INCEPTION Post Release - Page 36

Ok. There was a blip thrre were I couldn't reply to anything. Renn was right as far as me bitching about the site giving too much attention to a movie I didn't like. Not cool on my part.

What I MEANT to say was there has been toooooo much praise across the board for this film.

While well made it is hardly a technical marvel that people have mad eit out to be. Slow mo exploding fruit? A cityscape that folds on itself ala phototshop mirror? This stuff may be impressive to undergrads taking an LSD trip and staring at their Escher print on the dorm room wall but it takes more for me to get excited. Satoshi Kon left this sort of "dream imagery" in the dust with Paprika. In fact he trounced this film thematically and stylistcally. But that's subjective.

The script is hands down one of the most "tell me don't show me" scripts I have seen made into a major release. The characters explain explain explain all of this seemingly arbitrary crap regarding the plot ("It requires a veddy veddy strong sedative to reach a three level dream state" This is so essential to the plot it must be said TWICE by the same character-hint: he isn't white). MOst of the characters spend their screen time EXPLAINING shit to us. TELLING us what is going on. I prefer a film that trusts me to follow it and make up my own reasoning for the fucked upedness. This film seems content to hold the audience's hand up to a point then "Oh ho ho! It's so much more clever to leave questions unanswered!"

The actors were terrible for the most part. The scene with Leo and Ellen at the dream cafe was PAINFUL! They seemed lost in the pages of exposition they had to deliver. Like the audience.

As far as dream landscapes go: Who dreams like this? Steven Soderbergh before he makes an Oceans 11 sequel? It played it safe as can be as far as imagery is concerned. I suppose they wanted to be able to play up the "is it a dream" aspect at the end. And it would be too much trouble to make each dream really specific to the individual. (Sorry you have to do better than simply have a Chinese restaraunt theme for the one Asian character. And goofy scary Middle Eastern Dreamscape is shot the same as evry other scene. I'm not biting)

They specifically state that they have to bring people into a lucid dream state, that's why they need to specifically tranquilise the target.

The problem with criticising the nature of the dream sequences is that they're subjective visions of a dream world. It's impossible to clarify the exact parameters of dream conciousness and as such criticising the film for not doing dreams right is akin to bitching about an incorrect shade of blue on a fictional wall.

This is usually such a cheap thing to say, but I'm going to say it anyway: I really don't think you "get it."

ETA: I honestly don't mean to be a dick. It's just that your bias against this film (or films of its type, perhaps) has clearly just taken away any objective view on your part.

Ultimately it feels like this film is a calculated attempt to be "clever" and "dumb" at the same time. It leaves enough unanswered that folks can ponder the "meaning" of the film for years after its release, buying blu rays and books hoping to milk some menaing from it (spoiler: there isn't any meaning and there isn't any secret. Nolan left this booger this way on purpose. And no amount of special features is going to change that.) SOme very very very recognizable action sequences will keep the punters glued to their seats, but even they are going to get a tad tired of the seemingly endless string of climaxes Nolan trots out at the end. For fucks shake get on with it! By the end I was relieved I could leave the theater. Because I'd be damned if I would put up with that again. Especially after hearing the "theories" the rest of the audience had regarding the film and its meaning. Ultimately this film is well made but trite and ultimately dull. It fails even as a puzzle because it has no true resolution. It is a cheat. And a poor one.

The only argument of yours that really holds a significant amount of water. It doesn't greatly affect my enjoyment of the film because the exposition never slows down the film like it does in something like Matrix: Reloaded, but this movie is nearly wall-to-wall exposition.

And I feel that you are the one who is failing to be objective. And I LOVE films dealing with dreams and dreaming. I just don't think this is a good one.

Right. Because the film pretty much needs it to be. It's partly why he chose the heist structure in the first place.

I think this is true, but I do understand the criticism. Having recently seen 3 Women, which felt like a dream to me, Inception's setting is almost ENTIRELY dreamscapes, but it feels like any other movie.

