Inception (with implanted spoilers)

it would just be cool if inception was just a prequel to the new season

it would be cool if they mated inception and the departed and it was about leo trying to incept matt damon while -- oh yeah -- matt damon tries to incept leo

framing a film by starting in media res then filling in the gaps that led up to that point is pretty tiresome to me. i don't think it worked all that well. i was disappointed it turned up in the latest Claire Denis film, though it did work considerably better there.

re: "it was all a dream". people be overthinking this, picking up clues that are too subtle by half. nolan was trying to make a complicated flick that's lucid, not obscure.

dude it's like one of the oldest most elemental storytelling techniques in existence xp

was there any explanation for why the top had to fall over if things were real? like, why couldn't you just dream it falling over?

yeah I feel kinda silly taking this movie at face-value but if it's been established that each dreamer can change the physics of the dreamworld according to their subconscious then how can you be sure of the veracity of your totem... or is it like when you are imagining your totem you are trying to make it do what it won't do in real life

do you find the odyssey tiresome or xp

man now I really wnat to rewatch paprika :(

do you find the odyssey tiresome or xp

― al-goreda (s1ocki), Wednesday, July 21, 2010 3:57 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

ehh we pretty much already know the terms of the odyssey cause we read the fucking iliad first - in medias res can be great but not when you have to retconn 50 million things

End credits song shoulda been:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-kVFfKezVo

i know it's really old, but it feels like it's being used a lot more recently (granted, this could just be because i've been watching a lot more televisionI. like any storytelling trick, it should be used to enhance some aspect of the work and not just relied upon to pull the audience in.

xposts

also end credits should have been

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_xFNa7YKDw

I don't think I like level-crossing sci-fi movies / tv anymore. I think calling attention to the varying levels of 'reality' within the movie itself makes it harder to accept that the 'top level' of the movie is real and not just, you know, a story that was written and filmed and acted by a bunch of writers/directors/actors.

― sous les paves, Sunday, July 18, 2010 11:48 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

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

― gato busca pleitos (Eazy), Sunday, July 18, 2010 11:55 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark

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.

― sous les paves, Monday, July 19, 2010 12:33 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark

this, really - when you start off with the dream-within-a-dream scenario you are pretty much asking the audience not to believe that any level in the movie reflects reality

err not reflects reality, is reality

When they talked about the levels I kept thinking about

http://www.theonion.com/articles/fuck-everything-were-doing-five-blades,11056/

or is it like when you are imagining your totem you are trying to make it do what it won't do in real life

this, I think; the point is you take the totem and imagine it doing something it can't do and if that happens, you're still dreaming

And specifically that it is "your" dream, right?

yeah but what if your subconscious fucks with you! xp

I was kinda disappointed by how little control they had - it was all cool like when tom hardy brought out the grenade launcher but why couldn't they imagine better things like dogs and bees and dogs with bees in their mouths so when they barked they shot bees at cillians subconscious

i know the defense is that if they did some outlandish shit then everybody's subconscious would get grumpy with you, but christ you're already in a dramatic shootout, bring out the bee dogs

also it's not like this "dreams must be as mundane as possible" rule is based on anything but the director's vision

how malleable things are, and by whom, and how much control any one person has, eh i dunno... the totem stuff, plus the little detail of (eurotrash dude) saying "dream bigger darling" and pulling out a hueg gun when JGL is trading potshots, plus the fact that they left the details of exactly what the machine does and how it functions etc deliberately unsaid, means... nolan wanted wiggle room!

i don't think there's any secret code to crack that explains all the details. you can't go aha! and find the solution. there isn't one, i don't think. there's enough structure to keep things moving along, but more than enough fuzziness to have cool shit happening. that's about it really.

... but to contradict myself a little, i think it's important to remember that what we see are not really dreams, these are fake dreams made up by outsiders for the purpose of pulling shit on you. they aren't really spontaneous, or dreamy!

dude, a train can just show up in the middle of the street if you're feeling guilty, that's pretty spontaneous and dreamy! you might as well grab that bull by the horns and use bee dogs when cillian's not looking to see what you're doing.

it'd have been funny if some professor showed up and told dileep rao he forgot to take his final or something, otherwise Leo's guilt manifestations are really egregious signs of workplace incompetence.

there's enough structure to keep things moving along, but more than enough fuzziness to have cool shit happening. that's about it really.

yeah, ultimately I feel this movie was all about using $200 million to set up that minute where the synchronized kicks kick in and everybody wakes up 3 times in a row

also for nolan to use as a pick up line at bars "hey babe you wanna know what really happened in inception...well why don't we go back to my hotel room and I'll incept you"

Good article that argues for the theory that the whole movie is Cobb's dream:
http://www.chud.com/articles/articles/24477/1/NEVER-WAKE-UP-THE-MEANING-AND-SECRET-OF-INCEPTION/Page1.html

set up that minute where the synchronized kicks kick in and everybody wakes up 3 times in a row

Yeah, but tbh, that scene was nowhere near as over-the-top as I expected it to be. I was half-anticipating a series of close ups of each character gasping awake in rapid succession. Kind of happy Nolan handled it the way he did.

it's lame if it's literally ALL a dream and cobb is just some guy we never see awake

think you have to accept that some of it is real

counterpoint to that (already posted upthread):
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/07/inceptions_dileep_rao_answers.html
xxp

FWIW the film has been making scary good money in the US this week -- $10 million Monday, just under $10 million yesterday, projections are it should hit $100 million by tomorrow night. So it's getting people into the theaters at the least.

It's a limbo party now — who can go lower?

Rao gets a million points for making this joke

Had to wait to read the whole thread until I saw the movie last night.

