The other day, Lily wrote about how she “found Inception potentially very interesting but in the end quite disappointing.” I didn’t get a chance to see it until yesterday, but I had a different reaction: I found it uber freaking fascinating.
My thoughts after the jump…with Spoilers Aplenty, so beware if you haven’t seen it yet!
Layers. Russian Boxes. Cubes. Stories within stories. Narratives wrapped in narrative. Like the indicator test explained in the film which signals someone is in a dream: not remembering how one gets to where they are: no memory of a starting point: no memory of the preceding: “we never remember the beginning of a dream” – this film has no beginning, it just begins – if we assume the beginning is the ending, that is: Cobb washes up on the shore of his memory/dream which is actually limbo, the fourth layer (fifth layer?), the limbo Saito has been trapped in for a lifetime after being shot in a later dreamstate that actually, again assuming we begin at the end, has not yet happened. That means, there is no entry for the film. The film can only be the dream, pure. Pure dream. Have we seen a film before that is pure dream? One in which the dreamer does not wake? I’m not sure I can think of one –aside from Kurosawa’s Dreams, which is different for many reasons not least of which being that it’s a serial, composed of various unrelated tales, unlike Inception which is one extended tale.
This is not a film where at the end the person wakes up and goes, “oh it was all a dream.” This is a film where, I’m presuming, no one wakes up.
The question of the dreamer. Who is the dreamer? Who is participating and who is controlling? Is it shared or is it singular? Is each character a manifestation of some aspect of the dreamer’s psyche, subconscious, and if so how can we know?
The ultimate epistemological question, coupled with the ultimate ontological question: not just how do we know, but what is this world, what is “true” being vs. “false” being? Seems to imply something beyond Modernism and Postmodernism, or else a conflation of the two dominate characteristics of them (See: Brian McHale essay “Change of Dominant from Modernist to Postmodernist Fiction”)
We are told that one person dreams and another builds the architecture. The subject produces the content. But who is manipulating who? Who is producing the content in Inception?
Cobb is centered in the film, is a particular intensity, but we are privy to scenes without him. Yusef is the central character in the first level of the dream. Arthur is the central character in the second level of the dream. And the third level of the dream, I’m not sure…Eames is the one responsible for providing the kick, so perhaps he is technically the central character, given that the person responsible for the kick in the other two levels take on the role of the central character. But, it raises the question: must there be a master dreamer dreaming? Can we deduce who that master dreamer is – or is that master dreamer absent from the dream?
Would be interesting to consider the significance of the fact that Cobb’s first kick involves him falling into a bathtub full of water, in slow motion, same as the kick out of the first level of the job: the van falling into the water. Parallel actions = narrative clue?
Here is one attempt at unpacking the levels of Inception, which I found here:
While interesting/helpful, I think I disagree with the notion of their being a level of reality. Will have to see the film again to be sure, but my recollection is that all was dream — or, if nothing else, the possibility that all is dream weighs heavier than the possibility that a portion happened in “reality.”
Remember when Cobb visits his father in Paris and his father says “Come back to reality.”
Cobb has father issues. Cobb also has fathering issues.
Connection between Inception and Homer’s Odyssey. Cobb is “just trying to get back home.”
Further mythological connection: Cobb’s father introduces him to Ariadne. Ariadne was the name of a Greek goddess. Ariadne was Minos’s daughter. She helped Theseus escape the maze at Crete where the Minotaur was trapped, by giving Theseus a ball of string, which he tied at the entrance and carried with him as he made his way through the maze. Once he defeated the Minotaur, Theseus followed the thread back to the entrance of the maze to safety.
Eames was the counterfeiter. He could somehow take on the likeness of another person and trick another dreamer into believing that they were corresponding with someone else. This introduced the idea that people need not be who they seemed to be: if Eames could take on the likeness of someone else, why assume other characters aren’t doing the same thing?
Also, what genres are we talking about, when we’re talking about Inception?
Ron Silliman brought up an interesting idea, which I had not thought of: “I’m sure some ambitious critic is going to come along & make the claim that Christopher Nolan is making a film about films – that this rather obvious analogy is what all the dream-within-a-dream stuff is about – and that Nolan is showing how these summer thriller features are themselves compilations of genre-defined devices from earlier films (down close to the smallest detail, say the way the children won’t turn around & look at us echoes Nicholas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now, which was released when Nolan was just three years old, or that Cobb is a name Nolan himself has used before, in his first feature, The Following).”
Other critics have said:
OR:
Yes. Inception brought to mind Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine. It also brought to mind other simulated reality films like Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York, Cronenberg’s eXistenZ, Verhoeven’s Total Recall, and Proyas’s Dark City. All films I love.
Note to self: design undergraduate course around this idea of simulated reality.
Roger Ebert says:
“Here is a movie immune to spoilers: If you knew how it ended, that would tell you nothing unless you knew how it got there. And telling you how it got there would produce bafflement.”
& then:
“The movies often seem to come from the recycling bin these days: Sequels, remakes, franchises. “Inception” does a difficult thing. It is wholly original, cut from new cloth, and yet structured with action movie basics so it feels like it makes more sense than (quite possibly) it does.”
[his full review here]
Ebert’s last sentence there reminds me of what AD Jameson has discussed re: the tension between convention and innovation: the way a work needs to be legible lest (in Frank Kermode’s words) it become noise.
Inception is digestible. I would wager that one is not baffled in the same way one might be upon leaving the theater after seeing something like Inland Empire, for example, yet Inception remains in the same sphere of films in my estimation. Is that true? Inception is not a blistering mindfuck like Inland Empire, to be certain. It is a puzzler, though. And like Inland Empire, it is what Barthes would call a “writerly text.” What that means is that it requires the viewer’s active participation…it is not a movie to be consumed as much as it is a film to be created through the interplay of artist and audience.
Some critics don’t care for the cerebral quality. The New York Times says:
&
New York Magazine says: “Nolan is too literal-minded, too caught up in ticktock logistics, to make a great, untethered dream movie.”
I disagree. Nolan couldn’t have achieved the level of ontological uncertainty that I believe he does achieve if he would’ve gone “untethered” or allowed the “full measure of madness” those critics suggest. To do those things would firmly establish the certainty of the dreamworld, would destroy any ambiguity, and would get you Inland Empire — again, a brilliant film that similarly deals in the realm of dreams, but the important distinction between Inland Empire and Inception is that Inland Empire is not concerned with ontological uncertainty: what is “real” and “unreal” is more or less irrelevant in Inland Empire. Instead, Inland Empire is primarily concerned with an exploration of psychological landscapes: fears, hopes, aspirations, anxieties, frustrations, etc.
