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Sean 
"Necrosphenisciform anthropophagist."
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 Posted - 07/28/2010 : 05:46:49
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OK I haven't seen it or read much of this thread (I don't want spoilers) but by the sound of it this is gonna be one of those movies I'll have to re-watch a week after my first viewing. That's not a bad thing.  |
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Demisemicenturian 
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 07/31/2010 : 21:30:32
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I wish I'd known nothing about this in advance, but the only thing I did know (from the F.Y.C.T.H.) was that it was about dreams, so that didn't really spoil it.
I don't know about anyone else, but I have really exhilarating dreams which I love, so I was a happy to see a film based on this subject. In particular, I experience architecture and location very vividly so it was interesting that that was covered in such detail in the film.
As I predicted long ago, DiCaprio is finally growing into his looks.
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Originally posted by randall
Incessant and incomprehensible yakety-yak, and the sound design is awful to boot.
Yes, a lot of the dialogue is mumbled or obscured -- it's really frustrating as one never knows when it is going to contain important information. If I watched it on D.V.D. I'd have the subtitles on for sure.
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Originally posted by lamhasuas
it�s a bit too long. But I found it compelling throughout.
Ditto. Ditto.
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The movie�s greatest strength is its adherence to a highly imaginative yet rigorous internal logic, rarely the case with blockbusters & probably never the case with movies about dreams and alternative realities.
I'm glad to hear that. I was very tired (and indeed fell asleep during it, aptly) as I'd not slept much for a few days and it was my fourth film of the day, so I decided to let it just wash over me. However, I mean to watch it again in order to check that it all hangs together properly.
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For the plot to make sense, Nolan had to stick to his set of rules about what can happen & what can�t. This meant that the dreamscapes had to have a concrete realism about them that precluded the use of lots of special effects.
Good point. Dreams in films are usually presented as Daliesque or otherwise with little relationship to the real world, with people skipping on clouds &c., but how many people dream like that? I don't, for one. Unlikely or even impossible things can happen, but it's not like some kind of trip.
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Originally posted by BaftaBabe
I know it feels like it's about dreams, but it's not about dreams. Dreams is a McGuffin.
That isn't fair.
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Originally posted by damalc
"Inception" is pretty manipulative. you forget that Cobb and his team are the bad guys. they're thieves, and are particularly malicious as they manipulate Murphy in his grief over his father's death to destroy his own company.
Quite. I also wondered why the cause in the first case couldn't be a better one (not necessarily morally better, just more interesting). On a related note, if Saito can afford to buy an airline on a whim, how on Earth can he not afford to just compete in a normal fashion with Fischer's company?
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Originally posted by Sludge
I don't know if all viewers caught this, but to discuss the Totem issue and possibly ruin even a second viewing for you...
The Totem is not Leo's! He says early on that it was her totem. I believe Leo's totem is his kids' faces. He refuses to look at them until he's actually "home".
Interesting. I did indeed miss that and thought it was odd that the top seemed to be shown to all and sundry, which I thought defeated the point. I'll definitely be looking into this on my next viewing.
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Originally posted by benj clews
I also appreciated Nolan's use of things we all understand about dreams ('the kicker' springs most to mind).
That annoyed me a bit because, as I understand it, the sensation of falling in a dream comes from one's blood sugar level (or something like that) dropping, i.e. it's a physiological thing.
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Originally posted by demonic
I did find an emotional heart in Cobb's grief and guilt over Mal's death; her suicide was very effecting I thought, and in his primary goal to get back to his children.
Perhaps because of my tiredness I didn't see her reasoning for her suicide coming, and I thought it was a great 'twist' (hesitating to call it that because everything's a twist to some degree in this). However, given that presumably her mother (French accent) doesn't seem to hold Cobb responsible, why doesn't she just bring them to live with him in Rio or somewhere? He seems to have the funds to wander around the world at will. Or was that telephone conversation a dream? I did find it odd that he had to check who his children were.
5/5 |
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benj clews 
"...."
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Posted - 07/31/2010 : 21:36:47
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quote:
Originally posted by Salopian
quote:
Originally posted by benj clews
I also appreciated Nolan's use of things we all understand about dreams ('the kicker' springs most to mind).
That annoyed me a bit because, as I understand it, the sensation of falling in a dream comes from one's blood sugar level (or something like that) dropping, i.e. it's a physiological thing.
That may be so, but it's also a physical thing. I'm sure everyone here has at some point woken with a start as their head nodded downwards when falling asleep sat upright. I can also vouch for waking as you fall out of bed when asleep. I think the confusion here comes about because there is also the 'stepping off a curb' type of wake up which I think you're referring to and is clearly not physical.
