Inception (with implanted spoilers)

Exactly. Suspending belief in a regular movie and believing the characters are real is more effectively dream-like.

I don't think this movie is supposed to reflect what actual dreams are like and more than most movies are supposed to reflect what actual life is like.

*any more

It's funny because Nolan kind of cops to that line of criticism with the 'Mr Charlie' (I think that's the name, I can't remember) bit in the 2nd level of the dream. That is, you shouldn't put the person you're trying to get to believe in your made up unreality in the frame of mind to start looking for flaws in that unreality.

The audience, at that point, starts to take on the role of the 'subconcious agents' (or whoever the dudes with guns are) in the film, and starts to look for flaws and shoot holes in em.

http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l5sgo28Oqw1qz7f9to1_500.jpg

sort of surprised there hasn't been a screencap of this with a "yo dawg we heard you like dreams" caption

Just got back from this, liked it a lot. Maybe more when I'm less exhausted. But I had to share the most memorable moment of the night - during the trailer for Devil, the entire audience groaned/booed/laughed when M. Night Shyamalan's name popped up on the screen. It was glorious.

That seems to have been a common reaction everywhere! Thank god.

Yes, I was pleased to hear how many have turned against him. Apologies if that was already addressed in here, was avoiding spoilers until I saw it.

didnt hate this, didnt love it. felt a bit like i did about the dark knight. lots of almost plot 'twists' or just strands to make it seem mroe complex being stacked on top of each other but it felt a bit tedious or gimmicky. the first half hour or so was a bit of a mess really, seemed to not know what it was doing or where it was heading. got better once we started to learn a bit more about dicaprios past and his own uses for/affects on the dreams but this film thinks its much cleverer than it really is. the arrogant thing i kinda get cos everyone is strutting around with such self importance - theres next to no humour in this film, kinda like the dark knight. overall though, i felt like it was a cool concept, with lots of potential for interesting, thought provoking stuff that might you know feel like a surrealistic dream, but instead what i got was a kinda shallow rendering of that, dressed up to appear as though its the most complex thing ever. can imagine fanboys geeking it up forever about what meant what and how other people just dont understand all the details but this just seems like a bit of a mess between big modern blockbuster form meets hifaulutin concept. and weirdest of all, it felt a bit dated.

nolan is really overrated as a stylist btw. barring memento perhaps, his films arent really all that distinct visually.

obv dicaprio is always going to look like a kind of boy-man but i found it weird how the other main stars in this looked so young too.

"dressed up to appear as though its the most complex thing ever"

basically this shit just wasnt coherent
and they kept piling up more and more on it just in case anyone noticed i think
im sure plenty people will think its all 'deep' though

"dressed up to appear as though its the most complex thing ever"

That was my instinctive reaction, too. I went to see this with my son (14) yesterday, at his insistence. He loved it, and expressed his determination to obtain the DVD so he can watch it again. I fell asleep at the beginning (I almost always do that in cinemas) so missed a bit, but by the end felt I had understood the fundamentals of what I had seen, while remaining confused by some of the different layers of dreams within dreams. But, although the visuals were pretty stunning, ultimately the basic premise, the characters, and the storyline, were all just not interesting to me.

Going to see the film with my son, I was reminded of my father taking me to see '2001: A Space Odyssey'. I remember finding '2001' confusing, but also truly fascinating (in fact I still like it, in particular for its slow pacing and quietness, whereas there was far too much ridiculously over the top noise and frenetic action in 'Inception' for me). But what is almost certainly significant is that I was completely fascinated by '2001', and my son seemed to have a similar response to 'Inception' (whereas I think I was disgusted by it at some very deep level, while enjoying it superficially). My conclusion is that I am growing bit by bit to hate the modern world, which is presumably a side effect of ageing. I wish I could remember if my father detested '2001'. I remember discussing it with him at length on the way home, but I don't remember what his opinion of it was.

My friend Dan North (a film academic) on Inception - http://as.exeter.ac.uk/it/av/digital/#off

i think if this came out in a period where there was more on offer in terms of big hollywood fare, or maybe a decade or so back, it would probably have been seen as a bit of a failure. cos its really just an awkard blend of blockbustery big dumb action fare and attempts to appeal to peoples more intellectual side, except that its just not very smart.

just cos a film academic likes a film doesnt mean their word is law. im almost inclined to trust film academic types less actually. cos their enjoyment/appreciation of a film doesnt necessarily depend on it being enjoyable/good.