Some critics have also voiced a distaste for the seeming one dimensionality of the characters. My response to that criticism would be: of course the characters are all one dimensional: they are dream figures. The whole notion of “multi-dimensional” characters is predicated on the mimetic function: mimicking “real” people, not dream figures. Remember towards the end of the film when Cobb is holding Mal and he is telling her how one dimensional she is, how she is so unlike his “real” wife because his “real” wife was so complex. That’s it. What we are seeing in this film is what Cobb is describing: all are necessarily simple, not complex, projections.
Some critics got caught up in the spectacle and couldn’t see the philosophical running along beside it. I think that response is a shame. Inception certainly has the blow-up action sequences and the crazy special effects that audiences love in their summer movies, but unlike the majority of blow-up action sequence crazy special effects movies, which tend to reinforce preexisting assumptions and habits, Inception challenges reception expectations and forces intellectual engagement.
Finally, the love story aspect. Inception is, alongside all these other things, a romance. It is about love and guilt and betrayal. I thought the section where Ariadne shows up in Cobb’s private dreamspace — where he takes her in the elevator from memory to memory — was one of the most heartbreaking scenes in the film. One’s desire to lock away memories, hold them captive. One’s desire to not let go.
If you want more, Jezebel has a pretty good roundup of reviews.
And this fan site is a pretty good hub.
Tags: Brian McHale, Inception, Kurosawa's Dreams
Awesome, Christopher. I tentatively agree with your central arguments about what’s real and what’s not, although I’m waiting until I see it a second time to write anything substantive about it. But the more I think about it, the more I admire it.
Like this a lot. What I took away from Inception is that it’s a series of films about actions films, which at its center contains a love story that is only ever absent.
“but unlike the majority of blow-up action sequence crazy special effects movies, which tend to reinforce preexisting assumptions and habits, Inception challenges reception expectations and forces intellectual engagement.”
Oh come on. . . I mean it’s a really fun flick, but this is over-the-top. Ultimately it’s just another Nolan flick, not that different from what he was up to in TDK. To put it in the same sphere as Inland Empire is misguided, I think, though that’s not a bad thing. Nolan is maybe the best at doing what he does. . .
IMO Shutter Island was a better movie, to mention another DiCaprio/unreality film.
Also, the snow environment was lame. After two awesome levels (city and hotel), we get a snow fortress that looks like it came straight out of a James Bond videogame? Complete let-down. Actually doing a hospital—an urban hospital, not whatever the fortress was—would have been thrilling. Instead we got armed goons on skis!!
i actually loved inception, though i found the ending a little un satisfying, not because you don’t know what happens, but because the last shot felt like a copout.
anyway, going to see again this afternoon.
Ok, I liked Inception. I enjoyed watching it. We hid beers and snacks in our backpacks and had a nice afternoon in the (thank god) air-conditioned movie theater. And it’s fast paced, and a good mindfuck and all but…
But:
Why is nobody talking about gender/sex? Inception’s lines of desire flow along two pretty terrible tracks:
1) The male fantasy that you can both grow old with your wife and remain young and single, flirt with Ellen Page
2) The rape fantasy of entering a person’s innermost-self, going deeper and deeper, and then, without the other’s knowledge or consent, implanting (inseminating, making germinate) an idea that will (from this moment of (in/con)ception) grow to become a full-fledged thought – that is to say paternity with fatherhood.
And what’s the horror of the movie? That Cobb can’t enter anybody new without imagining his old lover.
Michael Caine is Cobb’s Father-in-law
Cool piece though.
Thanks, Nick! A second viewing will be key. In particular, there are certain things about the opening I’ve forgotten — like the transition from the limbo layer to the first meeting with Saito & then how those layers play out…also I think I’m gonna pay closer attention to the music, how it works, when it works, etc.
I like your thoughts on the film, and you’ve definitely gotten me to think a little bit more about my opinions, but I don’t think Inception is a very good movie. It’s certainly not a complete shitstorm, but I think the film could have been much better, and much more interesting. It’s a film that succeeds in convincing people that it’s a smart film. That’s not to detract from your thoughts, I just don’t think the film does anything that’s terribly innovative or, ultimately, that interesting, even though while viewing it the film manages to convince viewers that something complex is going on. I have thought a lot about Inception though, so it succeeds at that, for sure. I felt the same way about Shutter Island – an ultimately bad film, but a bad film that’s interesting to talk about (in terms of how much better it could have been, although with Shutter Island, I had a lot of trouble repositioning my eyes on the screen after they rolled back into my head while listening to DiCaprio’s awful Boston tough-guy accent. I mean, how interesting was it, after you realized what the film was really going to do, to keeping asking yourself: okay, when are we going to find out that DiCaprio’s the crazy one all along?)
A couple of specific problems I had with Inception – it’s basically a ‘caper’ film, which is fine, but that’s it – because the film is mediated through a bunch of ‘dream worlds’ just doesn’t ultimately make the film any more interesting than any other film where some dudes need to go steal something. To me, the logistics of how the characters do what they do wasn’t enough to hold up the film – the complexity of much of the plot lies in the layers of dreaming and how the characters navigate and control them, which (to me) at least, added up to learning how the car works instead of just riding in the car. Maybe part of the point of the film, but it didn’t do much for me to complicate the notion of riding in a car by troubling me with the mechanics of a car. The film would have been MUCH better if they had just done what they did without coming up with a bunch of half-baked exposition for how it all worked.
I think most viewers could see the end coming as soon as they understood that the film was going to take place in ‘dreamland’. It’s further beat into us by the what-felt-like-an-hour (maybe it was an hour?) of exposition foisted on Ellen Page’s character to explain the mechanics of the dream worlds. Yes, at the end of this film, we’re going to wonder – is he still in the dream? What’s real?? Oh, god, is anything real?!
The team assembling. We’re going to need an architect, and a chemist, and let’s see, a face man, and a wise-cracking weapons expert, and a wise British guy…
Could the dreams have been any less dream-like? Could there have been any less sexual tension? In DiCaprio’s character’s subconscious, he keeps his dead wife in the basement? How many people dream sets for action movies? If you’re going to make the argument that this a film about filmmaking, which is an obvious place to go, you could argue that the dreams are meant to evoke different action film tropes, and I’m not going to argue that that doesn’t make sense, but could the dreams have been any less imaginative? Could they have actually played with genre rather than aping them? There was nothing ‘dreamy’ about them. And not that dreams must be infused with sex, but there was ZERO in this film. Some harmless flirting with Ellen Page, but nothing that even came close to sexual tension, which seems a) a part of many dreams and b) a part of many action films. And the subconscious attacking the interlopers couldn’t have been manifested in anything more creative than gunfights and car chases? Oh wait, now they’re on skis! Again, if they’re playing with the action film genre, they could have actually played with it. Instead, we learn that action films are made by a bunch of dudes.
