Inception is a very powerful movie. I would like to know what people here think about it.
One thing I noticed was that the bring-back music sounded like Piaf, which was a nice touch considering that Marion Cotillard was in the movie.
Jonquil, with all due respect, you didn’t actually Review the movie. Would it be OK with you if I move this thread to Arts, Music and Entertainment, please?
Oh, I see. Oops. No, I don’t mind if you move it at all.
I thought it had some excellent ideas and high concepts - not all purloined from the Philip K Dick Locker - though Ubik was lurking there somewhere. What bugged me about it was the high octane/ thrill ride delivery vehicle - a bit too slick, too expensive, too Bourne at times!
Also in a film driven by concepts and ideas do we need a mutha m!"¬$¬ing Holly wood A-lister to play every minor part.
That said some excellent stuff - really liked the sub plot (or according to some folks the main plot/point of the entire excercise) involving the wonderful Marion Cotillard of the mesmeric big buggy eyes.
I also really really liked the idea of engineering dream architecture - could have been a bit more of that.
Decent film but possibly a wee bit over rated
kp
I haven’t read Ubik. From what I have read of Dick, however, his books can be read as dark, satirical comedies masquerading deep and wonderful thoughts, conjectures, and mystical truths. VALIS, for example, is laugh out loud funny while being dark and tragic at the same time, while there is so much to relate to and think about underneath the laughter and the deep complex sadness of the suicidal characters. Dick’s plot-making always seems to be a vehicle for something else that is of this world and yet seems not to be. With Inception, the plot is completely connected with the vehicle driving it, in that the dream world and the personal world together are manipulated for business purposes. It says something about our society and its subordination to corporate ends, which I suppose the film itself, being all Hollywoody and full of thrills and effects, could also be considered a metaphor of.
Thus, I totally agree on the over-emphasis of self-congratulatory special effects on the part of the film maker; but even so, some of those sets were amazing triumps of the imagination. I didn’t really care who played the parts, though. I thought they were all fine because the film pretty much over-shadowed good character acting… except for that of Mal, beautifully portrayed by Cotillard, who really can act.
Well noted.
Imagine that idea in the hands of a truly great film maker like Tarkovsky, Kurasawa, or Fellini. (Don’t get too depressed thinking about it, though.)
Yep.
Thank you, Jonquil.
(Thread moved to AM&E, shadow left in place)
OK I’ll stick to this version - jeeze there must be other opinions out there any theories on what the heck its about, why doesn’t the van driver end up in (limo) limbo too etc
here’s some to start us off!
cinematical.com/2010/07/19/d … lot-holes/
She’s sort of mesmeric –perfect for that type of role. I think the problem with the a-listers (most of whom were very good in their roles)is that if you watch a good few films you start to see the actors rather then the characters – I don’t see why a few newbies couldn’t have been thrown in.
Sometimes those famous egos are off putting especially in something so concept driven.
I love PKD – Ubik was specifically located in the mind of a character who is half dead (check Jacob’s ladder and aspects of inception) actually eye in the sky one of Dick’s very early ones is even more ambitious in that all the characters end up in a series of half worlds constituted by each ones mind one after another.
Actually now that I think of it that might be even better as a candidate for some of the DNA for inception.
BTW I’m carping a little here (as us old fellas are allowed!) I did enjoy the film.
Tarkovsky would have had fun with it – I’m sure Bunuel and Dali and those behind L’age d’or would have loved access to that technology.
The scene where Mr. De Caprio and (the constantly irritating – hey its just me) Ellen Page are going through and re-engineering on the fly their dream Paris is mind blowing – would have liked a bit more of that before the main “adventure”
kp
That guy is way too anal about over-analyzing the film… and wrong on so many counts. The only point he made that interested me was the one about who is the architect of that last dream. I thought it was Ariadne, great symbolic name by the way for the one responsible for getting Cobb out in one piece.
I don’t think that level 3 and Limbo are necessarily the same place in the dream. In fact, I don’t think they are at all.
My gut feeling tells me that the idea of death and going into Limbo in the dream was just a hastily contrived plot device to add suspense, and it didn’t work very well because of Nolan’s hollywoody need for a happy ending; hence the magic hat deus ex machina stuff where everyone who died or should have died comes back.
