Watched Christopher Nolan’s exegesis on dreams, Inception, with the wife Saturday night. I recognize that he’s an incredible writer-slash-director, and I enjoyed his previous work, starting with Memento right up to The Dark Knight. But for some reason I find his films to be ordeals. Word was that Inception is kinda confusing and very, very long, and I’m here to confirm both caveats as true. The funny thing is, though, I liked it.
You have to send off the logical part of your brain with a $20 bill to see Dinner With Schmucks or something similar while you watch Inception. What I immediately noticed twenty minutes in is that all the characters helpfully exposit lots and lots of rules about the dreamworld to us in the audience. Which is okay, because that sets up the parameters of the film, and I kinda knew what to expect ninety minutes later, major twists and such. And being a huge SF fan, I recognize and appreciate that you can bend the rules all you want in the service of a good tale – as long as you explain them to the audience and stay true to them.
The confusing part, which wasn’t so much confusing as arbitrary (again, ain’t necessarily a bad thing), is that most of the movie takes place as dreams-within-dreams-within-dreams. It takes a while to get used to this, but that’s okay, because you have something like a hundred and fifty minutes to acclimatize yourself to Nolan’s rules for Dreams. I was confused the first twenty minutes, but by the forty-five minute mark I think I had it figured out.
Everyone’s perfectly cast, and the actors are all good. Liked Leo and his sidekick as well as the Asian industrialist. Plot-wise, it was clear and concise: instead of stealing info via dreams as part of corporate espionage, Leo and crew are hired to plant some info as part of corporate espionage. If I had one beef to single out, it would be the seemingly incessant submachine gunfire, car crashes, and snowmobile chases throughout the film. I don’t think I’ve ever dreamed I flipped a taxi while blasting an M-16 out my shattered windshield. (Though I have been shot a few times …)
Though mildly headache-inducing, I realize that Nolan probably had to put all the fireworks in to satisfy the suits. I’ll give this a pass, though, because the dream-time special effects are phenomenal. There’s no obvious and hokey CGI, and I really dug the Escher-quality of the Land of Nod – truly it was awe-inspiring and riveting. I read somewhere that there is over 500 special effects shots in the film, but wherever possible Nolan worked with real, live FX before resorting to computers.
Inception is one of those movies you need to watch a second time. That’s one of my first comments once the credits rolled. Since the movie was ordeal-ish for me, I won’t re-watch it again for a couple of months. But I will re-watch it. The final scene leaves itself open to interpretation – is he dreaming or not? – and I loved it. I liked the open-ended-ness of it all, like the final scene of the final episode of the Sopranos. Similarly, I have my opinion and I can convince you of it.
Ultimately, the scales tipped in favor of the movie. I give it a B +.
You have to send off the logical part of your brain with a $20 bill to see Dinner With Schmucks or something similar while you watch Inception. What I immediately noticed twenty minutes in is that all the characters helpfully exposit lots and lots of rules about the dreamworld to us in the audience. Which is okay, because that sets up the parameters of the film, and I kinda knew what to expect ninety minutes later, major twists and such. And being a huge SF fan, I recognize and appreciate that you can bend the rules all you want in the service of a good tale – as long as you explain them to the audience and stay true to them.
The confusing part, which wasn’t so much confusing as arbitrary (again, ain’t necessarily a bad thing), is that most of the movie takes place as dreams-within-dreams-within-dreams. It takes a while to get used to this, but that’s okay, because you have something like a hundred and fifty minutes to acclimatize yourself to Nolan’s rules for Dreams. I was confused the first twenty minutes, but by the forty-five minute mark I think I had it figured out.
Everyone’s perfectly cast, and the actors are all good. Liked Leo and his sidekick as well as the Asian industrialist. Plot-wise, it was clear and concise: instead of stealing info via dreams as part of corporate espionage, Leo and crew are hired to plant some info as part of corporate espionage. If I had one beef to single out, it would be the seemingly incessant submachine gunfire, car crashes, and snowmobile chases throughout the film. I don’t think I’ve ever dreamed I flipped a taxi while blasting an M-16 out my shattered windshield. (Though I have been shot a few times …)
Though mildly headache-inducing, I realize that Nolan probably had to put all the fireworks in to satisfy the suits. I’ll give this a pass, though, because the dream-time special effects are phenomenal. There’s no obvious and hokey CGI, and I really dug the Escher-quality of the Land of Nod – truly it was awe-inspiring and riveting. I read somewhere that there is over 500 special effects shots in the film, but wherever possible Nolan worked with real, live FX before resorting to computers.
Inception is one of those movies you need to watch a second time. That’s one of my first comments once the credits rolled. Since the movie was ordeal-ish for me, I won’t re-watch it again for a couple of months. But I will re-watch it. The final scene leaves itself open to interpretation – is he dreaming or not? – and I loved it. I liked the open-ended-ness of it all, like the final scene of the final episode of the Sopranos. Similarly, I have my opinion and I can convince you of it.
Ultimately, the scales tipped in favor of the movie. I give it a B +.
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