Another truth I liked of this film was the moment when Cobb explained you don't remember how you got to be where you are in a dream. This is an interesting fact that I only realised how true it was last night in a dream about going on holiday where I found I had to ask another person in my dream when I'd booked it and for how long! Clearly, serious thought and at least some psychological research has gone into establishing the rules of this film. |
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Demisemicenturian
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 07/31/2010 : 21:58:53
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quote:
Originally posted by benj clews
That may be so, but it's also a physical thing. I'm sure everyone here has at some point woken with a start as their head nodded downwards when falling asleep sat upright. I can also vouch for waking as you fall out of bed when asleep. I think the confusion here comes about because there is also the 'stepping off a curb' type of wake up which I think you're referring to and is clearly not physical.
I haven't experienced two different types, so I can't really follow this distinction. I'll pay more attention when I watch it again: there was something about the way they presented it that didn't make sense. Perhaps it was the idea that that sensation can be generated in the same way as other dream elements. Having said that, I guess that is covered by the miscellaneous potions that are conveniently concocted. I found that to be one of the weakest plot mechanisms.
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Another truth I liked of this film was the moment when Cobb explained you don't remember how you got to be where you are in a dream. This is an interesting fact that I only realised how true it was last night in a dream about going on holiday where I found I had to ask another person in my dream when I'd booked it and for how long! Clearly, serious thought and at least some psychological research has gone into establishing the rules of this film.
Absolutely. As soon as he said that, it rang so fundamentally true for me. I had also never thought about it before. I wondered whether it might be related to the fact that once awake it's easier to remember the end of the dream, i.e. whether it's not as hard to remember the beginning while one is in the dream, but your experience shows that perhaps that's not it. I've been able to dream lucidly from time to time over the past few years (before that I thought that if one could think about whether it were a dream then it wasn't) but I don't remember ever looking back in one: perhaps I will next time. |
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benj clews
"...."
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Posted - 07/31/2010 : 22:09:17
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quote:
Originally posted by Salopian
quote:
Originally posted by benj clews
That may be so, but it's also a physical thing. I'm sure everyone here has at some point woken with a start as their head nodded downwards when falling asleep sat upright. I can also vouch for waking as you fall out of bed when asleep. I think the confusion here comes about because there is also the 'stepping off a curb' type of wake up which I think you're referring to and is clearly not physical.
I haven't experienced two different types, so I can't really follow this distinction. I'll pay more attention when I watch it again: there was something about the way they presented it that didn't make sense. Perhaps it was the idea that that sensation can be generated in the same way as other dream elements. Having said that, I guess that is covered by the miscellaneous potions that are conveniently concocted. I found that to be one of the weakest plot mechanisms.
Fair enough. I guess I'm just trying to say there is the kind of waking with a jolt brought about by something in the dream- most commonly stepping unexpectedly off a kerb (for some odd reason), and there's the kind influenced by the outside world we physically inhabit. The former would be some crazy brain shit going on and the latter would be a survival mechanism so we have some chance of doing something when our monkey brain falls out a tree mid-sleep. |
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Demisemicenturian
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 07/31/2010 : 22:17:57
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quote:
Originally posted by benj clews
I guess I'm just trying to say there is the kind of waking with a jolt brought about by something in the dream- most commonly stepping unexpectedly off a kerb (for some odd reason), and there's the kind influenced by the outside world we physically inhabit. The former would be some crazy brain shit going on and the latter would be a survival mechanism so we have some chance of doing something when our monkey brain falls out a tree mid-sleep.
In the latter case, I don't remember that ever interacting with a dream for me, although certainly plenty of non-emergency input does, such as alarms. In the former, I don't remember anything ever waking me up from fully within a dream. I dreamt I was murdered a few months ago (I was glad to find that I took it very calmly) and while I don't remember anything from afterwards, I don't think even that woke me up. The falling sensation can get incorporated into the dream and then wake me up, but I guess once it's woken me up, it leaves the shadow of a physical sensation that seems separate from the normal post-dream feeling. |
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randall 
"I like to watch."
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Posted - 08/01/2010 : 01:40:20
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| I've always welcomed my dreams as sleep-emergence, mind-manufactured playlets which try to keep me distracted and faux-somnambulant, while in real life I'm physiologically able to grab a little more sleep. Some are anxiety scenarios, some erotic [damn you, alarm clock!], some psychedelic, but Nolan is right: no matter how cleverly my mind fashions the dream, I never remember how I got there. |
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Joe Blevins
"Don't I look handsome?"
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Posted - 08/01/2010 : 22:52:50
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(Please note: I just want to write extemporaneously about the film while it's fresh in my mind. This is not meant as a well-thought-out essay on the film. You will forgive me for what I'm about to say.)
