Inception

[velessa]

I saw Inception last night and it was awesome! You know it's a good movie when you're still thinking about it for days afterwards. It's a little bit Matrix-y in premise, what with not knowing whether you're in a dream or the real world, but it is really way more mindblowing and confusing and complicated than the Matrix movies ever were. There are a lot of things I'm still trying to figure out about it, and I think it's one of those movies you have to see a few dozen times before you actually catch everything that's going on or that happened. Also the cast was really great. Two thumbs up!


Some of the things that confused me...how come every time Mal showed up in the dream, she tried to wreck whatever it was Cobb was trying to accomplish? What was that about? How was that going to bring him back to her underworld?

Also, why did they have to use their little magic box of sedation to go under to get into a dream within a dream? Just because that's how they do it in the real world and they couldn't alter that without throwing things off and having the projections/subconscious come after them?

Did anyone else get lost trying to keep track of whose mind they were in on which level? By the time they got to that snow fortress thing, I didn't know what the hell was really going on anymore.

Oh, and why did Mal think killing herself would send her back to subconscious limbo? If your brain is dead there isn't a subconscious to go to in the first place! Why would being dead bring you back there? How do you know that, even if you do believe the real world isn't real, what makes you think you'll end up back in that same place you left?

Also, Watanbe Ken's old age makeup sucked. I think they could have done a better job with that, right at the beginning of the movie I knew it was wrong.

And the ending = ARGH!!! I hate when movies do that! I want a definitive answer! Boo.

Okay, pondering over. For now. See the movie!

Comments

[julival.livejournal.com]

***SPOILERS***

I saw this today and also thoroughly enjoyed it. I went into it expecting twists and puzzles because I had seen Memento probably 7 or 8 years ago - after it came out on video. I had been so completely engrossed by Memento that I had to watch it multiple times to see where the clues were. So I really paid attention the whole time I was watching Inception. I will look forward to viewing it again when it comes out on dvd or On Demand so I can see what I missed even with the close scrutiny I was giving it today.

Like you, I loved the cast. I also loved the visual effects and the scenic panoramas. I thought the pacing was great. You just never know with a two and a half hour long movie, but I did not get that "when can I duck out for a bathroom break" feeling. I didn't check my watch a single time. I did get slightly annoyed by the super slow-mo shots of the van going off the bridge and thought the timing of everything was a little thrown when they had Cillian's character go into the vault to find out his father really loved him (NOT - psyche! Way to use a photo for positive reinforcement of the planted idea!). But overall, I thought they did a cool job knitting the timelines together and keeping the viewer aware of what was happening. It's the type of film that could easily lose a lot of people because of the complexity, but the dialog between the characters - particularly with Cobb and his "apprentice" Ariadne - kept us up to speed. (hahah - I really didn't intend the pun, but I like it.)

As to your questions:

On Mal's destructiveness - if you look at it as Cobb's subconscious, it's his projection of Mal and it only has the motivations he's giving it which is this: He believes she wants him to be with her in what she considers reality. If he dies far enough down in the dreamworld (dream within a dream, under sedation), he goes to their reality. She wants him to die so he can join her. She never just comes out and kills him because she wants him to choose to come to her (again, this is HIS construct of her).

On the little magic box of sedation - I didn't really think about that, but it didn't bother me. It probably just makes the process easier if they use a familiar method even in the dream layers. Don't want to get too creative or things might get out of control. *l*

I actually thought it was _supposed to be_ Ariadne's mind on every level. She was the Architect. The Indian was the Chemist, in charge of correct sedation and used to be lookout and 'kick' trigger at the first level - presumably because he had less finess in the finer points of controlling the dream. The smarmy guy was the Forger, in charge of impersonating other people in the dreamscape. He was good at modifying others' perception of his appearance. That was really his only usefulness. Arthur, the sidekick/assistant was the 'kick' trigger on the second level down. I really liked how they had to leave one person behind on each level to keep things safe! The Forger was the 'kick' trigger on the third level and Ariadne self-designated as 'kick' trigger in Limbo. But I believe the concept was that she was the controlling dreamer on all levels and they just made poor Cillian think he was in charge on levels two and three with all that Mr Charles stuff.

