects. I did not think a movie like this would be made in these days of special effects movies with a tacked on "story".

[Rei]

It is intelligent, has a great story, brings up fascinating concepts, and has a great cast and great special effects. I did not think a movie like this would be made in these days of special effects movies with a tacked on "story".

Did I translate correctly?

I haven't seen the film yet, although from the sounds of it I ought to.

[elfprince13]

I haven't seen the film yet, although from the sounds of it I ought to.

Yes. I'm not sure it's brilliant, but it is good, and very few movies have been recently.