However, I believe this to be another good argument that the "dreams" in the movie really represent filmmaking. Yeah, I just can't shut up about that theory.

It's fair for you to hate it. But objectively speaking, it is a very, very good film.

I get that you didn't like the imagery, style, narrative, acting and dialogue. Fair enough.

Whereas I felt it slowed the film down more than Rosanne Barr swimming thru molassase. The action was hardly something to get excited over derivative as it was so all we had left was the characters. And the biggest character moment in the film is DEAD WIFE or maybe FACELESS KIDS. I'm sorry but I've seen this done before and done better. If this had not been such a slow year for American movies then we would not be talking about Inception.

No it isn't joey. It is derivative, overly expository and ultimately dull. As far as the filming and editing: I'll give you that. It is well made. But it is nothing special in any way shape or form.

Now bring on True Grit so I can say positive things about a film!

At the risk of exposing my astounding lack of film knowledge, what is Inception derivative of? Were specific examples occurring to you as you were seeing the movie?

I don't think it's quite fair to compare the way dreams are portrayed in Inception compared to the work of someone like Satoshi Kon. As someone mentioned above, Nolan was using a heist structure for a reason. He was making a large scale action movie with ideas about dreams he wanted to incorporate. Since dreams are so highly subjective, to make a more dream-like film would make it difficult to ground the film with stakes and goals.

And it's not as if these people are dreaming full on through their own unconscious. They're sharing dreams constructed by another person for a specific purpose. So the first 3 levels shouldn't get too crazy. Maybe limbo could've been a little wilder, but I don't think so.

I do agree with you and Patrick about the constant exposition. It was definitely necessary to set up the somewhat convoluted rules of dreaming in the film, but it sometimes came across as rushed and obligatory. As for me, I couldn't really connect to Cobb's sudden therapy sessions with Ariadne.

Ahem. Allow me to trot out my (semi joking) list of films that Inception is derivative of durinf its seemingly endless finale.
1. Michael Mann (any Mann really but we'll say Heat because that gets referenced in film school a lot)
2. The bloody Matrix (Yeah this is a cheap shot that has more to do with the floating fight scene than anything else. And everyone is dressed like Agent Smith)
3. The Eiger Sanction (Very clever Mr Nolan, trying to sneak an unpopular Clint Eastwood spy drama set on a snowy mountain past us!)
4. Dark muthafucking City! Bam! You need to show a world gone all weird? WHy not rip something off from this little gem from the late 90s? You wouldn't be the first. And don't worry. No one really likes this turd for anything besides the production design.

ETA: And that is just the climax(es). Check out Paprika, Existenz, Ghost in the Shell, Fire Walk With Me, etc. for more done with less (budget wise).

As if both The Matrix and Dark City weren't already hodge-podges of ideas from other films and literature anyway.

And Nolan admits to Michael Mann's influence.

Does it matter if it isnt 100% original? (prepares to be stoned)

Does that make Inception doubly hodgy podgy then?

That sounds nice - does it come with custard (just kidding)

If you don't like the movie, sure. If you liked it, you could just as easily brush it off by saying, "Nolan used the popular cinema/dream language and archetypes available to him and constructed something great!"

*sigh* a missed opportunity then. And besides, Nolan is making this tech up as he goes along. WHo's to say how much of an individuals personality creeps into a shared dream? Well, Nolan does. And he made his job as easy as possible. And so I find this film and its take on dreaming dull as dishwater.

Yes. Yes you could say that. I wouldn't but you are more than welcome to. I just found it to be lazy storytelling mixed with effort on the technical end (I MUST give props to Nolan for actually shooting on locations. I LOVE that).

Actually, I did wonder about whether or not the subconscious of Cobb's team could populate the dreams they made for Fischer. Clearly, Cobb fucked up projection of Mal was strong enough to pop in whenever she wanted. I guess everyone else on his team are psychologically tip-top!

Not in the least! But I feel it has been put up on far to high a pedestal.