Well, Christopher Nolan and his minions have claimed a little bit more of my money. I gave in to curiosity and saw Inception this afternoon, mainly to see what the fuss was about. Somehow or other, I've seen all of Nolan's features from Memento onward except for The Prestige, and my experiences at all of them have been pretty much the same. I sort of grudgingly admire the intricacy of Nolan's plotting, but I'm utterly unmoved -- and worse yet unentertained -- by the filmgoing experience. To me, Inception just seems like the latest Nolan puzzlebox that yeilds nothing of particular value or insight once solved, if indeed it can be solved. Even without the end credits, this film could easily be indentified as coming from the director of the last two Batman films as it shares with those movies a deliberately drab production design, an unmistakable glumness of tone, and an overall numbing effect on the viewer. (At least this viewer.)
Much has been made of Inception's dream-vs.-reality themes, but not enough has been made of the fact that a good deal of the running time is given over to typical Nolan-esque "action" sequences of people shooting at each other in traffic, stuff blowing up, people yelling, and dead guys falling over railings -- all presented in that headache-enducing manner of his in which you can never quite be sure where everyone is or what exactly is happening. People should know what they're really getting for their money. I found long portions of Inception dispiriting and dull, lots of loud clatter interspersed with seemingly endless expository dialogue, much of which is swallowed up in the sound design. And, what the hell, I'll just say it -- Nolan's films are ugly. You hear me? Ug.Lee. They're just tough to look at for 2.5 hours. Inception plays like a funeral for the imagination, the movie where dreams go to die -- possibly by gunfire in a rainstorm. The fact that Internet has annointed Christopher Nolan as its current cinematic god seems to me to be an indication of the deeply-ingrained dreariness of our era. Isn't one of the marks of a great movie that you can watch it with the sound off and still tell what's happening? Try doing that with Inception. Maybe Norma Desmond was right when she railed against the "talkies." I can only imagine what Nolan would have done had he been making flicks in the silent era. The silent Inception would've been 75% intertitle cards, the remaining 25% divided between shootouts, explosions, rainstorms, and shots of a van falling very slowly.
Oh, don't get me wrong. There's plenty of neato-mosquito stuff in Inception. I particularly liked it when Ellen Page -- blessedly not channeling her character in Juno -- was able to use the power of imagination to take a cityscape and sort of fold it over itself like a giant burrito. And then there was Joseph Gordon-Leavitt, the thinking person's Shia LeBeouf, floating around zero-gravity-style in a fancy hotel for a good half hour, I think. But frankly, by the time we got to the last shot, I didn't give a good goddamn whether that top stayed up, fell over, or danced the hoochie-koo. |
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Beanmimo 
"August review site"
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Posted - 08/02/2010 : 03:27:38
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Well now that we are giving spoilers
Sludge, that was a fine compliment, thanks a million!!
A lovely open ending for either a once off or to spawn a sequel, whatever the market demands.
Here's the sequel I'd like to see spawned, the architecture of the entire movie is Adriadne's investigation of Leo's wifes death through his dreams so that in the sequel he wakes up at some point and then it becomes a bourne identity/strangedays/minority report/blade runner with dreams kind of a thing.
Incidentally, Ariadne is also a late ninteenth century short story about an artificially created woman so I didn't believe in her from the start.
Interestingly enough I saw Shutter Island on dvd the next day, it was funny seeing them so close together as you can imagine.
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Edited by - Beanmimo on 08/02/2010 03:34:56 |
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Demisemicenturian
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 08/02/2010 : 03:52:14
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quote:
Originally posted by Beanmimo
Incidentally, Ariadne is...
And she span the thread that led Theseus out of the Labyrinth. |
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Beanmimo
"August review site"
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Posted - 08/02/2010 : 04:04:50
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quote:
Originally posted by Salopian
quote:
Originally posted by Beanmimo
Incidentally, Ariadne is...
And she span the thread that led Theseus out of the Labyrinth.
Yes, that too and maybe slightly more valid.
Either way she'd be the ringer... in the dream. |
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randall
"I like to watch."
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Posted - 08/03/2010 : 23:17:05
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| Any film clever enough to inspire discussion -- assuming it keeps its audience awake -- is good for the medium. I will now warn anyone downstream that this flick has been out long enough: SPOILERS LIE BOTH AHEAD AND BEHIND, as if you didn't know already... |
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Joe Blevins
"Don't I look handsome?"
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Posted - 08/04/2010 : 02:46:03
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quote:
Originally posted by randall
Any film clever enough to inspire discussion -- assuming it keeps its audience awake -- is good for the medium. I will now warn anyone downstream that this flick has been out long enough: SPOILERS LIE BOTH AHEAD AND BEHIND, as if you didn't know already...