And the caper itself – they have to convince a dude to break up his father’s energy company (but why? to save the world from an energy monopoly? to help the other dude’s energy company? OK, but, really? That’s the best they could come up with? The point here is that didn’t matter at all to the film. They could have been in there trying to convince the dude that he really needed to freshen up his wardrobe – it was clearly an afterthought, so it felt like an afterthought) and if DiCaprio does this, his murder charge is going to be magically erased? This is stuff is so ridiculous… wait, OH, we’re in a dream! Bad writing is okay if you’re dreaming!
Was DiCaprio’s character’s name really ‘Mal’?
Also, the ethics of entering peoples minds against their wishes? Not that that can’t be in the movie, just what of it?
Anyway, I hope I’m not being too snarky. I like what you’re saying about the film, like I said, but this film was a big letdown. I was really excited to see it, with all is Baudrillardian promise, and was really disappointed. I think my biggest problem, really, is that what could have been a very good film was mauled by bad writing.
Thanks, Alec! Yeah, I like your idea about it being a series of films about action films with absent love at the heart of them all.
Hi Ryan,
Unfortunately I have seen neither The Dark Knight nor Shutter Island, so I can’t respond to those comparisons. Would be curious to understand your definition of “a better movie” — I mean, on what grounds, in what ways, how? Also can’t figure out why exactly you find my assertion that Inception & Inland Empire exist within the same categorical sphere to be “misguided” — are you objecting to my interpretation or usage of Barthes’s concept? Would you not agree that Inception is a film that requires the active participation of the audience, as opposed to, say, Transformers? Not sure how making such a claim could be misconstrued as being “over the top.” That comparison (i.e. Inception v. Transformers) seems fairly distinct and obvious. No?
Matt, I entirely agree with you, except that I probably liked the film even less. (Not to detract from anyone who did enjoy it, but I thought there was very little worth seeing.)
Incidentally, my haphazard reading of the ending is that they all did get out of the dream worlds, and then Saito put Leo back to sleep, so he could dream that he was with his children. That was what Saito was offering him, not true political amnesty. Note how cagey he was when Leo asked him how he could get him through customs. (He says something like, “I can do it, there is a way.”) The question then becomes as to whether Leo will accept this dream, or find a way out. The fact that he walks off and ignores his little top suggests the former.
Not that I think Nolan really knows what he was going, mind you. I think he just felt like he had to put that kind of ending on it, because the “mindfuck” genre calls for such an ending. Overall, I thought the whole movie pretty lazy (half generic gun battle scenes, half expository dialogue that never really mattered; atrocious writing and editing throughout)—and this after 40–50 years of precedents.
Off to reread The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch…
Awesome, Christopher. I tentatively agree with your central arguments about what’s real and what’s not, although I’m waiting until I see it a second time to write anything substantive about it. But the more I think about it, the more I admire it.
I agree that the last shot felt kind of like a cop-out, but then again I’m not sure how I would’ve ended it either. Admittedly, I’m a Nolan fanboy, so I loved the shit out of Inception, but I think what I loved most was not that I wanted to go home and write after I left the theatre, but that it inspired me to write something BETTER (if that makes any haphazard sense.) Any film/book/song/fragment of art that does that, I’ll love the shit outta that, too.
Hey Matt,
Thanks for this insightful response. In many ways, yours is the best negative argument I’ve read — and I have read a grip of reviews, many of which were negative.
Your point about the film succeeding in making audiences believe it is smart is interesting. I wonder where the line is between actually being a smart movie and being a movie that convinces audiences its smart? Obviously, this is a debatable line anyway.
But no question, I can’t help but agree with you when you say: “The film would have been MUCH better if they had just done what they did without coming up with a bunch of half-baked exposition for how it all worked.” That was indeed one of the things that I found irksome…using Ariadne’s character as the way to introduce exposition.
I like your question: “Could the dreams have been any less dream-like?” and I like your point about the strange absence of sexual tension. But maybe I’m just in a really generous mood or something because I want to spin those as benefits rather than a deficits. Sure, it could have been messier, more lusty, more of what we might expect dreams to be like, but the fact that it wasn’t is part of what I find interesting. I can see the perspective that it’s a failure on Nolan’s part to have omitted those obvious aspects, but I can also see it as a sign that, on the contrary, he knew very well what we all know: that dreams are lusty and dreams are messy, but wanted to purposefully approach the film counter-intuitively.
I also think you’re right in your reading of the caper: “The point here is that didn’t matter at all to the film. They could have been in there trying to convince the dude that he really needed to freshen up his wardrobe” — (that last bit made me laugh). But, again, I’m reading that as a purposeful move rather than a mistake. I mean, he went so far out of his way to explain other aspects of the film, I imagine he could’ve easily concocted a more reasonable caper — so the fact that it doesn’t really make sense seems very much planned, not an afterthought.
DiCaprio’s character’s name was Cobb, his wife’s name was Mal — which I thought was Moll the whole time I was watching it, until I came home and googled it. Mal is an awful name, for sure.
Your point about the ethics of invading someone’s mind is something that, I must admit, did not even dawn on me. Now that you say it, and Ben said it above, it seems so obvious, but for some reason I was on about other stuff. It’s definitely worth talking about, though.
Ultimately, I think I come down in favor of Inception because it gets me thinking (as you mention at the beginning of your comment) — which to me signals a success, whether it actually is a success or has tricked me into believing it is :)
Like this a lot. What I took away from Inception is that it’s a series of films about actions films, which at its center contains a love story that is only ever absent.
Thanks, Hillis.
But re: Michael Caine’s character…did you get this info from the film or from Wikipedia — a site which tends frequently to lack credibility? I can’t remember where in the film it was revealed that he was Cobb’s father-in-law, and it seems to me that if he was in fact the father-in-law (i.e. Mal’s father) he would have hated Cobb rather than helped him — right?
“but unlike the majority of blow-up action sequence crazy special effects movies, which tend to reinforce preexisting assumptions and habits, Inception challenges reception expectations and forces intellectual engagement.”
