so, yeah, inception.

[sophiaserpentia]

cowgrrl and I went to see "Inception" on Sunday. It's fun in a sort of video-game-y way but on the whole we were underwhelmed.

Basically, it's a caper movie. The protagonist is Cobb, who describes himself as the best in the world at stealing secrets from people's brains while they sleep. If he's the best then it must be a field full of people who really suck, because Cobb's emotional baggage comes along and majorly screws things up every single time.

The problem seems to be that Christopher Nolan couldn't decide, ultimately, whether he wanted to make a movie about a caper being pulled off in a dreamworld -- a genre of movie that is typically very light emotionally -- or a movie about how the protagonist attempts to make peace with his emotional traumas.

The basic premise is kind of neat, but I felt it was kind of remarkable how little it felt like things were happening in dreams. There are some neat effects with geometry and gravity but that's where any purported 'dreaminess' ends. When a threat arises, no one ever deals with it in a dreamlike way; it's all car chases and guns and explosions. (Like one reviewer said, maybe Chris Nolan's dreams are directed by Michael Bay.) And then the movie jumps the shark (I almost laughed out loud) when halfway through it's announced that this time, if you die in the dream you don't wake up, but get sucked down into a limbo-like dream state where 50 years or even infinite amounts of time could pass before the sedative wears off and you wake up. Sorry, I couldn't buy it, not even in a cinematic-suspension-of-disbelief way.

I kept expecting the movie to go all Philip-K.-Dick-ian and have it turn out that Cobb was the one who was being played in one long dream sequence. Nope. This underscores the frustration of being a science fiction fan who sometimes watches movies; it's rare for a movie to match the conceptual ingenuity of even the average SF novel.

Maybe most people *do* dream like this and I'm the odd exception here. Most of my dreams vary from the exceedingly mundane to the stark raving weird and non-linear, to the very occasional epic story (which means, I guess, any dream lasting more than ten or fifteen minutes of subjective time). The only movie I've ever seen which felt like it was happening in actual dreams was "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." Even "Dreamscape" felt more like it took place in dreams than this movie.

Comments

[wyndhover.livejournal.com]

I recommend 'Waking Life', if you haven't seen it already.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

I don't think I've seen that. Is it a Charlie Kaufman film?

[wyndhover.livejournal.com]

It's a film about dreams and waking and consciousness in general. Kaufman was not to my knowledge involved. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waking_Life

It really captured the experience of dreaming, at least to me.

off topic, but possibly of interest

[alobar.livejournal.com]

Christian Right Bigots Are Hiding the Truth -- Early Christians Condoned Gay Marriage
http://elyusium.livejournal.com/166144.html

Re: off topic, but possibly of interest

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

I've seen the occasional reference to this. It doesn't get much press, but then it seems to go against everyone's favorite narratives on the subject. It's the kind of thing where, if people can't fit it into their script somehow, it just vanishes from awareness.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

I had a feeling I wouldn't be impressed, much as I'm a fan of lucid dreaming and altered consciousness.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

I feel like, there are so many things you can do when making a movie about lucid dreaming, and they did about 15-20 minutes of interesting stuff in that regard, and then surrounded those 20 minutes with a barely-interesting action movie.

[tori-vixen.livejournal.com]

See, I thought that was the big cliff hanger with the spinning top at the end, was that it might all be his dream afterall... I dunno.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

I was expecting them to end the movie with an "is this a dream or is this real life" kind of moment.

PS don't mind me, I'm becoming more of a movie snob these days. (I just think if we as a society are going to allocate $100 million or more towards the making of a movie, it should really shake me to my core in some way.)

[tori-vixen.livejournal.com]

I'm finding the movies that have an effect closer to that have less of a budget (i.e. Shortbus, and movies of that ilk).

I sure did think it was purty tho. :P

[kellcrow7.livejournal.com]

OMG I can't get past the first paragraph of this. My head keeps resounding with "The Man They Call Jayne"!
I'll have to try after I get a drink of water.

[kellcrow7.livejournal.com]

Okay I'm back.

"...it's rare for a movie to match the conceptual ingenuity of even the average SF novel."
Well, you know, our technology is just starting to catch up; give us a bit more time... :P

Yeah, I was curious about that movie; now I'm not. I'll wait for it to make it onto Pirate Bay.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

It depends on how much you care about special effects. If you're all "ooooh" about them, then seeing it in the theater is not a bad idea. If you're "eh" or "meh" about them, then yeah, IMO you're better off waiting.

[kellcrow7.livejournal.com]

Put me down for Meh.

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

More or less, I agree with you. I went to see the flick a couple of weeks ago with lameautarch & his friend C., who'd already seen it & wanted us to come along. In fact, C. liked it so much that he treated us.

lameautarch & I instinctively searched for movies to which to compare it; we both independently came up with The Matrix. Inception has some of Matrix's feel, but the latter has a clear storyline & the former does not, much to its dismay.

I too was unimpressed with the explosions & shooting people on skis. My dreams don't often use such imagery, although I can concede the "dream beings see you as a threat & so must annihilate you" concept. It just seemed like Nolan didn't make up his mind as to what audience he was targeting.

The imagery I appreciated were the folding of space & crumbling edifices. That seemed dreamlike to me, especially if one is aware that the dream may degrade or become unsupportable.

I mentioned to lameautarch that Inception has sunk its claws into me, as I had a dream the other night. I was in a department store much like Wal-Mart or its ilk. At one point, I felt like lameautarch was waiting for me, & I was taking a long time shopping. Then I couldn't remember whether he had driven me or if I'd walked there. As I attempted to puzzle it out, I promptly woke up.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Well as I wrote above, there's about 15-20 minutes of this that felt dreamlike to me. The scenes of crumbling artifices would count as part of this. It had the kind of dim dream-lighting that I usually see. Basically -- the movie IMO needed much more of that, the emotional stuff (which was unfortunately pasted on and so much less deep than it really needed to be) and fewer of the shooting and car chase scenes.

There are a couple of things they got right, and the "not remembering how you got where you are" is a really good tip for realizing whether or not you're in a dream. That's really interesting that a bit from this movie affected you in a real-life dream conundrum (although maybe you would have preferred to stay asleep).

Comparisons to "Matrix," "Dark City," etc. seem appropriate. Nolan says he was inspired by "Matrix" and his own "Memento."

[redslime.livejournal.com]

Never go see a thriller after everyone else. Wait for the video.