I agree with the above sentiment. In the interest of fostering ongoing debate, I have a little more to say about Inception:
The magazine Film Threat used to occasionally rate movies on each of five separate categories: Laugh, Cry, Scream, Orgasm, Think. These are a little reductive, maybe, but they basically encompass what we're hoping to get out of movies as viewers. After watching Inception, I had to wonder how this film would hold up when rated on these criteria.
Laugh: Well, there are a couple of mood-lightening moments of humor here and there (as when Joseph Gordon-Levitt steals a kiss from Ellen Page), but I think we can all agree that this is not -- and is not trying to be -- a funny movie. No higher than a 3 out of 10.
Cry: Here there is room for debate. Are we meant to be truly moved by the saga of DiCaprio and his wife and DiCaprio's quest to return to his children, or are these just pieces of Nolan's complicated puzzle? I'm guessing the latter. I never for a second bought DiCaprio and Cotillard as a "real" married couple with a shared history, and their idealized children never even emerge as fleshed-out characters. It is possible that people who really have been separated from their own children will find this aspect of the film more compelling than I did. Both Cotillard and DiCaprio are so inscrutable that I had a tough time getting a handle on who these characters are. What kinds of people are these? Does Nolan even know or care? Overall, this is not a particularly "emotional" film. Most of the main characters, DiCaprio especially, remain fairly stoic in demeanor. Inception is no tearjerker. Elsewhere, Cillian Murphy deals with some daddy issues and attendant grief over his father's death. Again, to me, this felt like something meant to advance the plot rather than to arouse emotions from the viewer. On the "Cry" scale, I can only give the film a 4 out of 10 - still a marked improvement over "Laugh."
Scream: Hmmmm. Is Inception a "scary" film? There are some moments of classic horror-film tension, as when Ellen Page descends to the "basement" of DiCaprio's dreamworld. One concerned viewer even yelled out, "I WOULDN'T GO IN THERE!" at this point. But calling Inception "scary" is a stretch, especially compared to something like the thematically-similar Shutter Island, which is much closer to the gothic horror tradition. On the plus side of the ledger, we do have occasional "gotcha!" moments and jump scenes, so let's be generous and give it another 4.
Orgasm: I guess it depends on the individual viewer. The cast, by and large, are photogenic enough and generally are photographed in a flattering way. Maybe that's enough for you, if either Leonardo DiCaprio or Ellen Page is your "type." Only Cotillard's wardrobe could conceivably be called "arousing," and her dresses do reveal some pleasant sedimentary upthrusts. But for a movie about dreams and the subconscious, Inception is surprisingly unconcerned with sex. Come to think of it, where was the sex in this movie? 2 out of 10. We're backsliding.
So that leaves us with...
Think: A grand slam for Inception, right? An easy 10 out of 10? Not for me, it wasn't. I didn't particularly find the movie to be a consciousness-raising, mind-expanding experience. For one thing, it's -- let's not forget -- an action movie with shootouts, explosions, crashes, chases, etc. This is a demolition zone, not a zen garden. And much of the dialogue (and there's a bunch of it) serves as exposition rather than philosophy. Hell, The Matrix had more philosophy in it than Inception, as did Fight Club, to name two equally-flashy CGI enhanced action films. If there's food for thought during Inception, it's pondering the mysteries of Nolan's intricate plot -- a matryoshka doll with dreams nested within dreams -- not the mysteries of existence. Quick, name one profound idea in Inception. Name one insight into the human condition Nolan gives us. I can't really think of any. Inception is a neat trick, all right, but is it anything more than that? To me, it fits the Nolan pattern of being complicated and yet curiously shallow at the same time. I can think of any number of excellent, memorable visuals from the film but can't really remember any "great scenes," per se, i.e. individual moments you want to savor because they're so well-written and well-acted. Maybe a second viewing will reveal some great scenes to me, some moment of perfectly-realized drama within Inception. Until then, I can't give the film any more than a 6 out of 10 on the Think scale. |
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ChocolateLady
"500 Chocolate Delights"
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Posted - 08/04/2010 : 06:09:12
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Which makes it a pretty lousy film.
But... isn't this list of items missing something - the "Pow" factor? This is an action film, and therefore it should also be judged on that scale as well.
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Conan The Westy
"Father, Faithful Friend, Fwiffer"
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Posted - 08/04/2010 : 22:56:16
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quote:
Originally posted by demonic
I was talking to a friend tonight who totally missed the fact that the whole last scene could just be limbo and not reality, but I guess he missed the point about the spinning totem...
That was exactly what I went out of the cinema thinking demonic.
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Originally posted by Joe Blevins
And then there was Joseph Gordon-Leavitt, the thinking person's Shia LeBeouf, floating around zero-gravity-style in a fancy hotel for a good half hour, I think.
I absolutely loved that scene. 6/5 |
Edited by - Conan The Westy on 08/04/2010 22:57:03 |
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Inception
