Christopher Nolan's Inception

[Whiplash]

I loved it. The writing, acting, action, and overall design of the movie were excellent. It's a bit jumbled but not impossible to follow. I definitely felt it was a combination of the heist movie with surreal reality of movies like the Matrix. However, it's not as predictable as the average heist film, and it's not as wanked and nerd chic as The Matrix was.

That's because instead of stupid nerdy fashion shit and computors and pseudo-philosophical shit that make shallow people feel 'deep', unlike the Matrix Inception instead had very nifty suits and slick haircuts and coats and ties and some kind of high-class formal fashion straight out of the 20s, as Vymp just said.

Man, Nolan has a very nice fashion sense.

That's the funny thing about certain action movies, its like yeah ... you look good in that suit, but are you comfortable, how can anyone fight in a suit? Last time I wore a suit, I had to ask, 'how the hell could anyone fight in this?' I actually find the movies that have the "heroes" running and gunning in wife beaters and gym shorts to be more believable, even though it doesn't look half as cool.

[neoolong]

I just thought of something. Who was dreaming during Ariadne's first lesson. If it was Leo's dream, why were they located in a place from her memory, he told her not to recreate from memory after he noticed where they were. If it were Ariadne's dream, why were the her projections attacking her?

It was Cobb's dream, but Ariadne created the structure of it. So when she started changing things about, the projections in Cobb's subconscious attacked her.

I think.

[Shroom Man 777]

It was Ariadne's dream, hence everything around her was manufactured by her subconscious. Cobb was inside her dream, hence it's populated by his subconscious.

[Admiral Valdemar]

He used the analogy to explain the subconscious projections as being like mental versions of lymphocytes. It seems that, regardless of who is forming he dream world as the architect, the minds of all connected are used to fill in the blanks to an extent, or populate it rather. Yusuf dreaming of a wet world thanks to his, ahem, potty accident, means the subconscious can still override their planned, voluntary designs as it does in any real dream. After all, the trick to lucid dreaming is realising you are dreaming, then being able to alter it at will, rather than just wake up. It takes some skill, though.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Also, as an aside, I hear Nolan and Pfister have refused to do anything in 3D, citing it as a gimmick. Looking at Tron Legacy, it works for nice effects driven films like that. But I can't see it ever being accepted as anything more than a cash cow by the real auteurs (what's left of them) in the industry.

[wautd]

Just seen it and I really like it. It's one of those films where I don't notice how much time has passed.

Just seen it as well it it really was amazing how quick the time seemed to go. The first half until the break literally felled like half an hour for me and my friends.

Our theatre went Aww! too at the end.

Yup, here too.

[Skylon]

Saw it on Friday. I enjoyed it, but wasn't super-blown away. I'll probably give it another watch when its released on DVD. The entire movie could have very easily been an incoherent mess, but Nolan did a very good job at avoiding that.

The one thing that throws me is Leo's totem. It appears in Dicaprio's flashbacks as being locked away in the safe of her dreams, and I think even held by her at one point (correct me if I'm wrong about the later). The dude who was the kid from Third Rock from the Sun (blanking on his name) stated the importance of the totem being familiar only to the individual. Is this:

a) Indicative of how Leo's wife kept sneaking into his dreams...his anchor to reality was one of her possessions and a constant reminder of her?

b) Symbolic that he was still stuck in the dream realm through the film?

[Gaidin]

It could be as simple as that didn't matter once she was dead. The film never went into when he started using it as his totem, but hints are dropped that it was after she died since it was in her safe in their dream.

[Admiral Valdemar]

He kept those memories of her alive in his mind as Ariadne saw, which anyone who has lost a loved one would do, especially if they could delve into their subconscious and interact with their memories as Cobb did. Cobb using the totem Mal used was should probably have been seen as a warning sign by his team, assuming they had seen him and his wife in reality before. That she crashed the party in the opening dream mission should be a pretty good indicator he wasn't over her.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Saw it yesterday.

To me it was a bit Memento v. 2.0. Nolan clearly wanted to go back to those same themes, but since Memento is already done, he had to come up with a slightly different plot for it. Unfortunately he could not come up with such an original idea (which I believe was his brother's anyways) for a second time, so he had to go for a more worn out one. This time he had a big budget to work with, which means a lot of action and stunts, but he still manages to keep it all together with the experience he has gathered from the two Batman movies. The end result is a really entertaining movie that still somehow lacks the secret ingredient to make it truly great. It's difficult to put my finger on it, and I might still change my mind after a second viewing, but for now it just isn't there.

