Inception
I went to see inception this Saturday. I was happy to get out and enjoy a film in a theater. Let me say that the audience in the theater was very silent, which can be a rare thing. The movie was Inception, dir Chistopher Nolan. Perf. Leonardo DiCaprio, Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard,Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Dileep Rao, Tom Berenger, and Michael Caine.
There’s a lot going on in this film, but at its heart we’re treated to a story where people are able to enter your dreams and steal your thoughts. The term “inception” does include entering dreams, however, the goal is to plant ideas in one’s head. We start with a dream heist gone bad to planting a dream in a wealthy heir’s (Cillian Murphy) head. Nothing goes 100% as planned.
What I noticed immediately was a comparison to The Matrix. After all we have a film where technology allows people to enter an alternate world inside the human brain. He have some zero gravity combat, some shoot em outs and in fact some brain hacking. Several of the people are even able to alter the dream world in some fashion like Neo.
Mind you, The Matrix isn’t the first film to deal with alternate states. It certainly should not be the last. I’m allowing myself a moment where I accept this fact. I think of how the film shows the inner world which reminds me of Expressionist films, but the dreams are larger, and the advances in technology make the dreamscapes look amazing. One look at the crumbling buildings near the seashore in Cobbs’ dream world tells us the story of a lonely man and his guilt.
What I noticed a lot in Inception is the use of diagetic and non-diagetic sounds. When dealing with alternate worlds, one must keep in mind what is within the story world and what is outside the story world. Let me say the soundtrack for this film (by composer Hans Zimmer) was very moving. Somewhat dark and excitable. If I may say as contagious as placing a thought in one’s head. The fact that music is used in the film as a diagetic aspect to wake several people works interestingly. After all only certain characters within the film can hear the songs.
This is a bit of a caper film, so we do see a heist going on. I like the fact that there is a clear mission, and some unusual math in here. Dream world time is different from real world time. With the sub-levels of dreams seconds become years.
What kind of took me out of the story a few times was that it sometimes resembled video games. I was thinking “Metal gear” when the cast stormed a fortress to break into the target’s mind. There were several gunfire scenes that gave me pauses. Mind you we have DiCaprio’s character Cobb losing his mind here. He projects his dead wife, Mal into many dreamscapes, and she is pissed! She is hostile and willing to inflict pain and death on anyone she comes across.
The ending is very ambiguous, in spite of having a happy ending where Cobb returns to his children. What we are left to infer is that he is still within a dream. The rest of the cast fades away and the only thing that really matters is Cobb’s world.
Emmet said,
August 1, 2010 at 8:18 PM
I was also impressed with how the audience was rapt up until the very end of the movie.
Some cinema patron behind me continually muttered ‘ooooooh’, under her breath with every new revelation.
What frustrates me is that having ensared cinema audiences with his vision, Nolan didn’t take it further. At times the film feels almost pedestrian, despite the incredible images and action sequences. When we cut back to the van still suspended in mid-air….slowly falling….it has the unintentional result of causing you to feel time itself slowing down. This is a two hour long film. That is not a good thing.
Had more of the story been left a mystery – for example the van punches the rail and in the next level everyone goes into zero g freefall. We don’t discover if they survive the crash until the end of the movie.
A film that doesn’t want for ambition, but got bogged down in exposition.
srhaynes said,
August 1, 2010 at 8:36 PM
I would have loved for more character exploration, and less shoot em up scenes. I suppose they serve to break up the lag. There were several times where I felt the touch of the “uncanny” (being pulled out of the film. That slow drop of the van is one of them. I know Nolan loves to play with time, but it didn’t work for me.
april said,
August 4, 2010 at 12:08 AM
i disagree emmet, i think the scene w/ the van is used to underscore the rules that are outlined as to maintain suspension of disbelief. not only that but to also hold the tension of how the mission unfolds. it is the first domino to fall and you see the rest of the pieces fall into place. all 3 scenes have work in tandem to make the move work. else it’s just a bunch of people doing cool stuff for the sake of doing cool stuff.
there are a lot of similarities w/ the matrix but i like that it isn’t really about the “tech” it’s about the things that lurk w/in us and how they shape the world around us and how the world in turn shapes those things as well. and for me that is the brilliance of this script and the execution of it.
ultimately it’s about cobb’s arc resolution and his redemption. and that’s the place where i think it fell a bit short because it seemed too predictable after the ride the viewer gets taken on…but still a brilliant film.
srhaynes said,
August 4, 2010 at 12:50 AM
Thanks for posting, April. I appreciate it.
Kat said,
August 9, 2010 at 7:41 PM
I agree with April that the van falling was being used to illustrate the passage of time. We’re reminded that, even though a lot has been happening in the other dreams, the van has only fallen a few feet during this time.
I see the similarities to “Matrix”, but it’s really such a very different film, that I would not have made any comparisons on my own. The “reality in your head” theme is the same, but the difference, again like April pointed out, about the realities that we create *within* ourselves, is so profound that I didn’t think about the similarities.
–I have a huge headache, so I think I might have babbled here. XP
srhaynes said,
August 9, 2010 at 8:23 PM
You’re not babbling. Thanks for posting Kat.
Emmet said,
August 9, 2010 at 10:37 PM
There’s something awfully cold and calculating about that for me though. The domino metaphor sets up the rules of the kick, but there’s no real visceral risk.
In the Matrix if you died, your brain died. In Inception we have that moment when the target has been ‘killed’, and Eames just comments dismissively ‘oh well, what a shame’ or words to that effect.
I was open-mouthed at that. What was the point of any of it if they can just walk away. This is not life and death, it’s mild inconvenience versus Cobb’s personal catharsis.
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