Monday, July 19, 2010

If You Need Convincing to See Inception

I will try to tell you a little about Inception without giving away any spoilers. I loved this film but I can easily see it's not for everyone. My hope is this will help you figure out if you'd hate it or not.

I knew three things about the film going into it. One, it was about dreams. Two, the writer-director Christopher Nolan (Memento, The Dark Knight) was being compared to Stanley Kubrick. Three, it has an ending that spawned various articles that talked about it.

The first isn't a spoiler at all and is given away in first or second scene. The second seemed absurd to me before seeing the film. I do venerate Kubrick and Nolan just does different stuff, but a little into the film I understood why the comparison is being made.

Eyes Wide Shut was a film about dreams. The point of it was to make you experience a dream. All the stuff was bizarre and not clearly understood and moved at an other-worldly pace and had jarring music. Kubrick didn't explain it was a dream. No review I read ever explained it as such (and I read dozens and dozens). I tried to analyze every element of the film and didn't work it out on my own. I knew Kubrick was a genius and I was missing something, but I couldn't figure out what. It wasn't until I saw Martin Scorcese guest host with Ebert on At The Movies where he put it in his Top 10 list and explained it.

Inception is about dreams. Your experience watching it is dream-like. It's complex and teases out information about what's going on and you can almost follow it. As an example, they explain at one point, that when you dream, you're someplace, and yet you don't know how you got there. This film recreates that feeling for the viewer but in such a way it's not annoying. There's a complex plot, it juggles a lot of plates at once and I always felt I had just enough info to think I was following what was currently going on and had just strong enough memories of all the levels down the rabbit hole that I thought I knew how we got here but knew I was just forgetting something. It kept me completely engaged throughout. I thought about looking at my watch, but I honestly didn't want to know how much time had passed and I seriously didn't want to look away from the screen for a single second.

I think, like with Eyes Wide Shut, a lot of critics are missing that the point (well a point) was to experience a dream while watching the film. If you don't like complex stories and hate not following everything, you might not like the experience at all. If you always complain that movies are too simple and find plot holes in everything, you'll love this film. If you're looking to go to the theater and turn your mind off, don't pick Inception.

Knowing there was something interesting about the ending I kept trying to figure it all out. With some films (think M. Knight Shyamalan), knowing there's a twist ending can ruin the experience because you look for every little clue and might figure it out. That's not the case with Inception. There were several times where I thought something and I may or may not have been right, but it didn't matter at all. The visceral experience was so wonderful and it was so much fun working so hard to keep up. And yet, what's really magic about this film, I think you can watch this on just a scene by scene basis and not have to figure out every little detail and get an equal enjoyment of the ride, you'll still experience a dream. I'm not sure, but I bet if you do figure it all out (and I will try) it will be completely internally consistent. It's like a Pixar film that works for kids and adults at two levels. This works (should work) if you follow it or not. And if you're really good, it works at another level too.

To compare it to other films, I'd have to say it's the point of Eyes Wide Shut, but instead of being boring, it has all the mind-trippy thrills of The Matrix and it's as effective and emotionally manipulative as Where the Wild Things Are.

I don't know if I've ever had as satisfying a movie going experience. They're completely different films, but I loved A Fish Called Wanda and In The Loop. But I wasn't riveted to the screen for two and half hours barely able to keep up. I loved the amazing story telling of the first half of Wall-E but the second half not so much (though I loved the end credits). Star Wars made a huge impact on me as an 11 year-old, but it didn't manipulate my brain as a second order effect as Inception did. The only recent film that comes close to this for me is Where the Wild Things Are and this left me far more excited. I always say Rear Window is my favorite film, because it's great but also because it really started me on my extreme love of movies. It might take me 20 years to figure it out, but I'm not sure Inception will quite be that for me, but it will be in my Top 10.

As far as other comparisons with Kubrick, I don't see it. I'm not sure there was any imagery in this film that will be as iconic as Kubrick always managed to do. There's no monolith, axe through a door, Singing in the Rain, man riding a nuclear bomb, or anything like that that's seared into my brain. Maybe that's better. I can't figure out if I want to see it again right now, or let it slowly fade like a dream.

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