Oh come on. . . I mean it’s a really fun flick, but this is over-the-top. Ultimately it’s just another Nolan flick, not that different from what he was up to in TDK. To put it in the same sphere as Inland Empire is misguided, I think, though that’s not a bad thing. Nolan is maybe the best at doing what he does. . .
IMO Shutter Island was a better movie, to mention another DiCaprio/unreality film.
Also, the snow environment was lame. After two awesome levels (city and hotel), we get a snow fortress that looks like it came straight out of a James Bond videogame? Complete let-down. Actually doing a hospital—an urban hospital, not whatever the fortress was—would have been thrilling. Instead we got armed goons on skis!!
Hey Ben,
Wow, yes! Very interesting reading of the film. None of those issues were on my radar, but now that you’ve raised them I have to go back and reconsider. Many thanks.
It’s unclear from “the actual text” whether he’s his father or father in law, I think.
Hey Adam,
Sorry to hear you disliked Inception so much.
I appreciate your reading of the ending, but don’t see how Saito could’ve put Cobb to sleep — for one thing, he would’ve needed one of those Inception machines, wouldn’t he? And I wonder what indicated to you that the others awoke? The last we saw of them sans Cobb was in the van, right? They were all still asleep.
I could be wrong on any/all of these points. As the time between now and when I saw it grows longer, my lack of short term memory hampers my ability to remember correctly.
On a side note, have you read Dick’s Time Out of Joint? I liked it better than Three Stigmata.
I really don’t think it requires anymore active participation from the viewer than something like Transformers.
Caleb Crain has an interesting post on the Paris Review blog about Inception: http://blog.theparisreview.org/2010/07/21/down-the-rabbit-hole/
The key scene in the movie, for me, was when Cobb is in the bathroom throwing water on his face and tries to spin the top. The top falls on the ground and Saito walks in before Cobb can see whether he is dreaming or not. He does not spin the top again until the final scene in the movie.
i actually loved inception, though i found the ending a little un satisfying, not because you don’t know what happens, but because the last shot felt like a copout.
anyway, going to see again this afternoon.
Ok, I liked Inception. I enjoyed watching it. We hid beers and snacks in our backpacks and had a nice afternoon in the (thank god) air-conditioned movie theater. And it’s fast paced, and a good mindfuck and all but…
But:
Why is nobody talking about gender/sex? Inception’s lines of desire flow along two pretty terrible tracks:
1) The male fantasy that you can both grow old with your wife and remain young and single, flirt with Ellen Page
2) The rape fantasy of entering a person’s innermost-self, going deeper and deeper, and then, without the other’s knowledge or consent, implanting (inseminating, making germinate) an idea that will (from this moment of (in/con)ception) grow to become a full-fledged thought – that is to say paternity with fatherhood.
And what’s the horror of the movie? That Cobb can’t enter anybody new without imagining his old lover.
Guys, it’s okay to like an action movie.
Great post, Christopher. One thing I thought when I read your sentence “…compilations of genre-defined devices from earlier films…” is that Danielewski’s ‘House of Leaves’ is may be closer ballparkwise to Inception than any other film.
It is also okay not to like an action movie.
Michael Caine is Cobb’s Father-in-law
Cool piece though.
Thanks, Nick! A second viewing will be key. In particular, there are certain things about the opening I’ve forgotten — like the transition from the limbo layer to the first meeting with Saito & then how those layers play out…also I think I’m gonna pay closer attention to the music, how it works, when it works, etc.
I like your thoughts on the film, and you’ve definitely gotten me to think a little bit more about my opinions, but I don’t think Inception is a very good movie. It’s certainly not a complete shitstorm, but I think the film could have been much better, and much more interesting. It’s a film that succeeds in convincing people that it’s a smart film. That’s not to detract from your thoughts, I just don’t think the film does anything that’s terribly innovative or, ultimately, that interesting, even though while viewing it the film manages to convince viewers that something complex is going on. I have thought a lot about Inception though, so it succeeds at that, for sure. I felt the same way about Shutter Island – an ultimately bad film, but a bad film that’s interesting to talk about (in terms of how much better it could have been, although with Shutter Island, I had a lot of trouble repositioning my eyes on the screen after they rolled back into my head while listening to DiCaprio’s awful Boston tough-guy accent. I mean, how interesting was it, after you realized what the film was really going to do, to keeping asking yourself: okay, when are we going to find out that DiCaprio’s the crazy one all along?)
A couple of specific problems I had with Inception – it’s basically a ‘caper’ film, which is fine, but that’s it – because the film is mediated through a bunch of ‘dream worlds’ just doesn’t ultimately make the film any more interesting than any other film where some dudes need to go steal something. To me, the logistics of how the characters do what they do wasn’t enough to hold up the film – the complexity of much of the plot lies in the layers of dreaming and how the characters navigate and control them, which (to me) at least, added up to learning how the car works instead of just riding in the car. Maybe part of the point of the film, but it didn’t do much for me to complicate the notion of riding in a car by troubling me with the mechanics of a car. The film would have been MUCH better if they had just done what they did without coming up with a bunch of half-baked exposition for how it all worked.
I think most viewers could see the end coming as soon as they understood that the film was going to take place in ‘dreamland’. It’s further beat into us by the what-felt-like-an-hour (maybe it was an hour?) of exposition foisted on Ellen Page’s character to explain the mechanics of the dream worlds. Yes, at the end of this film, we’re going to wonder – is he still in the dream? What’s real?? Oh, god, is anything real?!
The team assembling. We’re going to need an architect, and a chemist, and let’s see, a face man, and a wise-cracking weapons expert, and a wise British guy…
Could the dreams have been any less dream-like? Could there have been any less sexual tension? In DiCaprio’s character’s subconscious, he keeps his dead wife in the basement? How many people dream sets for action movies? If you’re going to make the argument that this a film about filmmaking, which is an obvious place to go, you could argue that the dreams are meant to evoke different action film tropes, and I’m not going to argue that that doesn’t make sense, but could the dreams have been any less imaginative? Could they have actually played with genre rather than aping them? There was nothing ‘dreamy’ about them. And not that dreams must be infused with sex, but there was ZERO in this film. Some harmless flirting with Ellen Page, but nothing that even came close to sexual tension, which seems a) a part of many dreams and b) a part of many action films. And the subconscious attacking the interlopers couldn’t have been manifested in anything more creative than gunfights and car chases? Oh wait, now they’re on skis! Again, if they’re playing with the action film genre, they could have actually played with it. Instead, we learn that action films are made by a bunch of dudes.