I can point out specific flaws, like the fact than Nolan is not that great with gun action scenes, merely competent, but that is somewhat compensated by the well executed hand-to-hand action, especially the zero-g one. Unfortunately I'm not a really big fan of that anymore, because choreographed fight scenes have outlived their usefulness in my mind. Nevertheless, none of that is critical in itself. Somehow I feel that Nolan tries just a little bit too hard to get to the effortless feeling of Hitchcock style film making, he even references Hitchcock and the classic Freudian era movies like Rye pointed out, but the end result is still somewhat artificial. Just a little bit, but still.

After some more thinking I believe the reason is the somewhat complex plot. It's very difficult to make a truly great film with a complex plot. Most movies in the timeless classic category have a simple and straightforward storylines. Nolan certainly executes the plot very well, there's nothing to complain there, but its complexity does not add to the whole. Note that I'm not complaining that the plot is difficult to understand; I had no troubles understanding it.

Nevertheless, it's still probably the best movie out of major Hollywood studios this year. Which of course rarely is the best English language film, let alone the best film made in the world in any given year...

[Peptuck]

Just got back from seeing it, and I do plan to go see it again - multiple times.

Its rare for me to say this, but the movie was almost flawless[/] to me. There was nothing I disliked about the movie at all. Usually there's some nagging thing that annoys me about a movie, but Inception delivered, and did so in a way so excellent that I saw no problems whatsoever.

[LMSx]

Saw it yesterday.

To me it was a bit Memento v. 2.0. Nolan clearly wanted to go back to those same themes, but since Memento is already done, he had to come up with a slightly different plot for it. Unfortunately he could not come up with such an original idea (which I believe was his brother's anyways) for a second time, so he had to go for a more worn out one. This time he had a big budget to work with, which means a lot of action and stunts, but he still manages to keep it all together with the experience he has gathered from the two Batman movies. The end result is a really entertaining movie that still somehow lacks the secret ingredient to make it truly great. It's difficult to put my finger on it, and I might still change my mind after a second viewing, but for now it just isn't there.

This could be pre-release fluff, but I recall reading in previews and interviews that Nolan came up with the basic idea when he was 16 or so, and realized after he first got a toehold in Hollywood that he had to hold off because it was going to require an enormous budget for the full dream effects. So I think you're not totally wrong, but believe there's a stronger case that Memento and Inception both sprang from whatever existing fascinations Nolan already had, rather than "can I write Memento 2?".

Click Instant Inception for instant drama in whatever mundane little activities you do on the Internet. Judging from a YouTube survey looking for the track, I don't think this piece is actually on the soundtrack. Funny that there's a pretty clear connection between this music clip and "I'm Not A Hero"/"Aggressive Expansion" from the Dark Knight soundtrack. Hans Zimmer said in an interview that he sometimes has similar sounding music because the movie has to be released before Zimmer's fleshed out the idea musically; which is pretty clearly the case here.

[Havok]

All right. Literally just got back from this.

I think it is safe to say that this is one of the best movies I have ever seen.

The visuals were stunning. The acting was superb. The music was amazing. The pacing was outstanding. The story was complex, yet easily followable and it didn't slow down for info dumps.

What I love about the movie the most though is that Nolan and co. challenge you to go back and rethink everything you saw from the very opening scene.

There are so many possibilities to what may have happened. What was real... who was real. Was any of it real. Was it all real exactly how we saw it.

The interesting things I remember that can fuck everything up... Spoiler

-The first thing Cobb says about the totem is that it is personal and no one can touch it or it defeats the purpose, yet the first thing we see in the movie is Cobb without his totem and Saito touching and spinning it.

-We later find that it is not even Cobb's totem, and it is Mal's totem, which lends credence to the theory that it is actually all Mal's dream and Cobb isn't real because she wouldn't know what Cobb's totem was.

-Assuming none of the above is true... IIRC, the scene after Cobb goes down into the chemist's basement has him splashing water on his face and when he attempts to spin the top, it is knocked on the floor because of Saito's interruption. So there, we have him knocking over the top but not spinning it to see if he woke up from that dream, again, IIRC he never spins the top again in the movie until the last scene. And again, we have Saito interacting with the top as in the first/last scene of the movie.

-It is awfully convenient that the new Architect is better than Cobb, picked it up faster than anyone has before and does things that amaze Cobb, yet is in awe of his own skills. It seems to me that Cobb simply created her because his mind needed a conscience/guide to help him deal with Mal. Assuming it is his dream at all, and it is not Mal or the Grandfather or anyone else trying to plant and Inception in Cobb's mind.