(I wish I could make such a preperation. Getting stoned, I mean)

always best to prepared my friend!

Each dreamer in the story constructed their own levels individually to reach the set objectives for the job. The subjective aspect is absolute in that it pertains to each member of the team; i.e. Yusuf's city and Arthur's hotel.

Criticizing the nature of the dreams has no weight. I criticize the mountainous winter wonderland scripted to be created by Eames. That's the writing that I feel goes against the character. A swindler in the snow? Fuck NO! Eames would have totally developed a level with scantily clad women running amok in a sweltering cesspool of gambling and booze. There would have been whores, villains, thieves, pickpockets and bastards everywhere. That's a man who was chillin' in Mombasa for fucks sake. His level probably would have resembled Rick's Café in Casablanca more than the frozen fortress from XXX.

Really though that sequence is held together by the actors, the pacing, the exposition and the events that unfold. The setting could have taken place elsewhere, but it is a dream and it does serve a purpose. The cold also keeps the mind sharp and focused more often than not so there's sufficient reason regardless. It just adds to the parts I don't like of movies I find to be great... and perfect.

Also, bitching about an incorrect shade of blue on a fictional wall sounds like a trip to hypothetical Hell.

That makes Saito a nitpicking dork! Wool? Polyester!? WHO GIVES A SHIT, MAN!?

That reminds me of Fischer's moment of levity when he bitches, "Couldn't someone have dreamed up a goddamned beach!?" If he had said that to Eames, I can imagine Eames muttering, "I wish... I wish..."

I never get the feeling any of the shades of blue are different on any of the walls in the film. Everyone dreams the same. And I check out.

And as far as it being held together: I don't feel that it is held together on any appreciable level. I feel it is a really insufferable string of climaxes that irritates me more than excites me. And it was so fucking predictable I wanted to cry.

I have literally no idea what anything in my house is made of and probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference between different types of fibre in ANYTHING. As such Saito being able to identify the dream as a dream by tactile sensation is something that I cannot onboard with and unpicks the entire narrative of the film.

And that's why you'll never be as awesome as Ken Watanabe!

This shit is all well and good guys, but I'm not getting into this nitpicky crap in my critique of the film. It is badly written. There aren't any new ideas being implemented on a narratgive or technical level. The dialogue is bollocks. The screenplay relies too much on exposition through dialogue. The actors seem stiff and one dimensional in their characterizations. Aside from being pretty to look at I don't see a reason to revisit this film at all.

New ideas aren't the be all and end all. What's important to me, in terms of the films intellectual value, is that it's a blockbuster which fits into Nolan's canon. If nothing else Christopher Nolan has impressed me by being able to take source material which ranges from Comic Book action movies to Victorian Sci-Fi and have a clear thematic line through them all.

What do you think of Nolan's other films, Judson?

My favorites are The Prestige, Memento and Insomnia. He works best when he isn't the source of the story. Memento hasn't aged well for me honestly, but it's such a great bit a storytelling slight of hand I can't help but like it.

Overall, I find his films cold. I just don't react to them the way I think I should and it has fuck all to do with a predjudice against him as a person. And he is better at incorporating the technical aspects of film with his characters and stories than a guy like Zack Snyder. But he's just not my cup of tea. Seems to have a tendency to skate the surface of ideas and not really get into the nitty gritty if you know what I mean.

I have a friend who feel exactly the same way as you do in regards to the coldness of Nolan's films (and HATES The Dark Knight), but she LOVED Inception. Nolan's iciness is a comment I've seen before, and it's been said that Inception was a film that finally brought in some emotion, but I don't really agree with that.

I've never found Nolan's films LACKING a warmth or human connection. It's never all that prominent, but it's not missing. I didn't think Inception was all that different in that regard. I actually found myself much more moved by Fischer's manufactured catharsis than I was with Cobb seeing his kids again. I kept thinking, "Save it for the jury, Tom Jane!"