And the caper itself – they have to convince a dude to break up his father’s energy company (but why? to save the world from an energy monopoly? to help the other dude’s energy company? OK, but, really? That’s the best they could come up with? The point here is that didn’t matter at all to the film. They could have been in there trying to convince the dude that he really needed to freshen up his wardrobe – it was clearly an afterthought, so it felt like an afterthought) and if DiCaprio does this, his murder charge is going to be magically erased? This is stuff is so ridiculous… wait, OH, we’re in a dream! Bad writing is okay if you’re dreaming!
Was DiCaprio’s character’s name really ‘Mal’?
Also, the ethics of entering peoples minds against their wishes? Not that that can’t be in the movie, just what of it?
Anyway, I hope I’m not being too snarky. I like what you’re saying about the film, like I said, but this film was a big letdown. I was really excited to see it, with all is Baudrillardian promise, and was really disappointed. I think my biggest problem, really, is that what could have been a very good film was mauled by bad writing.
Thanks, Alec! Yeah, I like your idea about it being a series of films about action films with absent love at the heart of them all.
this summer at the university of utah there was an undergraduate literature glass about virtual reality/simulated reality. i wasn’t able to take it, but i signed up for it before i realized my schedule wouldn’t allow it. the syllabus consisted of nueromancer, borges, grizzly man, the matrix, avatar, Slavoj Žižekand’s pervert’s cinema or whatever its called, and others i can’t remember. i loved how inception felt ‘unsolved’ with the ending we were given. it wasn’t the best movie ever made, but it is a quality, worthwhile experience just the same.
Hi Ryan,
Unfortunately I have seen neither The Dark Knight nor Shutter Island, so I can’t respond to those comparisons. Would be curious to understand your definition of “a better movie” — I mean, on what grounds, in what ways, how? Also can’t figure out why exactly you find my assertion that Inception & Inland Empire exist within the same categorical sphere to be “misguided” — are you objecting to my interpretation or usage of Barthes’s concept? Would you not agree that Inception is a film that requires the active participation of the audience, as opposed to, say, Transformers? Not sure how making such a claim could be misconstrued as being “over the top.” That comparison (i.e. Inception v. Transformers) seems fairly distinct and obvious. No?
Matt, I entirely agree with you, except that I probably liked the film even less. (Not to detract from anyone who did enjoy it, but I thought there was very little worth seeing.)
Incidentally, my haphazard reading of the ending is that they all did get out of the dream worlds, and then Saito put Leo back to sleep, so he could dream that he was with his children. That was what Saito was offering him, not true political amnesty. Note how cagey he was when Leo asked him how he could get him through customs. (He says something like, “I can do it, there is a way.”) The question then becomes as to whether Leo will accept this dream, or find a way out. The fact that he walks off and ignores his little top suggests the former.
Not that I think Nolan really knows what he was going, mind you. I think he just felt like he had to put that kind of ending on it, because the “mindfuck” genre calls for such an ending. Overall, I thought the whole movie pretty lazy (half generic gun battle scenes, half expository dialogue that never really mattered; atrocious writing and editing throughout)—and this after 40–50 years of precedents.
Off to reread The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch…
I agree that the last shot felt kind of like a cop-out, but then again I’m not sure how I would’ve ended it either. Admittedly, I’m a Nolan fanboy, so I loved the shit out of Inception, but I think what I loved most was not that I wanted to go home and write after I left the theatre, but that it inspired me to write something BETTER (if that makes any haphazard sense.) Any film/book/song/fragment of art that does that, I’ll love the shit outta that, too.
Hey Matt,
Thanks for this insightful response. In many ways, yours is the best negative argument I’ve read — and I have read a grip of reviews, many of which were negative.
Your point about the film succeeding in making audiences believe it is smart is interesting. I wonder where the line is between actually being a smart movie and being a movie that convinces audiences its smart? Obviously, this is a debatable line anyway.
But no question, I can’t help but agree with you when you say: “The film would have been MUCH better if they had just done what they did without coming up with a bunch of half-baked exposition for how it all worked.” That was indeed one of the things that I found irksome…using Ariadne’s character as the way to introduce exposition.
I like your question: “Could the dreams have been any less dream-like?” and I like your point about the strange absence of sexual tension. But maybe I’m just in a really generous mood or something because I want to spin those as benefits rather than a deficits. Sure, it could have been messier, more lusty, more of what we might expect dreams to be like, but the fact that it wasn’t is part of what I find interesting. I can see the perspective that it’s a failure on Nolan’s part to have omitted those obvious aspects, but I can also see it as a sign that, on the contrary, he knew very well what we all know: that dreams are lusty and dreams are messy, but wanted to purposefully approach the film counter-intuitively.
I also think you’re right in your reading of the caper: “The point here is that didn’t matter at all to the film. They could have been in there trying to convince the dude that he really needed to freshen up his wardrobe” — (that last bit made me laugh). But, again, I’m reading that as a purposeful move rather than a mistake. I mean, he went so far out of his way to explain other aspects of the film, I imagine he could’ve easily concocted a more reasonable caper — so the fact that it doesn’t really make sense seems very much planned, not an afterthought.
DiCaprio’s character’s name was Cobb, his wife’s name was Mal — which I thought was Moll the whole time I was watching it, until I came home and googled it. Mal is an awful name, for sure.
Your point about the ethics of invading someone’s mind is something that, I must admit, did not even dawn on me. Now that you say it, and Ben said it above, it seems so obvious, but for some reason I was on about other stuff. It’s definitely worth talking about, though.
Ultimately, I think I come down in favor of Inception because it gets me thinking (as you mention at the beginning of your comment) — which to me signals a success, whether it actually is a success or has tricked me into believing it is :)
Thanks, Hillis.
But re: Michael Caine’s character…did you get this info from the film or from Wikipedia — a site which tends frequently to lack credibility? I can’t remember where in the film it was revealed that he was Cobb’s father-in-law, and it seems to me that if he was in fact the father-in-law (i.e. Mal’s father) he would have hated Cobb rather than helped him — right?
Hey Ben,
Wow, yes! Very interesting reading of the film. None of those issues were on my radar, but now that you’ve raised them I have to go back and reconsider. Many thanks.
It’s unclear from “the actual text” whether he’s his father or father in law, I think.
Hey Adam,
Sorry to hear you disliked Inception so much.
I appreciate your reading of the ending, but don’t see how Saito could’ve put Cobb to sleep — for one thing, he would’ve needed one of those Inception machines, wouldn’t he? And I wonder what indicated to you that the others awoke? The last we saw of them sans Cobb was in the van, right? They were all still asleep.