If this came out a decade ago, it would have compared unfavorably with all the VR/recursive loop-closing films that were the zeitgeisty flavor. Matrix, Existenz, Dark City, "Harsh Realm", even The Thirteenth Floor all tackled more or less the same plot more stylishly.

Or at maybe they just modeled their noirish worlds on Myst like adventure games which were still selling back then vs. the open world twitch console shooter that influences Inception.

On the bright side, we were spared the obligatory climactic fistfight with protagonists punching WITH THEIR BRAINS!

Hahaha I totally put the wrong fucking link there! Clipboard fail!

http://drnorth.wordpress.com/2010/07/17/inception/

That's the real link!

is the name dom cobb a reference to anything?

I kind of assume so, but I dunno what.

it was so literal. too literal.

A banal espionage plot, lots of people running around with guns, and DiCaprio as usual barely convincing as an adult. Reminded me a lot of that forgotten J-Lo pic The Gift, only that one was at least boring in a stylized way. I guess it's provoking "discussion" among people who don't usually go to movies because, like The Celestine Prophecy and The Alchemist, the movie offers a taste of something Deep and Spiritual along with the usual thrills.

The Cell, I meant.

Cobb was the name of a character from Nolan's first film. Figured he just liked the name. Or Ty Cobb. xposts.

lolling at the "WORST FILM EVER!" hyperbole

guys, there's a Cats Vs Dogs sequel coming out, you have to ration the ire so that it lasts all summer

if cats and dogs sequel goes around masquerading as high art cinema, and the critics buy it, i'll worst film ever that too

seems a bit unfair to rip on inception for 'masquerading as high art' just because a few critics and fanboys claim it as such. i don't think there's anything particularly pretentious about it, nor does it seem to make any claims to be anything other than a summer action/heist film.

as I said before I feel like the studio's secrecy about it did it a disservice. anyway, of the movies I've seen this summer, this ranks below toy story 3 and well above, uh, eclipse.

Mouthy, I'm glad to see an article that notes the DiCraprio character's odd similarity to Nolan himself! I thought I was nuts for noticing that.

ha this movie took in over $60M this weekend, I guess trippy trailers that don't really tell you the story are a good marketing angle

This interview with Dileep Rao (the Chemist) = top notch:

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/07/inceptions_dileep_rao_answers.html

There aren't many actors -- hell, many people -- able to tackle a question like this:

Q. What if Leo is the one being "incepted" with an idea? We keep hearing the phrase "Do you want to become an old man, filled with regret?" and it's like someone — maybe Ellen Page's character because she's the catalyst of his emotional catharsis — has set this all up so he can let go of his regret over Mal's death. That's why at the end with Saito he offers to come back and be young again (not old, full of regret). Even the Edith Piaf song they use to signal ten seconds before kick translates to "No, I regret nothing." And there's so many scenes where Ellen Page is talking to Leo, getting him to reveal his issues, in the same way that Eames tricks Fischer into revealing his issues. Also, Leo's kids are the same age at the end, right?

A. I'm not trying to be authoritative, so this is just my understanding of how I approached it from my work on it. But you're saying it's like some sort of crazy-ass psychotherapy session where the whole thing is a constructed narrative of massive complexity only to distract Cobb so that he will achieve his change? I mean sure, you could totally say that that's what it is. In a way, that's what we're doing to Fischer, so it's not unfounded.

The problem for me is that you're using negative evidence to support a story that isn't there. I don't know what to say about a character who only exists before and after the movie. You're talking about a character who isn't on screen. And I mean on one hand, it's awesome that this movie can sustain that kind of discussion. It shows you just how well-though-through and comprehensive it is, but I mean I don't know where that kind of speculation ends. It's like people who are convinced 9/11 is an inside job. It's a mental heuristic failure to think that one or two minor details explain absolutely everything. I mean, kids wear the same clothes all the time.

