Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010)

[HistoryProf]

Here’s a list of more than fifty films dealing with memory or the unreal nature of reality, all of which are vastly superior to Inception...

Heard this argument before, and it's still lazy. For some reason, Charade, Amarcord, and The Beaches of Agnes are on that list.

Can anyone tell me what in the fuck "the unreal nature of reality" is supposed to mean? couldn't you put, i don't know, every movie ever made in that category? He couldn't do it about dreams, so he creates some non-category that allows him to cherry pick random movies and force them into said non-category to show how awesome that category (which doesn't exist) is capable of being and thus why this one movie sucks? what kind of "criticism" is that?

that reads like a grad student screed. Pick your topic...they're all really the same.

[wattsup32]

I can never get behind the "this/these films are better than that one, so you should watch this/these and never that" argument. The natural and inevitable conclusion of that type of argument is that there is only one film suitable for watching. I don't wanna watch only one film.

[swo17]

I still haven't seen this movie yet, but am now starting to have dreams about going to see it. I have to hand it to Nolan--that's some pretty clever marketing.

[Dr. Geek]

And then the whole film fell apart.

[Murdoch]

And then the whole film fell apart.

I loled

[Highway 61]

And then the whole film fell apart.

I loled

Indeed, pretty funny that no one pointed that out in 11 pages.

[HistoryProf]

And then the whole film fell apart.

I loled

x2

[J Adams]

They also might have considered having The Forger forge a will that broke up the Empire.

[Anhedionisiac]

I definitely laughed at the .jpg but it was mostly because of Leo's squint as the punchline.
I thought it was pretty self-evident that the reason Michael Caine hasn't flown Leo's children to France is because their grandmother has a short leash on them and hates Leo, as stated in the telephone conversation he has with his children.

As for the Forger forging a will, security's so tight he could only manage to get briefly close to Browning. He'd probably need a whole heist team for that and the one he's a member of only does heists in dreams.
And if you meant forging the will in the dreams, it's explained that the inception needs to be thoroughly cathartic for it to work, simply providing the alternate will as visible proof in the dream won't work because Fischer can easily ignore it.

[Finch]

I definitely laughed at the .jpg but it was mostly because of Leo's squint as the punchline.

Same here. Leo's squint makes it all the funnier.

[Mr. Ned]

Not as good, but equally ingenious.

[eljacko]

Not as good, but equally ingenious.

somewhat crude, but alternatively

[swo17]

I finally saw this film, in a near empty (yay!) local theater (my first time in a theater, actually, since a highly unpleasant experience watching The Dark Knight two years ago ). I now proudly present my very own giant black box:

SpoilerShow

I rather liked Memento when it first came out, but my opinion of it and of Nolan in general has lessened since, especially with the onslaught of his Batman films. So I was somewhat surprised to find that I unreservedly loved nearly everything about Inception. First, I don't understand accusations that the film is too action-oriented, or isn't enough like some people's conceptions of what a dream should be. The entire film (not just the dreams proper) felt like a dream that I might have had (what I often call my Indiana Jones dreams) and I feel sorry for you if you don't get to have dreams like that from time to time. But more importantly, the film clearly establishes that the dreams are designed by the architect to be the way they are (for the express purpose of international corporate espionage) and that the mark has been trained to resist such subconscious subterfuge (thus explaining all of the armed combatants). It's not meant to be this grand statement on dreams in general, but rather a very specific story that happens to take place in the realm of dreams. So check your expectations at the door.

I loved the score as well, and I felt it helped to know going in that Zimmer's usual bombast here is actually a variation on the Piaf song glacially slowed down, which of course makes perfect sense when you consider the lateral time relativities that the film plays with. This is a terribly clever conceit, but on top of that, I think it just sounds great on its own, and might even be considered something of a comment on other summer-type action films with scores of this ilk.

Even after scrutinizing the film's labyrinthine plot, I'm honestly having a hard time poking holes in its logic. It's meticulously crafted, and what minor plotholes might remain can seemingly be explained away by the idea that the whole thing could just be a dream. In fact, if you consider the very real possibility that the whole plot of birthing the idea in the heir tycoon's brain is just Cobb manipulating his own dreams to convincingly maneuver a way to be with his children in what he can convince himself is reality (even if it isn't really), then any moments of strained credulity take on a kind of tragic quality, as though Cobb is so determined to complete his mission that he will even allow his mind to bend the physical laws that reign over the dream world. Or the whole film could be interpreted to be a dream in a completely innocuous way--perhaps the real Cobb is just a regular guy like me who had a weird, intricate dream one night about losing his family and becoming a mind spy. Or countless other possibilities. I love the ambiguity there.