That wasn’t a problem for me. The only A-listers I recognized were Cillian Murphy and Marion Cotillard anyway, and I really like them. I wondered who was playing Peter Browning all through the film; he seemed familiar yet I just couldn’t make out who he was. Turns out he was played by Tom Berenger (from The Big Chill, another great movie!). Another great touch was Michael Caine playing Cobb’s father or father-in-law. I did keep wishing that he would have had a bigger role, though.
I love PKD too. His novels are so much more than sci-fi genre stuff; they’re more mind-bending and just fucking interesting on a very great mystical level, as well as being entertaining and amusing. I put Ubik on my Kindle and plan to read it soon. I’m about halfway through VALIS right now, truly great. Have you read that one?
Good points about the surrealists. Could you imagine a film with Tarkovsky’s great vision and skill, and all that water, combined with the art deco kind of surrealism of Bunuel. What a mind blowing tour de force that would have been.
I liked Ellen Page as Ariadne though. I thought her character was perfect. She was another one I didn’t recognize, though, as an actress. I don’t watch that many popular hollywood movies; I tend to go for the independents more, if anything.
Yea I think I’m better wired for unhappy endings but that may come from watching too many European films!
Cillian Muprhy from Cork – great in a certain type of role – I could mightily do with out even a fraction of Michael Canine but some folks like him I guess!
You know I have it and I’ve read it and I can’t remember it!
The hardest one to get out of my head is the three stigmata – a weird take on how religions achieve their power over the mind…he’s the bomb…especially when you consider he was churning them out 2-3 a year on a cocktail of god knows what varieties of uppers!
Ah its coming back to me – he has to go to a musician’s house for some reason – yea one of the good ones…there’s the aliens who “see” musically - actually there’s a set of last interviews (what if their world with PKD where he talks about it a good bit - also getting on the set of Blade Runner. Turns out he was very pleased with the rough releases of the movie he raves on and on about it. Great that he at least saw what touching fame was before he kicked his clogs!
amazon.com/World-Their-Heave … 158567009X
Whadda know one of them on line!??!
philipkdick.com/media_twilightzone.html
Oh fuck yea! Might even let Nolan in as a guest but just on the action sequences – the lads would get too fascinated with slow mo and floaty stuff!
I liked Ellen Page as Ariadne though. I thought her character was perfect. She was another one I didn’t recognize, though, as an actress. I don’t watch that many popular hollywood movies; I tend to go for the independents more, if anything.
She kid of annoys me though I’m not sure why and she was good in the role if I’m honest – I’m a film nut so I’ll go from willfully obscure to highly commercial at the drop of a hat – might need better critical judgment there!
kp
I understand. Either way – happy end or not – I dislike the contrived plot machination. It could have been threaded into both plots – dream and reality – much more subtly and interestingly.
We definitely have to agree to disagree here. I love Michael Caine and just about all his movies. I’m such a fan I’ve even seen and greatly enjoyed The Wrong Box.
VALIS is a trip of a book, very satirical and humorous, going through all the New Age stuff, along with the more traditional and mystical teachings, dealing with paranormal and supernatural experiences. Dick doesn’t even try to distinguish himself from one of Fat’s internal narrators. It’s clear that some of the things that happened to Fat happened to Dick himself, and he’s looking for answers. (This reminds me so much of me, I can’t tell you, except I’m not nearly so well read and knowledgeable of all the historical ins and outs of metaphysical philosophy, theology, sects, gospels, mysticism, science, and drugs.) What I really appreciate also is the way he looks at very ancient cultures through the works of Mircea Eliade, including the dreamtime; and the way he delves into mind-bending notions about reincarnation going both ways in time, where “God” might become Fat’s own self visiting him from the future. Of course, he’s always saying how crazy Fat is; but clearly there is a very strong, paradoxical look at insanity from a very original angle. I love this book.
I have a copy of The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch but haven’t read it yet. I’m glad that Dick liked Blade Runner, but it isn’t exactly faithful to the book (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?). I loved the movie and the book both, though; just as I loved Tarkovsky’s film Solaris and Lem’s book as well.
Look, everyone has their own tastes. Life would be pretty boring if we agreed on everything. Chacun à son goût.
Good point!
We will have to disagree indeed - he wasn’t too bad in Children of Men mind you!
I think his books were the opposite of therapy for him – they seemed to make him physically and mentally ill plus he was utterly taken with religion and mystical experience – seemingly any religion and all mystical experience!