I could be wrong on any/all of these points. As the time between now and when I saw it grows longer, my lack of short term memory hampers my ability to remember correctly.
On a side note, have you read Dick’s Time Out of Joint? I liked it better than Three Stigmata.
I really don’t think it requires anymore active participation from the viewer than something like Transformers.
Caleb Crain has an interesting post on the Paris Review blog about Inception: http://blog.theparisreview.org/2010/07/21/down-the-rabbit-hole/
The key scene in the movie, for me, was when Cobb is in the bathroom throwing water on his face and tries to spin the top. The top falls on the ground and Saito walks in before Cobb can see whether he is dreaming or not. He does not spin the top again until the final scene in the movie.
Guys, it’s okay to like an action movie.
Great post, Christopher. One thing I thought when I read your sentence “…compilations of genre-defined devices from earlier films…” is that Danielewski’s ‘House of Leaves’ is may be closer ballparkwise to Inception than any other film.
It is also okay not to like an action movie.
this summer at the university of utah there was an undergraduate literature glass about virtual reality/simulated reality. i wasn’t able to take it, but i signed up for it before i realized my schedule wouldn’t allow it. the syllabus consisted of nueromancer, borges, grizzly man, the matrix, avatar, Slavoj Žižekand’s pervert’s cinema or whatever its called, and others i can’t remember. i loved how inception felt ‘unsolved’ with the ending we were given. it wasn’t the best movie ever made, but it is a quality, worthwhile experience just the same.
leonardo dicaprio plays the same ‘stressed out guy’ in aviator, the departed, shutter island, and inception — though he was mellow in titanic as the ship sank where he shoulda really been stressed out.
Perhaps, not thinking yourself expected to do so, you didn’t participate actively (enough) and thus found no evidence of anything that might require such participation, confirming your own suspicions.
(I haven’t seen the film yet.)
Damn. I’m in Italy at the minute, and it doesn’t come out over here until September 24th. I’ll have to wait until I get back to England. These big blockbuster films stay in cinemas for a few weeks, right? I haven’t been to one for a while.
Oh, but yeah, great post, anyway! Thanks. I’m really interested in seeing this now.
I remember getting that when I was 13 or so. I’d just been to see the Lindsay Lohan edition of ‘Freaky Friday’,
(End-comma due to foreign keyboard use, rather than aesthetic choice)
leonardo dicaprio plays the same ‘stressed out guy’ in aviator, the departed, shutter island, and inception — though he was mellow in titanic as the ship sank where he shoulda really been stressed out.
Perhaps, not thinking yourself expected to do so, you didn’t participate actively (enough) and thus found no evidence of anything that might require such participation, confirming your own suspicions.
(I haven’t seen the film yet.)
Damn. I’m in Italy at the minute, and it doesn’t come out over here until September 24th. I’ll have to wait until I get back to England. These big blockbuster films stay in cinemas for a few weeks, right? I haven’t been to one for a while.
Oh, but yeah, great post, anyway! Thanks. I’m really interested in seeing this now.
I remember getting that when I was 13 or so. I’d just been to see the Lindsay Lohan edition of ‘Freaky Friday’,
(End-comma due to foreign keyboard use, rather than aesthetic choice)
No. I came in with high expectations, if anything.
And I mean, I LIKED the film. It was a blast. But seriously, it’s a popcorn-thriller. Tons of fun, a sweet plot, things blow up. Saying this requires active participation is like saying the Matrix films do.
or, perhaps I should have said an unusual amount of active participation.
i liked it. i’d say it’s “the new ‘matrix.'” made me want to see a bunch more movies with marion cotillard, cillian murphy, joseph gordon-levitt, and/or ellen page in them.
a good sci-fi movie only asks you to swallow one inconsistency in order to create it’s universe. this is why the matrix fails. it asks you to take the enormous concept of the matrix, which the viewer accepts, then instead of playing with the rules and levels of that concept, it introduces a new one: Neo is robot/computer/real-world christ with powers unexplainable.
Inception asks you to accept that there is a technology which can induce structured dreams and allow other people to enter. everything else is a play within those rule sets and existant rule sets – the sensation of falling and hitting water does fuck with your inner ear and will snap you back to reality. the movie is very finely-tuned, and it’s ok not for it to be your thing, but it’s not lazy.
Also, yes, dreams are wild and crazy and nutso. however, when i wake up its the ones that seem closest to reality that give me that weird blurring of boundaries. the movie isn’t about dreams in general, it’s about reality-blurring with this specific tool, so of course if you wanted to convince someone that what they saw had validity and merit as a memory, you’d do something with close to standard reality.
also, for the kind of movie it was (old-schoolish sci-fi with action and pschological thriller elements) there was a surprising amount of character development. Fisher’s relationship with his dad was interesting, especially in the context of being a group of people literally trying to break down the component parts of it. Arthur was a very interesting character, both in his relation to the other characters and also because he was, in a sense, the muscle.
I dunno. I think some of you might be a bit eager to take it down without giving it proper thought. because everything deserves proper thought.
the movie only piles on one concept (or maybe 1.5 with limbo, though the rules of that don’t seem out of line with the normal dream rules).
Thanks, Adam. Would be keen to hear the connections you see between Inception and House of Leaves (a book I loved).
Hey Dan, that sounds like an awesome class…you don’t happen to recall the name of the professor teaching it, do you?
alright dude, i am biting.
why scare quotes around the idea of this being the new matrix?
why the matrix? the first one was kind of alright in the sense that it was sort of really fun to watch when i was 15 and wore black a lot while listening to rage against the machine telling me to wake up, but the sequels were not very good. in fact i have yet to see the third. so you’re saying here that you see this as being an alright move that you want to see spawn progressively shittier movies to the point that maybe you don’t even want to see the first one ever again? maybe this was not your reaction though. maybe i’m placing my shit onto you, and if so, well, i am goddam sorry.
and also it makes you want to see a sequel to this movie, or using this cast? i don’t understand. the cast thing though, who knows. nolan seems to sometimes use the same people. in that for the prestige he used christian bale and michael caine again from batman.
i’m sorry i just jumped on you stephen.
fact.
i want to say here that while i understand all the criticisms people have with inception, and i see and acknowledge them as being true, for me, they don’t matter.
inception is one of a handful of movies, let alone things in this world, that, while undergoing the experience of it, i never once stepped outside of myself. at no point were my thoughts removed from anything other than the matter at hand and the matter at hand was this fucking movie.
it is so rare for me, as a person, to experience something so fully and completely engrossing, to experience something that does not allow me to step outside of myself and reflect on what is happening and then get lost in those thoughts to the point where what is happening around me no longer is even acknowledged, that these criticisms leveled at it, to me, just make me sad that other people did not experience this.
i’m not sitting here saying that i’m sorry for everyone who doesn’t see what i saw and feeling all smug and superior. this is just how i felt. i imagine that being able to feel lost in something vast is what draws people to twilight and things like that. a way of feeling fully engrossed in something that is not you but that, for a time, becomes you. this is probably what draws some people to that lilly if you are reading this. but i don’t know, because i’m not really one of those people. those twilight people.