However as some one who has connected with film on a number of levels, I love it. Maybe I am stupid or just plain easily pleased (or stoned), but when I watch it, I feel touched and emotional. I don't see the poor dialogue, plot holes , bad acting etc I experience a great time and thats all that matters to me.

I don't mind the movie as much as Judson, but I have similar problems with it. It started it off well enough, but I got tired of all the exposition fairly quickly and was really disappointed by the action sequences at the end. All this stuff with running away from and/or shooting at henchmen (whether it be in a warehouse or a snowy fortress) was really boring and made the flick come across as a poor man's James Bond movie.

There were a few great moments. For example, I thought the whole sequence with Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character in the hotel was fantastic, especially the fight in the hallway, but I agree that the dream world generally looked bland (I would have preferred something more surreal and trippy) and the storytelling and dialog left a lot to be desired. I can't think of any memorable lines aside from Levitt's "worth a shot". I loved the ending, though. It's easy to not get too bummed out about a movie's flaws and leave it happy when the ending is so effective.

I would watch it again, though I probably fall closer to your attitude than most other people here. What I appreciated about the film was its (well-covered elsewhere) metaphor for storytelling and filmmaking, up to, including, and especially the way Nolan folded the narrative logic holes of his previous work - his biggest weakness as a filmmaker- into the narrative/metaphor of this film. The narrative flaws of his earlier films become the dream logic of Inception; they're now in a context that makes them "work."

But if the dreams were trippy then it takes away from a major danger of the dreams as presented by the film. In Inception Nolan views dreams as a playground where people are masters of their domain, can shape the world around them and can ultimately get lost in them.

Without the verisimilitude of the dream world the entire subplot with Mal and Cobb doesn't really work. If the dream world is wild and trippy then the inference is that there isn't as much control, the structured, ordered dream worlds in Inception are a domain of the intellect.

Exactly. Really, the only place in the story that a trippy dream would make sense is in limbo. But trippy dreamscapes were clearly not what Nolan was interested in. If anything, isn't trippy dream imagery the more obvious thing to resort to?

In interviews with Nolan, the one word that I've heard come out of his mouth on several occasions is "mundane". Not unlike Hitchcock, he likes to present his audience with characters and environments that teeter on the mundane because he believes that underneath that unexceptional exterior is danger and disorder. Inception works specifically because the line is blurred, because the desires of most people are "mundane" and relatable.

The "mundane" quality of the dreams didn't bother me; I wasn't expecting An Inception on Elm Street. My biggest complaint might be that I was never not aware of how clever the film was. As a result there was never a level of immersion for me. I stood back, impressed, but from a distance.

That said, I'd take this as the standard bearer of "summer blockbuster" over just about any other summer tentpole release.

I'll readily admit that Inception was not an emotional experience for me, but I was engaged. That's something I've come to accept about Nolan, he's all about noticing things, not necessarily feeling them.

This is such a bizarre fucking reaction to the film, but it's apparently really common. People seem to be reacting to some 'pretension' that the film doesn't really seem to have. I've only seen the film once but I felt that the film's focus on Cobb's journey/mental state and it's reticence to even attempt to explain the science behind the technology made the film far more emotive than intellectual.

Heheheh

Exactly, it seems like Judson's problem with the film is in its underlying structure and concept. And that's a fairly intellectual argument to make, unless the film is perpetrating some highly offensive point of view through its storytelling. Which it isn't.

Can something be bizarre and common?

I'd like to think I'm not some mouth-breathing rube off the street. (Yeah, yeah, wouldn't we all?) And as I get older I find I'm WAY more prone to reacting emotionally to a film than when I was in my 20s. Just didn't happen for me here.

It's an unusual reaction to the movie (as in it makes no sense to me) which seems to have a few advocates. But whatever. There's no point in even attempting this conversation.

It is really more a complaint regarding its structure. All the problems this film has can be traced back to a weak screenplay with an over reliance on exposition. The poor performances, redundant set pieces and lousy pacing can all be linked to that weakest link.