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gategrrlOkay: Inception; probably the most *intricate* action-heist movie I've seen in a long time, with dashes of this 'n' that, and other things, all poured into a bowl-ful of What is Reality Meta as I've ever seen. Has it all been done before? Oh, for fuck's sake. It's Hollywood and Big Business, so of course it's been done before in other movies, to varying degrees.
Moving on--I'll be honest and say that I walked out of the movie disoriented because my inner ears aren't what they used to be. It's about as close to a roller coaster ride as I want to get in this current reality. There are some spectacular fight scenes in a rotating gimbel corridor set that's amazing. After reading up after I saw the movie, if Nolan, the director, could use a practical Real Life effect instead of CGI, he did. And it shows in the reality of what paradoxically goes on in the nested dreams of the various (?) characters.
You might have heard of the ambiguous ending. Is DiCaprio's character out in the real world, or is he in his own Limbo? The ending doesn't let you clearly know one way or the other. I suspect that there are plenty of clues and "easter egg" style hidden eurekas in the earlier scenes. I'm pretty sure that no, he isn't in the Real World-he's still in his dream world, but this time he's managed to get to a level where he can be happy. He's spent untold years in the Limbo he shared with his wife, both WITH his wife, and while trying to find Saito, a mogul financing the entire Inception venture.
I think this movie is going to last a long time beyond the summer not because of its effects, both real and unreal, but because of it's Meta questions that every college Freshman who takes beginning philosophy wants to know---what is reality? The dream worlds are an older expression of that question (unlike the Matrix, which used virtual reality as a dream world). AND I think it's going to last longer in the minds of thinking movie-goers, because it also harkens back to the Existentilists--Sartre in particular. What is hell? What gets you into, and then out of, your own hell? When do you know when you're happy? Does a false reality mean you have false happiness?
Aside from those high-falutin' questions, there are some practical "What now?" things going on. There are two women in the movie. Or are there? But for my purposes at the moment, let's assume they're their own people, and not a mental projection of the main character. First off--the cast itself is almost entirely coded white, and so are ALL the extras. At least the ones I noticed inbetween the nonstop action. There are two nonwhite characters--one is a drug-dealer from Africa (though he codes as middle eastern rather than African, at least to me). There's also Saito, the Japanese mogul of an energy empire. He's must be kept safe, and he insists on going along for the ride. All the rest of the characters are white, and male, possessing various accents and levels of bad-assedness.
And then there's Ariadne, and Mal. They do have a conversation, and exchange deaths--they each kill the other at different times during the movie, so that's all even-steven. So yes, I think Inception manages to squeek by with the Bechdel Test. Mal is more of an exotic-to an American audience, at least. She speaks with a sexy accent, shows up unexpectedly and causes havok, and dresses in sexy outfits and gorgeous styles, often evoking ealier eras (like the 1940s or 50s). Ariadne is a fresh faced American Masters student whose teacher, the main character's father in law and mentor, hands her over to DiCaprio's character, Cobb, to function as his architect (or more simply, his web spinner or maze master). He needs her to keep Mal away-what he knows, Mal knows. Weird how that works, eh? It's acknowledged through the movie that Mal is a projection. She's dead. She no longer exists, except in Cobb's memories and dream world.
Ariadne has lots of talks with Cobb. She's able to sneak into his dreams and memories and find out what his problems are and why he really shouldn't be doing what he's doing. He can endanger everyone else on his team. She knows more than she should be able to know, and it's weird. She kept expressing an urgency on how bad his issues were when I didn't feel it, from the evidence I was given during the movie. Part of that is because the movie itself moves very fast, and I wasn't able to forge that emotional connection to Cobb Ariadne was able to, with all her in depth insights. But then, I think Christopher Nolan realized he needed a way to tell the audience HOW fucked up Cobb really is, and that His Issues Are Really That Bad! If anything, Ariadne felt like Deanna Troi on The Next Generation; she's supposed to be very important in uncovering other's psyche's, AND architecting the dream world, but I kept feeling that her importance in that function which is highly important in that sort of dream world, was minimized. She's a natrual at it, so then she's more like a really really good special effects house for the movies; you're not supposed to notice how good the effects/dreams are, so SPFX houses and Ariadne become nearly invisible throughout the film.
The nested dreams were clearly delineated, at least to me, and I thought all the explanations worked. I'm not sure why some pro reviewers were so confused by the actual dream mechanics. The deeper you go into the dream layers in someone's mind, the longer the subjective time is within that dream layer (that's VERY important). The deeper you go, and the more layers you create, the deeper you and your subject must be drugged in order to stay IN the dream state. The stronger the drug and the deeper you go into nested levels of dreams, the more likely you are not going to come back, and be lost in Limbo, or (in the real world) in a coma, of permenant dreams.
I'm of the opinion that the movie starts out in Cobb's Limbo. The viewer has never started out in Reality. Therefore, anything that happens in the movie is suspect. Did Mal ever really exist? Did they ever actually have children? Is Robert Fischer's mind really Cobb's? Or did MAL actually escape Limbo, and Cobb refuses to see that he is trapped? At the end, Cobb doesn't care one way or the other; his goal is to reunite with his (imaginary?real?) children, and once he does--it doesn't matter what the reality is. He finally left Mal behind, "moved on", and is now in his version of heaven, not Limbo or purgatory.