If I have one complaint about the film though, it's that it was not just two and a half hours of JGL flying through that hotel hallway. Seriously, there was no excuse for that.

And now, to respond to some questions:

I do not accept the fact that this should excuse several illogicalities that bugged me as I was watching it, namely: why would Di Caprio accept a newbie (albeit one as graceful as Page and who had been recommended to him by his father-in-law Caine) as part of the team for one final fling at his ultra-specialized job with an all-important outcome (reuniting him with his long-lost children)?

The prior architect had been taken out of the picture and he couldn't design the dreamscapes himself because then Mal would know about them and sabotage the mission. He needed an architect, and his father recommended someone who was supposedly even better than he had been back in the day.

similarly, how on earth could a mere industrialist (Watanabe) nullify Di Caprio’s murder charges by making one phone call?

If I understood this correctly, all he promised to do was get him through immigration at the airport. If this explanation doesn't work for you, this could perhaps be one of the instances like I was mentioning earlier where Cobb needed to orchestrate a way in his mind to get to his kids in his perceived reality, and this was a way that it could work, even if the logic behind it is somewhat specious.

what was the point of the team risking their lives repeatedly to discover the contents of Poslethwaite’s vault when it has been telegraphed in advance (in that recurring photograph of Murphy as a boy) all along?

Well, the whole point of "inception" is supposed to be that you plant an idea in someone's mind in such a manner that he is convinced it's his own idea. The crew knew what would be in the vault. The whole point was to create an elaborate obstacle course to get there and then have the mark discover what was in the vault for himself.

[Mr Pixies]

(has anything ever been labeled both pretentious and for teenagers?)

uh, well, Donnie Darko IS that, but in that case those may be positive qualities.

Everything Richard Kelly does is pretentious

everything is flawless.

SpoilerShow

all movies are the same, this extends to everything else, but i love thinking about it limited to movies. but still, Inception is another man's vision for what is totally going on in Donnie Darko, Waking Life, Southland Tales, Synechdoce New York, Avatar, everything is all just in one person's mind. and the thing about it all being a dream is, this is a dream too, or how ever a dream works, this is the same, this right here and now stuff. so, i might be disappointing, at first to see that there is no one but you, everything does not exist, but in your imagined form, information, of it. all i mean to say is, everyone can do no other real thing other than to display this, that it will always be imagined in you, i guess that is why i loved it so much, cause it gets to be a cool action movie, but it also lets you in to what you are doing, and how you do it

[mattkc]

SpoilerShow

all movies are the same, this extends to everything else, but i love thinking about it limited to movies. but still, Inception is another man's vision for what is totally going on in Donnie Darko, Waking Life, Southland Tales, Synechdoce New York, Avatar, everything is all just in one person's mind. and the thing about it all being a dream is, this is a dream too, or how ever a dream works, this is the same, this right here and now stuff. so, i might be disappointing, at first to see that there is no one but you, everything does not exist, but in your imagined form, information, of it. all i mean to say is, everyone can do no other real thing other than to display this, that it will always be imagined in you, i guess that is why i loved it so much, cause it gets to be a cool action movie, but it also lets you in to what you are doing, and how you do it

I had to ingest three different kinds of hallucinogens just to read that.

[rs98762001]

I think that the many of the criticisms of the film, attempting to poke holes in every little bit of the plot, are largely pointless. I greatly enjoyed Inception, and think for a modern-day big-budget Hollywood film it's a near-miracle.

But Nolan is no poet. He's doggedly literal in every way. His dreams look not like dreams, but like other movies. Even his most imaginative sequences have a sort of prosaicness and lack of mystery that clearly mark him a step below genuinely great filmmakers. In The Dark Knight there were really only two brief moments - both involving (and perhaps improvised by) Ledger, one where he hung his head out of the window of a stolen cop car, and one where he staggered away from the smoking hospital wreckage in drag - which seemed to really have a life of their own. Inception ultimately suffers from that same overly tight, wound-up desire for control over every frame.

[ehimle]

I don't get why people complain about the dreams not looking like dreams.

If the dream were to be dreamlike the "mark" would soon realize this and the sub-conscious projections would attack
(what happened when ellen page started making streets and buildings go vertical and so on).
the architect is needed to create a realistic world.