No. I came in with high expectations, if anything.
And I mean, I LIKED the film. It was a blast. But seriously, it’s a popcorn-thriller. Tons of fun, a sweet plot, things blow up. Saying this requires active participation is like saying the Matrix films do.
or, perhaps I should have said an unusual amount of active participation.
i liked it. i’d say it’s “the new ‘matrix.'” made me want to see a bunch more movies with marion cotillard, cillian murphy, joseph gordon-levitt, and/or ellen page in them.
a good sci-fi movie only asks you to swallow one inconsistency in order to create it’s universe. this is why the matrix fails. it asks you to take the enormous concept of the matrix, which the viewer accepts, then instead of playing with the rules and levels of that concept, it introduces a new one: Neo is robot/computer/real-world christ with powers unexplainable.
Inception asks you to accept that there is a technology which can induce structured dreams and allow other people to enter. everything else is a play within those rule sets and existant rule sets – the sensation of falling and hitting water does fuck with your inner ear and will snap you back to reality. the movie is very finely-tuned, and it’s ok not for it to be your thing, but it’s not lazy.
Also, yes, dreams are wild and crazy and nutso. however, when i wake up its the ones that seem closest to reality that give me that weird blurring of boundaries. the movie isn’t about dreams in general, it’s about reality-blurring with this specific tool, so of course if you wanted to convince someone that what they saw had validity and merit as a memory, you’d do something with close to standard reality.
also, for the kind of movie it was (old-schoolish sci-fi with action and pschological thriller elements) there was a surprising amount of character development. Fisher’s relationship with his dad was interesting, especially in the context of being a group of people literally trying to break down the component parts of it. Arthur was a very interesting character, both in his relation to the other characters and also because he was, in a sense, the muscle.
I dunno. I think some of you might be a bit eager to take it down without giving it proper thought. because everything deserves proper thought.
the movie only piles on one concept (or maybe 1.5 with limbo, though the rules of that don’t seem out of line with the normal dream rules).
Thanks, Adam. Would be keen to hear the connections you see between Inception and House of Leaves (a book I loved).
Hey Dan, that sounds like an awesome class…you don’t happen to recall the name of the professor teaching it, do you?
haha… no worries man.
i put scare quotes because it’s a stock phrase, “the new [this],” “the new [that].” because the statement doesn’t really make any sense or i guess it raises the kinds of things you brought up if one thinks along those lines. it seems high-concept like “the matrix,” it has striking action sequences like “the matrix,” and it might be looked back at in the future as like “a seminal movie in the [something] genre” or something. what i meant by it is it’s a sweet action movie with a lot of parts/visuals/aspects to it that might make a great number of people (but not all people, obviously) think things or even mutter things in a crowded theater such as “sweeeet” or “damn…” or “whoa… three levels of the subconscious, bro.”
i was indirectly suggesting that if one goes into thinking “this is gonna be sweet… like ‘the matrix'” one might be more pleased than if one went into thinking “this better be fecking as fecking intellectual and highbrow as those critics said or i’m gonna trash it on the internet, by god.”
my last comment was just meant to indicate that i liked all those members of the cast, which means, by omission, that i’m kind of suggesting i didn’t like leo dicaprio as much as the others, which is sort of true, although i’m unsure what i think of him. i like him ok. sometimes i like him. other times i don’t “believe” him in his roles. but he’s fine too, just wanted to praise the other cast members. seems like a sweet-ass cast. i like joseph gordon-levitt a lot. ellen page is a good actress, IMO. cillian murphy has incredible presence and seems to have great range as an actor (yall seen “breakfast on pluto”?). and marion cotillard is very talented, has a great voice, and IMHO, is ridiculously beautiful.
and i don’t think there will be any sequels. nor do i wish for sequels. i agree “the matrix 2” or “reloaded” or whatever was pretty lame. didn’t see the third. should have written “if one goes into [it]” above
There’s always a “snow fortress”
and i did find it engrossing, sasha. i wasn’t moved by it, but i was engrossed.
alright dude, i am biting.
why scare quotes around the idea of this being the new matrix?
why the matrix? the first one was kind of alright in the sense that it was sort of really fun to watch when i was 15 and wore black a lot while listening to rage against the machine telling me to wake up, but the sequels were not very good. in fact i have yet to see the third. so you’re saying here that you see this as being an alright move that you want to see spawn progressively shittier movies to the point that maybe you don’t even want to see the first one ever again? maybe this was not your reaction though. maybe i’m placing my shit onto you, and if so, well, i am goddam sorry.
and also it makes you want to see a sequel to this movie, or using this cast? i don’t understand. the cast thing though, who knows. nolan seems to sometimes use the same people. in that for the prestige he used christian bale and michael caine again from batman.
i’m sorry i just jumped on you stephen.
fact.
i want to say here that while i understand all the criticisms people have with inception, and i see and acknowledge them as being true, for me, they don’t matter.
inception is one of a handful of movies, let alone things in this world, that, while undergoing the experience of it, i never once stepped outside of myself. at no point were my thoughts removed from anything other than the matter at hand and the matter at hand was this fucking movie.
it is so rare for me, as a person, to experience something so fully and completely engrossing, to experience something that does not allow me to step outside of myself and reflect on what is happening and then get lost in those thoughts to the point where what is happening around me no longer is even acknowledged, that these criticisms leveled at it, to me, just make me sad that other people did not experience this.
i’m not sitting here saying that i’m sorry for everyone who doesn’t see what i saw and feeling all smug and superior. this is just how i felt. i imagine that being able to feel lost in something vast is what draws people to twilight and things like that. a way of feeling fully engrossed in something that is not you but that, for a time, becomes you. this is probably what draws some people to that lilly if you are reading this. but i don’t know, because i’m not really one of those people. those twilight people.