-I like how everyone goes outside of themselves. Arthur ends up being crazy imaginative. The Chemist does excellent field work. The Forger is the ultimate action hero. The Architect/New Girl is the one that figures everything out. The Tourist, ends up doing the hardest thing, which all the experts are terrified of, without any training, escaping from Limbo with his brain intact. Of course this all lends more credence to the entire movie being a dream of someones.

-When Mal/Cobb's totem is shown spinning in the the memories/dreams/flashbacks it never waivers. It just spins. The wobble at the end is not characteristic of what we are shown throughout the movie as the characteristic of the dream top, but the real top.

Again, so much to think about. Amazing film. Can't wait to see it again.

[Marcus Aurelius]

This could be pre-release fluff, but I recall reading in previews and interviews that Nolan came up with the basic idea when he was 16 or so, and realized after he first got a toehold in Hollywood that he had to hold off because it was going to require an enormous budget for the full dream effects. So I think you're not totally wrong, but believe there's a stronger case that Memento and Inception both sprang from whatever existing fascinations Nolan already had, rather than "can I write Memento 2?".

I have no problem of it coming from the same pool of ideas as Memento, and in fact that's pretty much what I wrote. It's quite common for creative artists to come out with different versions of the same basic theme. For some it's everything they do. However, for me as a viewer it did appear a bit like an action-enhanced version of Memento. At this stage of my development as a movie nerd it is very difficult to impress me with action, since nowadays Hollywood is filled with reasonably competent action directors, and with only a relatively few exceptions, Nolan does not really separate from that mass.

So, I just hope Nolan has some other good ideas as well besides this one, which remains to be seen. If he doesn't, he will soon to be on his way of becoming the Philip K. Dick of movie directors, albeit with more commercial success. The Batman movies, while well executed and entertaining, are after all just franchise movies.

[Lagmonster]

The odd thing about the ending is that, unless I'm recalling this incorrectly, DiCaprio stopped watching the spinning totem before the movie ended. He was distracted by his children so he walked away, leaving the totem spinning. At this point, the audience is left alone to watch the totem, yet there shouldn't be a third-person, "objective" perspective in a dream. So, if the ending was a dream, who exactly was watching the totem spin? The audience? Some other agent who was attempting an inception on Cobb?

We don't really know. It could be there was a third party, which goes back to the idea that Cobb's being put at ease finally by the professor or someone else (even his wife, given it could be that Cobb constructed that whole murder suspect story himself and lived the delusion subconsciously).

The thought I have about the ending is this; it doesn't matter to him. The point of the totem was as an indicator of whether he was in reality or not - but he just walked away from it without checking. In other words, he was where he wanted to be and no longer cared whether he was dreaming or not. That's his ending - he doesn't give a shit.

[JLTucker]

Click Instant Inception for instant drama in whatever mundane little activities you do on the Internet. Judging from a YouTube survey looking for the track, I don't think this piece is actually on the soundtrack. Funny that there's a pretty clear connection between this music clip and "I'm Not A Hero"/"Aggressive Expansion" from the Dark Knight soundtrack. Hans Zimmer said in an interview that he sometimes has similar sounding music because the movie has to be released before Zimmer's fleshed out the idea musically; which is pretty clearly the case here.

It's not. It is a song called "Mind Heist" created by Zack Hemsey.

[2000AD]

Am I the only one that thought the first inception that Cobb placed was not going to be Spoiler

that his wife should wake up but that she loved him in the first place?

That would have been the ultimate (or close to) betrayal.

As for the ending:
Spoiler

I choose to believe that everything up until Cobb wakes up on the plane is real. Cobb is stuck in limbo, he misses the kicks and becuase he knows Japanese guy wont be around for his get out of jail free card he constructs a new reality for himself, one where he can see his kids and where the job was a succss so his team gets it's reward.
It's said that when you're in a dream you never quite remeber how you got to where you are, he should have gone through 3 stages of the dream yet we only see him go straight to waking up on the plane, he didn't recall how he got there, just that he was there in a nice happy ending.

EDIT: realsied first part could be a spoiler too

[Guardsman Bass]

As for the ending:
Spoiler

I choose to believe that everything up until Cobb wakes up on the plane is real. Cobb is stuck in limbo, he misses the kicks and becuase he knows Japanese guy wont be around for his get out of jail free card he constructs a new reality for himself, one where he can see his kids and where the job was a succss so his team gets it's reward.
It's said that when you're in a dream you never quite remeber how you got to where you are, he should have gone through 3 stages of the dream yet we only see him go straight to waking up on the plane, he didn't recall how he got there, just that he was there in a nice happy ending.