He also was vastly read in religious stuff and best friend with Bishop Pike who timothy archer is based on.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Pike
Plus he’s usually in his own books in many forms and more than one character!
There’s a great recent book by a French fella which actually tries to get into the mind of PKD – it’s disturbing!
(can’t remember the name – hang on….)
Ah thanks interweb
amazon.com/Am-Alive-You-Are- … 0805054642
Utterly brilliant and terrifying book.
I must get back and read more of him.
According to the interviews he was very ambiguous about the film – I don’t know if he would have been mad on the final version – as pointed out by the interviewer both the tacked on happy ending (less so in the directors cut) and the first person narrative would have bugged him.
But he was delighted with some aspects of what he saw especially the sets and the general feel of it…
He strongly resisted writing a “novelisation” of the film and kept going on the “transformation of timothy Archer”
I think site is going off line soon – but maybe this thread needs to be inception with plot spoilers and the life and times of Philip K Dick!!
Bien sur!
kp
Oddly enough, that’s one I haven’t seen. I think the latest Caine movies I’ve seen were Quills and The Quiet American. TQA is so great, a real eye opener both for the time it portrays and as a way of looking at the CIA and Black ops in our own time.
Dick always admitted that drugs really fucked him up, but from my take based on the books I’ve read, he wasn’t fucked up at all. There is always a very clear, knowledgeable, and brilliant mind at work; and he writes satirically. So it’s not always good to take him too seriously or literally on the plot and character level, but to try to see what underlies it all… and that is the great mind of a mystical traveller and visionary.
I wouldn’t trust anyone who thinks they can get into the mind of PKD, not past my nose. Dick was a one-of.
I don’t care where a thread goes as long as it’s interesting, and this most definitely is!
A bientot!
j
I’m not sure - he really did believe that he was being guided by voices and lots and lots of other strange stuff and he ingested a lot of meds (mostly prescription ones mind you) - mind you none of that would necessarily mediate against having a brilliant mind - maybe its even necessary to it!!!
here here!
Well its more a sort of attempt to do a bit of impressionist literary psychology - I really enjoyed it - but a bit depressing at times…
I actually did like the quite American actually maybe I’m being a bit hard on Mr. Caine
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiWB6XP228Y [/youtube]
kp
Dick (and all his hilarious alter-egos he creates in his books, just gotta love Horselover Fat) was totally mind-fucked and paranoid sometimes; he admits it, he did some really bizarre stuff (like writing the FBI about another sci-fi writer because he thought the writer used code-language in a book), and he was also under-appreciated for his writing during his life, which can’t have been easy – since it’s clearly obvious that he was not a pulp sci fi writer. His books sort of defy genre categorizing; they are just brilliant in their own right and very entertaining.
Anyway, I’m almost finished with VALIS – the most entertaining and interesting of the three others I’ve read so far, and they were all great – and I have determined that Dick was a type five on the Enneagram, the embodiment of Wisdom and omniscience. By the end of the book, he practically apotheoses wisdom, and his grasp and breadth of knowledge is phenomenal, which is typical of type fives.
Dick just knows so much and is able to put together the most amazing conjunctions of mystical knowledge I’ve ever seen in one place. He also embeds it in the most hilarious ways, and you can see how he was grappling with paranormal and supernatural experiences and trying to get a handle on them through study and knowledge (wisdom). It was a magnificent effort, even if he descended into some dark and paranoid places while searching. The thing is that I’m not sure that the realm of the mystical and what’s behind the physical world can be accessed and understood solely through knowledge and language.
As I said, chacun a son gout. I love Caine’s movies, practically all of them. He’s a kind of cultural icon and was very popular for a long time.
That youtube is really trippy.
I should say a little more about Inception and dreams now. I’ve been thinking about dream levels. I’ve never had more than two levels, meaning a dream within a dream, and even then not that often. My dreams are pretty tame, really, though I can find certain repeating scenarios like house dreams or bizarre elevator dreams and so on. I’ve never had a dream that went to that third level of all-encompassing oceanic consciousness. Is that something that really happens with dreams? What do you think?
Actually I don’t think that the “real world” we live can be fully accessed through knowledge and language!
Same here I don’t think I’ve ever gone further than one level.
What does tend to happen tho’ is that my work place, college, primary school and house may all get entangled and similarly for folks living (or gone) that inhabit(ed) them.