i apologize fr being a dick stephen. i genuinely appreciate yr thoughts and need to work on the whole getting real uppity about scare quotes. and breakfast on plute was pretty great and good lord is he a pretty pretty man.
and more than anything, i did not mean to fault you fr not being moved. i think faulting someone for not feeling what you feel is, i don’t know, irresponsible. it implies that are feelings are not our own personal reactions to outside stimulus and that everything has only one single meaning.
i didn’t really read reviews of it since i’ve been up in vermont all month. i can understand how hearing a lot about something and not having the same reaction as what you have been told you will have by a person you’ve never met, how that could be frustrating.
anyway. i am going to go back to watching friday night lights and feeling real moved.
no worries man
Alf Seegert. I took a class from him in 2006 (yeah, i;m in my fifth year of getting my bachelor’s in english) and he definitely knew what was what.
haha… no worries man.
i put scare quotes because it’s a stock phrase, “the new [this],” “the new [that].” because the statement doesn’t really make any sense or i guess it raises the kinds of things you brought up if one thinks along those lines. it seems high-concept like “the matrix,” it has striking action sequences like “the matrix,” and it might be looked back at in the future as like “a seminal movie in the [something] genre” or something. what i meant by it is it’s a sweet action movie with a lot of parts/visuals/aspects to it that might make a great number of people (but not all people, obviously) think things or even mutter things in a crowded theater such as “sweeeet” or “damn…” or “whoa… three levels of the subconscious, bro.”
i was indirectly suggesting that if one goes into thinking “this is gonna be sweet… like ‘the matrix'” one might be more pleased than if one went into thinking “this better be fecking as fecking intellectual and highbrow as those critics said or i’m gonna trash it on the internet, by god.”
my last comment was just meant to indicate that i liked all those members of the cast, which means, by omission, that i’m kind of suggesting i didn’t like leo dicaprio as much as the others, which is sort of true, although i’m unsure what i think of him. i like him ok. sometimes i like him. other times i don’t “believe” him in his roles. but he’s fine too, just wanted to praise the other cast members. seems like a sweet-ass cast. i like joseph gordon-levitt a lot. ellen page is a good actress, IMO. cillian murphy has incredible presence and seems to have great range as an actor (yall seen “breakfast on pluto”?). and marion cotillard is very talented, has a great voice, and IMHO, is ridiculously beautiful.
and i don’t think there will be any sequels. nor do i wish for sequels. i agree “the matrix 2” or “reloaded” or whatever was pretty lame. didn’t see the third. should have written “if one goes into [it]” above
There’s always a “snow fortress”
and i did find it engrossing, sasha. i wasn’t moved by it, but i was engrossed.
i apologize fr being a dick stephen. i genuinely appreciate yr thoughts and need to work on the whole getting real uppity about scare quotes. and breakfast on plute was pretty great and good lord is he a pretty pretty man.
and more than anything, i did not mean to fault you fr not being moved. i think faulting someone for not feeling what you feel is, i don’t know, irresponsible. it implies that are feelings are not our own personal reactions to outside stimulus and that everything has only one single meaning.
i didn’t really read reviews of it since i’ve been up in vermont all month. i can understand how hearing a lot about something and not having the same reaction as what you have been told you will have by a person you’ve never met, how that could be frustrating.
anyway. i am going to go back to watching friday night lights and feeling real moved.
no worries man
Alf Seegert. I took a class from him in 2006 (yeah, i;m in my fifth year of getting my bachelor’s in english) and he definitely knew what was what.
I was waiting for the lava level. =(
I was waiting for the lava level. =(
as soon as the Yazuka stereotype said “Ah, a dream within a dream. Very impressive.” I knew that I would hate this movie will all my heart.
Whenever a Japanese actor plays a wealthy businessman with subconscious bodyguards, my mind immediately runs to crime syndicate, and Yakuza stereotypes are most evident when a script explains who a Japanese character is and aligns him, however clumsily, with a sympathetic company/goal.
as soon as the Yazuka stereotype said “Ah, a dream within a dream. Very impressive.” I knew that I would hate this movie will all my heart.
Whenever a Japanese actor plays a wealthy businessman with subconscious bodyguards, my mind immediately runs to crime syndicate, and Yakuza stereotypes are most evident when a script explains who a Japanese character is and aligns him, however clumsily, with a sympathetic company/goal.
why haven’t you seen dark knight? why?
why haven’t you seen dark knight? why?
[…] Many have been trying to read the film as being more complicated than it is—and many seem to be having a lot of fun doing it, so God bless them. Me, I think it’s all much simpler than it appears. […]
Hi Chris,
They had one of the dream machines right there in first class. But you’re right: if the ending’s a dream, it starts when Leo wakes up in the cabin. So we wouldn’t know what happened to the others.
I never read Time Out of Joint, but will prioritize it now. Three Stigmata isn’t my favorite PKD—in general I prefer the 70s stuff to the 60s—but I think it’s great point of reference for movies like Inception and The Matrix. They steal so much from it (and from Dick in general), even if they don’t do so directly, or even know it.
I’m not sorry that I disliked Inception. Disliking something isn’t all that different for me than liking something. (Perhaps? For one thing, I saw it again today, which isn’t all that different a behavior than if I had liked it.) (I doubt I’ll see it a third time, though.)
I might even write more about things I dislike than things I like—so maybe I like the things I dislike more than I like the things I like?
Cheers,
Adam
Hi Chris,
They had one of the dream machines right there in first class. But you’re right: if the ending’s a dream, it starts when Leo wakes up in the cabin. So we wouldn’t know what happened to the others.
I never read Time Out of Joint, but will prioritize it now. Three Stigmata isn’t my favorite PKD—in general I prefer the 70s stuff to the 60s—but I think it’s great point of reference for movies like Inception and The Matrix. They steal so much from it (and from Dick in general), even if they don’t do so directly, or even know it.
I’m not sorry that I disliked Inception. Disliking something isn’t all that different for me than liking something. (Perhaps? For one thing, I saw it again today, which isn’t all that different a behavior than if I had liked it.) (I doubt I’ll see it a third time, though.)
I might even write more about things I dislike than things I like—so maybe I like the things I dislike more than I like the things I like?
Cheers,
Adam
[…] have been digging around in the depths of a popcorn bag, and not know what’s up. Remember, those of you who think these movies sophisticated: Nolan makes his pictures for Popcorn […]
[…] The problem is that, in the summer of 2010, Chris Higgs preferred Inception to Scott Pilgrim. (Chris’s pronouncement of SP: […]