To me, it's a far more elegant story if it's a vast job that Leo has to pull off. The threat is real, the growth is real, the adversary is real. The weakness of "It's all a dream" — why we hate that, why we feel cheated when narratively anything is revealed to be all a dream — is that you've just asked me to spend so much time and emotional capital investing in the stakes of this, and you've now swept it away with the most anti-narrative structuralism that doesn't have anything to substitute in its place. It's laughing at you for even taking it seriously. You don't want to feel like a victim of the narrative, and I don't think Christopher Nolan would do that.

the last paragraph of that interview encapsulates almost exactly how I felt about the movie

okay someone splain this to me because I had a tough time with it. Maybe I am missing something. When Joshua Jordan Lovett is floating around in zero gravity in the fancy-schmancy hotel, gathering up all his bundled-together buddies, he explodes the elevator. AND IT FALLS? BUT HE IS IN ZERO GRAVITY. I DON'T GET IT, CAN SOMEONE EXPLAIN PLS.

I am getting more and more annoyed at this movie as more time passes and more people post status updates on Facebook and make LJ icons about it.

also Ellen Page was a terribly miscast.

the answer to that = physics + movie handwaving

he first disconnected the elevator car from the supporting cable with the emergency brake on it so it would move in the shaft, then put explosives on the opposite side to act as rocket propulsion to shove it down the shaft

I still don't get why people who are espousing the "all a dream" theory aren't looking at middle ground. Why does it either have to be "all a dream"? Why couldn't some sequences that we thought were 'real' potentially be a dream, while others (such as the end) be real?

It's "all a dream" is lazy thinking IMO, and likely a product of our exposure to such lazy writing as depicted on Dallas, Roseanne, other tv shows ad nauseam. To be quite honest, the only part I even really thought was up for debate were the events after Cobb met with Saito in limbo. There were other pieces I interpreted (see thread above), but they were mostly attached to the 'alternate ending'. I mean it's not completely unrealistic either to think the events did all happen too, it's just fun to theorize alternates since Nolan left an 'out'.

curse the lazy writing of "Roseanne", it has ruined us all

he first disconnected the elevator car from the supporting cable with the emergency brake on it so it would move in the shaft, then put explosives on the opposite side to act as rocket propulsion to shove it down the shaft

And this was so it would hit the top/bottom of the shaft and generate the kick that they would not otherwise get in zero-g, right?

Correct.

xxpost well I specifically meant how they ended their last season by saying it was all a dream and Dan died, etc....

O WATE SORRY FOR NOT SAYING *SPOILER* GUYS...for those of u who don't no how roseanne ended yet :( :( :(

Damn you, San Te!

the last paragraph of that interview encapsulates almost exactly how I felt about the movie

It's a great point to bring up, isn't it? I remember wondering about that a bit in that brief few seconds between when he leaves the top behind him and the cut to black, then all of a sudden my mind was elsewhere...

dan, i'll trust your explanation because yr smart and went to harvard

Correct

Thank god. Because otherwise that whole sequence made me feel like I'd been on the gin all afternoon ("wait, he's now bundling them up in electrical flex, whaaaa?"), the amount I understood it. Let alone that the explosives would just have torn the liftcar to pieces rather than propelling it so daintily. As you say, "movie handwaving", still loved this film.

xp.

A banal espionage plot, lots of people running around with guns, and DiCaprio as usual barely convincing as an adult. Reminded me a lot of that forgotten J-Lo pic The Gift, only that one was at least boring in a stylized way. I guess it's provoking "discussion" among people who don't usually go to movies because, like The Celestine Prophecy and The Alchemist, the movie offers a taste of something Deep and Spiritual along with the usual thrills.

― I'm never gonna do it without the Lex on (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, July 19, 2010 8:09 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

where are these plebian, non-moviegoing-people "discussions" of how Deep and Spiritual this movie is? not on this thread.

there's really nothing spiritual in this movie AFAICT. fuckin' tomb raider movies are more spiritual.

i mean there's a lot of ways nolan COULD have fudged it with some lame spirituality, like introducing some ambiguity about whether marion cotillard's character was 'real,' like a ghost inhabiting leo's mind, but he dismisses that pretty soundly and thank god for that

yeah if anything, this movie is super clinical (one of the things I really liked about it)

the threat is real, the growth is real, the adversary is real

wait who is the adversary

a bunch of faceless, nameless projections? his crazy dead wife?