I pretty much came to a similar conclusion to San Te wayyyyyy upthread. I feel like the only thing really in question is whether or not Cobb came out of that subconscious level. I don't buy the 'it was all a dream' stuff. And I can't really buy into a happy Reality ending for Cobb. It's a happy ending for him, but it's on his terms, not reality. I feel like he's still in the subconscious level. Little things for me, like us not ever seeing him come out of the first (?) level (van underwater)...the movie seems to set up a precedent that you get to see each person come back, in each level they're in. (I might be remembering that wrong though, don't know if I saw Cillian Murphy do all the levels now that I think of it.) Anyway, the way I remember it, we only see Cobb come out of the top level back to 'reality'. That stuck out to me. Whoosh he's back on the plane? It didn't sit right. And there was that small exchange with Cobb and Mal, where he said 'At least let me keep them', or something to that effect, and she said 'Only if you stay here with me.', which I took to mean he could keep the children if he stayed there. I think that he stayed. Because that was the only place he could see his children. I don't feel like Watanabe came out of it either, so that meant there could be no deal for Cobb. I think he finally saw the children's faces because he had resolved his guilt with Mal. Or Mol, or whatever her name is, when he told her about the inception. And I think maybe the 'viral' nature of inception had maybe planted itself within his mind somewhere too. Maybe not to same degree as Mal, but to the point where he felt like the subconscious level was more of a home to him than reality.

but maybe I'm reading too much into it.

But damn I can't stop thinking about it and I must go see it again. I feel like I'm enjoying it more and more as time passes, because it took me a couple of hours afterwards of just sitting, thinking, digesting to really figure out how the movie sat with me. I enjoyed the experience of watching it, it just took me a while to figure out if I really understood it. And I like that.

I don't feel like Watanabe came out of it either

hm, why? he reaches for the gun, and then ...

if Watanabe was lonely couldn't he have dreamed himself up some hot women who had old guy fetishes?

it's lame if it's literally ALL a dream and cobb is just some guy we never see awake

think you have to accept that some of it is real

Not to pick on you here, because I've heard this argument a lot, but why does it bother you so much for it to be all a dream with no reality shown on screen? Do you really NEED that reality anchor to feel invested? (These are honest questions here)

yes, I think the reality anchor makes it more meaningful. it's more meaningful for us to be watching six people sharing an experience rather than watching the projections of one person, in part for the reason Leo articulates: he can't imagine his wife in all her complexity. but also because watching one person find happiness in their own mind is less interesting then watching one person escape their own mind and re-join the rest of the real world.

I take it you didn't like the first half of Mulholland Drive then?

why does it bother you so much for it to be all a dream with no reality shown on screen? Do you really NEED that reality anchor to feel invested? (These are honest questions here)

yeah i do. think we need things like catharsis.

I just don't get why the dream cycle is "all or nothing" in this film

Someone says "Last night I had a dream about you" and then robots start dancing.

― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, July 21, 2010 2:45 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark

hahaha +1 million

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnsnZvR4X68

xxp right, and i find this

and what he's ultimately saying is that the catharsis found in a dream is as real as the catharsis found in a movie is as real as the catharsis found in life

from the CHUD article totally unconvincing, because I believe that there is a difference between our relationships with people and our relationships with our internal projections of the same people

but also because watching one person find happiness in their own mind is less interesting then watching one person escape their own mind and re-join the rest of the real world.

Fair enough, but I just don't really share that desire. I like films that leave more open, rather than being able to effectively "close the cover" at the end and say, well, he joined reality again. Great. I like ambiguity in a film like this and it really doesn't change my investment in the characters in the least.

whew, finally read through the thread. I think caek is most otm in describing why I didn't like the film that much:

I don't think the end says "it was all a dream" so much as "i used to read word up magazine".

my problem is that none of the human drama stuff is credible or about life as it is lived. this is not in general a problem in lots of movies, but it's clear that the people came after the premise. and in this case it's a total failure. there is no character development. who gives a shit about imaginary problems due to mental illness induced by an imaginary technology? and his goal is to accept he was right and successfully move house?
anyway, you're left with an action film about a technological idea and the entire weight of the film is on the audience finding (what nolan does with) the premise interesting per se. so yes, exploring dreams is more than just a macguffin, but not in a good way.
― caek, Tuesday, July 20, 2010 10:50 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

also this whole thread reminds me about the time right before the matrix 2 came out and everybody had crazy theories like it's a matrix within a matrix within a matrix etc. but then the wachowski brothers were like sike we just wanted an excuse to have guys in white suits make things blow up

Going back to the totems, I thought the idea of them was so that you could tell if you were in a dream designed by someone else - only you knew the specific detail of the totem; much like how (near the start) the first 'dream within a dream' failed as the architect didn't know the material of the carpet.

I'm fairly sure at one point either Leo or JGL says the totem is so that you know you're not in someone else's dream.

i don't trust caek's reading coz it saw it at like 7am on a sunday?

literally cannot imagine a worse time to see a film

xp yeah but the trick to leo's totem was that it would always fall, right? who dreams of a world where tops keep on spinning forever? I get the loaded die or ellen's bishop that might only fall a certain way or w/e

you're right h-mayne, in the future I expect all film reviews to be prefaced by a recount of where and when and under what conditions the reviewer saw the film

Inception + Juicy = floating Diddy heads

you're right h-mayne, in the future I expect all film reviews to be prefaced by a recount of where and when and under what conditions the reviewer saw the film

― You’re going off of her word that the farmer’s wife is the farmer’s wife? (dyao), Wednesday, July 21, 2010 9:55 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

ehh, it wouldn't hurt. the newspaper dudes see too many films in one day, and they start too early. almost notoriously they don't 'get' comedies, which go over much better with a large audience of people who aren't salaried aspies.

what's your excuse

He's an aspie with an AHRC grant?