Spoiler

That was my initial thought as well when I walked out - that he and "Old Saito" never really woke up from limbo. The whole ending sequence after he woke up on the plane just seemed really surreal.

[Anguirus]

However, for me as a viewer it did appear a bit like an action-enhanced version of Memento.

I'm curious about this, because you haven't really articulated why. I've seen both films, and it's not obvious to me what you're getting at. They share themes of decision-making in the face of existential confusion, (and I suppose a "layered" narrative), but you are implying that it goes way beyond that.

[Marcus Aurelius]

However, for me as a viewer it did appear a bit like an action-enhanced version of Memento.

I'm curious about this, because you haven't really articulated why. I've seen both films, and it's not obvious to me what you're getting at. They share themes of decision-making in the face of existential confusion, (and I suppose a "layered" narrative), but you are implying that it goes way beyond that.

The question about the nature of reality and trustworthiness of experience is clearly very essential in both. Layered narrative is the way to examine that "existential confusion", like you appropriately put it, in both of them, but I would not consider that as important as the basics thematics. In fact, the real question is why superficial plot differences should be considered so important that they are not similar. The largest real difference I see between them are the more grandiose visuals made possible by the larger budget, which admittedly does produce a substantially and perhaps even significantly different viewing experience, depending on how much weight you put on such things. However, Nolan's visual style is still largely the same, so it's not all different in the visual side of things, either.

[Havok]

IIRC isn't Memento just a 'Who done it?'? Cleverly done of course. It doesn't remind me at all of Inception (which as has been stated, is a variation on a heist movie, cleverly done) though.

[Marcus Aurelius]

IIRC isn't Memento just a 'Who done it?'? Cleverly done of course. It doesn't remind me at all of Inception (which as has been stated, is a variation on a heist movie, cleverly done) though.

Those are both plot-related classifications and while they are certainly true, I am not very interested in them. To me and many of my equally artsy fartsy friends motion pictures are not about what actually happens, but how it happens and what kind of themes it exposes, and of course also the visual side, which can never be forgotten. I would like to reiterate that the thematic similarity between Memento and Inception is not the reason why I didn't find the latter to be a truly great movie but merely a good movie... Like I wrote, it probably has something to do with the complexity of plot, which is somewhat distracting, but I will have to reserve my final judgment to second (or perhaps even the third) viewing. Good thing for Nolan, since I will probably buy the BD.

[Admiral Valdemar]

The thought I have about the ending is this; it doesn't matter to him. The point of the totem was as an indicator of whether he was in reality or not - but he just walked away from it without checking. In other words, he was where he wanted to be and no longer cared whether he was dreaming or not. That's his ending - he doesn't give a shit.

Precisely. Although I've just come back from seeing it again now (incidentally, a second viewing is recommended, especially if, like me, you saw it first at IMAX and had to try and follow the action on a massive screen not that far from your face), and there are two instances after the opening mission where he checks his totem and both times they fall. The one time he misses it is when he doesn't spin it properly as Saito checks on him after meeting Yusuf and trying out his formulation.

Also, what's with the spoiler tags again?! If people are reading page 5 now, they already know the film ends like it does!

On the relation to Memento, I actually see a more overbearing theme relating to Nolan's works, even those he hasn't penned but merely adapted with his brother (Insomnia and The Prestige) which relates to identity and perception. Even Batman Begins and TDK have it to some extent, the "who are you?" motif and reason for being. If it wasn't for the clever way this concept plays into films like Following, Memento and Inception, they'd be otherwise just rehashes of films already made. Well done, but otherwise not all that original, much like the Avatar example I used.

Oh yeah, anyone else researching how to lucid dream at will now, or at least recall dreams properly?

[JLTucker]

Oh yeah, anyone else researching how to lucid dream at will now, or at least recall dreams properly?

I succeeded twice years ago. I no longer attempt it because I didn't like how my heart rate spiked; it scared the hell of me and caused me to awaken. For more research, check out stuff written by Stephen Laberge.

[Admiral Valdemar]

It's funny, because this idea was brought up by random with a friend, weeks before I even saw Inception and I considered it. But with my various mental mood swings lately, my sleep has been iffy to say the least, so didn't get anywhere. I am intrigued though, since I'm getting annoyed my co-worker has such awesome random dreams to tell me, even if they're batshit insane. I must eat more cheese than her...