Moving on--I'll be honest and say that I walked out of the movie disoriented because my inner ears aren't what they used to be. It's about as close to a roller coaster ride as I want to get in this current reality. There are some spectacular fight scenes in a rotating gimbel corridor set that's amazing. After reading up after I saw the movie, if Nolan, the director, could use a practical Real Life effect instead of CGI, he did. And it shows in the reality of what paradoxically goes on in the nested dreams of the various (?) characters.
You might have heard of the ambiguous ending. Is DiCaprio's character out in the real world, or is he in his own Limbo? The ending doesn't let you clearly know one way or the other. I suspect that there are plenty of clues and "easter egg" style hidden eurekas in the earlier scenes. I'm pretty sure that no, he isn't in the Real World-he's still in his dream world, but this time he's managed to get to a level where he can be happy. He's spent untold years in the Limbo he shared with his wife, both WITH his wife, and while trying to find Saito, a mogul financing the entire Inception venture.
I think this movie is going to last a long time beyond the summer not because of its effects, both real and unreal, but because of it's Meta questions that every college Freshman who takes beginning philosophy wants to know---what is reality? The dream worlds are an older expression of that question (unlike the Matrix, which used virtual reality as a dream world). AND I think it's going to last longer in the minds of thinking movie-goers, because it also harkens back to the Existentilists--Sartre in particular. What is hell? What gets you into, and then out of, your own hell? When do you know when you're happy? Does a false reality mean you have false happiness?
Aside from those high-falutin' questions, there are some practical "What now?" things going on. There are two women in the movie. Or are there? But for my purposes at the moment, let's assume they're their own people, and not a mental projection of the main character. First off--the cast itself is almost entirely coded white, and so are ALL the extras. At least the ones I noticed inbetween the nonstop action. There are two nonwhite characters--one is a drug-dealer from Africa (though he codes as middle eastern rather than African, at least to me). There's also Saito, the Japanese mogul of an energy empire. He's must be kept safe, and he insists on going along for the ride. All the rest of the characters are white, and male, possessing various accents and levels of bad-assedness.
And then there's Ariadne, and Mal. They do have a conversation, and exchange deaths--they each kill the other at different times during the movie, so that's all even-steven. So yes, I think Inception manages to squeek by with the Bechdel Test. Mal is more of an exotic-to an American audience, at least. She speaks with a sexy accent, shows up unexpectedly and causes havok, and dresses in sexy outfits and gorgeous styles, often evoking ealier eras (like the 1940s or 50s). Ariadne is a fresh faced American Masters student whose teacher, the main character's father in law and mentor, hands her over to DiCaprio's character, Cobb, to function as his architect (or more simply, his web spinner or maze master). He needs her to keep Mal away-what he knows, Mal knows. Weird how that works, eh? It's acknowledged through the movie that Mal is a projection. She's dead. She no longer exists, except in Cobb's memories and dream world.
Ariadne has lots of talks with Cobb. She's able to sneak into his dreams and memories and find out what his problems are and why he really shouldn't be doing what he's doing. He can endanger everyone else on his team. She knows more than she should be able to know, and it's weird. She kept expressing an urgency on how bad his issues were when I didn't feel it, from the evidence I was given during the movie. Part of that is because the movie itself moves very fast, and I wasn't able to forge that emotional connection to Cobb Ariadne was able to, with all her in depth insights. But then, I think Christopher Nolan realized he needed a way to tell the audience HOW fucked up Cobb really is, and that His Issues Are Really That Bad! If anything, Ariadne felt like Deanna Troi on The Next Generation; she's supposed to be very important in uncovering other's psyche's, AND architecting the dream world, but I kept feeling that her importance in that function which is highly important in that sort of dream world, was minimized. She's a natrual at it, so then she's more like a really really good special effects house for the movies; you're not supposed to notice how good the effects/dreams are, so SPFX houses and Ariadne become nearly invisible throughout the film.
The nested dreams were clearly delineated, at least to me, and I thought all the explanations worked. I'm not sure why some pro reviewers were so confused by the actual dream mechanics. The deeper you go into the dream layers in someone's mind, the longer the subjective time is within that dream layer (that's VERY important). The deeper you go, and the more layers you create, the deeper you and your subject must be drugged in order to stay IN the dream state. The stronger the drug and the deeper you go into nested levels of dreams, the more likely you are not going to come back, and be lost in Limbo, or (in the real world) in a coma, of permenant dreams.
I'm of the opinion that the movie starts out in Cobb's Limbo. The viewer has never started out in Reality. Therefore, anything that happens in the movie is suspect. Did Mal ever really exist? Did they ever actually have children? Is Robert Fischer's mind really Cobb's? Or did MAL actually escape Limbo, and Cobb refuses to see that he is trapped? At the end, Cobb doesn't care one way or the other; his goal is to reunite with his (imaginary?real?) children, and once he does--it doesn't matter what the reality is. He finally left Mal behind, "moved on", and is now in his version of heaven, not Limbo or purgatory.