I think the tangling is between different levels of significance that your mind assigns to things and it tends to be outside of time or certainly of just the here and now.
I think the scenarios in Inception are actually a little too neat in many ways
(plus each new “rule” must be explained by De Caprio or some other in a sort of FAQ for the back seats)
Real dreams are messier.
(but, of course, as the dream landscapes are being mostly set up in the film that makes complete sense)
Personally I’ve never had the dream within a dream - nearest thing is waking thinking about a dream and falling back into it or a modified version when nearly awake!
Any one else?
kp
Lol. Touche. Very good point.
I didn’t think the dreams in Inception were all that neat. I just thought that one contrived plot device with its deus ex machina ending was a bit too facile.
Yeah, I’d like to hear from others about their dreams also.
It leaves an obvious but interesting question: Is it better to live a deception?
Cillian Murphy’s character ends the film believing his relationship with his father was better than it actually was, and the end of the film is left with the totem provocatively spinning, suggesting that de Caprio’s happy-ever-after finale might too be a deceit.
I’m also somewhat irritated by what I felt I saw as a justification for de Caprio’s and Watanabe’s selfish pursuits. I mean, could they have writ the same film without de Caprio trying to get back to his children? Considering he basically brainwashed Cillian Murpy’s character; does the family story serve as a counter-weight to this…immorality? And what about Watanabe, towards the end of the film he becomes one of the most heroic of the characters, yet he no doubt is representing some mega-energy-corp in competition with Postlethwaite’s empire considering it’s his idea to plant the inception and to split up his mega-corp empire. Watanabe should have been a much shadier character, just as Postlethwaite and Berenger were portrayed.
Besides that, how was it that when de Caprio and Page entered into Murphy’s mind when he died they ended up in de Caprio’s dream-world? 
Hi Bluff - very good questions there - I wish I had some answers - a film that can raise those sort of issues can’t be all bad. I’m more and more inclined to the analysis that the entire exercise with doing the inception, Cillian Murphy his da etc etc was a side bar and that, in fact, the crucial thing was to sort out De Caprio’s Character’s guilt.
kp
You’re probably right. The question then is: Does de Caprio’s ‘redemption’ justify his actions?
We would all say that his trade is certainly unethical, maybe even immoral but the story of his own redemption, and the compassion that it evokes trumps the immorality - he is a good guy. Family propaganda. The stray father returns home.
A bit like Odysseus’s return to Penelope after he and his boys have fucked up half the ancient world!
De Caprio and his crew as Odysseus and co on the ship…
entering into a mythical world to destroy it and grow another…
The inception of Capitalism
jaysus I’m wild today!
(the Adorno remix of his travels anyway)
Actually their sojourn in limbo
-
hmmmmmm
-
check this analysis of Adorno and Horkheimer’s take on the Odysses myth
…my emphasis
Odysseus is shipwrecked on the island of the goddess Calypso, who keeps him as her lover for eight years. All the while his wife Penelope, who is under intense romantic siege from the suitors who have taken over her home, faithfully waits for Odysseus to return. Eventually, Calypso releases Odysseus, who sets sail for Ithaca. Six weeks later he returns in disguise, reunites with his son Telemachus, and the two of them slaughter the suitors. So, after going off to war twenty years earlier, Odysseus has finally returned home to resume his rightful role as king of Ithaca…What unites the two is Odysseus’s cunning, his most famous trait. Like the bourgeoisie of the capitalist world, Odysseus employs instrumental reason to advance his self-interest. This enables him to survive the mythological terrors of the ancient world. He sacrifices all else that he might desire and value, even his crew, all of whom die on the way back to Ithaca. And so he escapes the mythological world of his voyage. Yet what does he return to? An enlightened world of freedom and autonomy? No, he returns to his kingdom, resuming his place as ruler of his people. His odyssey is thus a voyage in which — to express a complicated matter in a simple formula — Odysseus oppressed resumes his place as Odysseus the oppressor. So instrumental reason can successfully combat myth, but only at the cost of re-establishing a new myth. One form of alienation is exchanged for another. This is the dialectic of enlightenment
(othervoices.org/cubowman/siren.html
- via a guy called Curtis Bowman)
Hmmm an Adorno/Odysseus analysis of Inception - gurn!
Again I dunno - this domestic bliss
- street devil home angel…
kp