If the mark becomes self conscious of the dream state like Watanabe did in his lover's apartment with the carpet.
he would realize he was in a dream and no longer be willing to give up his secrets and fight back, knowing if he did die he would just wake up.

pretty simple. possibly a tad to convenient a reason for some.

[wattsup32]

His dreams look not like dreams, but like other movies.

I can only gather from this statement that you've actually had Nolan's dreams, since that's the only way you could know this.

[matrixschmatrix]

His dreams look not like dreams, but like other movies.

I can only gather from this statement that you've actually had Nolan's dreams, since that's the only way you could know this.

I think he was referring to 'his dreams' as in 'the dreams depicted in his movie, Inception'. As stupid as the criticism that the dreams in Inception are wrong because they're not dreamy enough is, that doesn't mean it's not fair to point out the dreams are more movie pastiche than any attempt at surreality. That was clearly Nolan's deliberate choice, and pointing that out isn't the same as claiming that the choice is inherently wrong (which is what a lot of people did, and which is stupid.)

[rs98762001]

His dreams look not like dreams, but like other movies.

I can only gather from this statement that you've actually had Nolan's dreams, since that's the only way you could know this.

I can only imagine you're being facetious. But in case I wasn't clear enough, my point is that the dreamworlds created in Inception don't feel genuinely inspired. They come from dozens of movies we've seen before. Dark City, 2001, etc - there's already been enough written on the numerous visual influences. And I don't think Nolan's making some sort of meta point about how our dreams our influenced by films. I think it's just a lack of genuine imagination.

As stupid as the criticism that the dreams in Inception are wrong because they're not dreamy enough is, that doesn't mean it's not fair to point out the dreams are more movie pastiche than any attempt at surreality. That was clearly Nolan's deliberate choice, and pointing that out isn't the same as claiming that the choice is inherently wrong (which is what a lot of people did, and which is stupid.)

Yes exactly. It's not that the dreams aren't "dreamy" enough. It's that they're not original or unique enough in their own conception.

[FerdinandGriffon]

Can we please put the whole "Inception's dreams don't look like actual dreams" argument to bed? It's ludicrous. It's like arguing that Alphaville or Blade Runner's art design is terrible because it doesn't look futuristic.

Inception isn't really about dreams, just like most science fiction isn't actually about the future. Get over it.

[matrixschmatrix]

To whom are you speaking? I think both rs98762001 and I explicitly made the point that we were not complaining that they don't look like 'actual' dreams- and I wasn't actually complaining at all, since I think a more surreal environment would have been less interesting.

The dreams are certainly heightened reality- which I was thankful for, since I hated (for instance) Caché, which felt to me like the whole movie was designed so you couldn't tell if you were watching the movie or a voyeuristic video within the movie, so both came out largely flat- but they largely follow physical rules. That's not a criticism, it's an observation. I think the movie wouldn't have worked as well if they didn't.

That said, I think some of the strongest moments and sequences- Joseph Gordon-Levitt's levitation scenes, the water rushing in near the beginning, the gravity bending with Ellen Page- were parts that did violate the rules. I don't know if that's because they were inherently the most inventive parts, or just because they seemed heightened further by the baseline reality most of the movie stuck with.

[swo17]

I think some of the strongest moments and sequences- Joseph Gordon-Levitt's levitation scenes, the water rushing in near the beginning, the gravity bending with Ellen Page- were parts that did violate the rules.

Do you mean that they violated physical laws or the rules established by the film, because if it's the latter I disagree.

[matrixschmatrix]

Physical laws, the movie was largely pretty careful about holding to its internal logic.

[HistoryProf]

Yes exactly. It's not that the dreams aren't "dreamy" enough. It's that they're not original or unique enough in their own conception

and what, exactly, is the problem with this? Something has to be 100% unique to be worthy of praise or compelling? nonsense.

and the whole "how could Watanabe fix things with one phone call" nonsense is on the one hand silly nitpicking just to nitpick, and on the other entirely plausible: Remember that this was about oil and power resources on a global scale. Of course someone of his stature would have some very important government numbers in his blackberry - especially if he could tell them that they had just succeeded in preventing a global monopoly consolidating its hold on fuel resources. One would imagine a silly murder charge would be easily dealt with at that level. And it's not like he wouldn't have made arrangements ahead of time either...he clearly would have told the people who needed to be told to expect a call.

picking on stuff like this shows nothing but a lack of actual thought or paying attention and a desire to be critical for the sake of being critical. It has become very annoying.