I hit the character limit on my reply, so I'm going to copy paste the rest into a reply to the reply. Heh.

[julival.livejournal.com]

Mal did not think killing herself would send her back to subconscious limbo. She thought killing herself would send her back to reality. She thought Reality was the dreamworld. The idea that Cobb planted in her mind in Limbo stayed there after she woke up and she confused her realities and thought she was dreaming and still needed to wake up. She was mentally ill. But since she was really dead at the point she killed herself in Reality, it was only Cobb projecting that she felt real in her subconscious limbo. She had no subconscious after she jumped from the building. She did not exist except as a projection in Cobb's dreams.

I agree that they did a crappy job with Watanabe's aging make-up. They also did a crappy job with DiCaprio's aging make-up. I had to really look hard when they came back to the old guy in limbo version of Watanabe and his memory trigger dialog with DiCaprio. Because _clearly_ if Watanabe's character died AFTER Cobb entered subconscious limbo and his character aged that much, then DiCaprio must have held onto the idea of that quest and been looking for him for a VERY long time.

I do not think the ending was ambiguous. I firmly believe that Cobb was still dreaming. I believe he was dreaming for the entire film. I believe he was like the people that he saw in in his dream of the chemist's workshop in that he had to be asleep to be with Mal, so he basically went comatose and the whole film was his father in law's therapy for him to start working to heal him of his horrendous guilt and to give him some peace. Michael Caine's character was obviously a professor of the dream 'extractor' science and he was Cobb's mentor. The only thing I was not clear on was whether he was Cobb's father or Mal's, since he was the grandfather of the two children.

Anyway, I think if you see it again, you'll be able to see a lot of the clues that he was dreaming the whole time. He jumps around in his locations constantly, like in a dream. The columned walkway that Ariadne re-creates from memory in her introduction to dream architecture appears again in the subconscious limbo that Cobb and Mal created. (I guess it could be because they all went to the same university where Caine's character was teaching dream manipulation...). But the most telling thing to me was his views of the children. They are ALWAYS in the same pose with their backs to him, including when he comes back to them.

I think Caine's character got the Ariadne character into Cobb's dreamscape to get him to finally let go of his obsession/guilt over Mal. He kept repeating that he just wanted to get home to his children. He knew they needed him and since Mal was dead, she didn't really need him, he just needed to be able to release his feelings of responsibility for her. He explained out loud that he couldn't ever make her like her real self. This was a step in the process of letting go of the need to be with 'her' in the dream world.

It may be that he's so far gone that he can never be taken out of the dreamscape, but at least he can be at peace with his projections of his children.

That's my two bit analysis, for what it's worth. *l* I am really looking forward to seeing how other people interpret it.

[velessa.livejournal.com]

Heh, that's kind of funny, I totally hated Memento! Something about it going backwards and the fact that he'd done it all before, I don't know, it bugged the crap out of me.

I really hope this wasn't one of those "it was a dream all along" movies, though; I think that's just a complete cop-out rather than a cool twist. I'm sick of all the Sixth Senses and Shutter Islands where it's "he was dead all along!" or "he was really the prisoner all along!" Blech.

I did think it was pretty cool they used the pinwheel to trick the guy into thinking what they wanted. So manipulative!

I do think he was still in the dream at the end of this one, given that the kids were in the same position and turned the same way, and that they clearly hadn't grown any and it seemed like he'd been gone a really long time, but I'd prefer the happy ending where he really gets to go home at the end. But I'm a sap. ;)

[velessa.livejournal.com]

Link to another take on it: http://cleolinda.livejournal.com/893867.html

I think she has it right, I remember them bitching to the Indian guy about not peeing before going under, and the shot always cutting to the Third Rock kid in the van...the person who has to provide the kick is the one dreaming that particular level. The girl is just filling it in with the mazes they need or whatever.

[moose1992.livejournal.com]

i have a list of films to see at the moment and that is right up there! glad its good!

[urox.livejournal.com]

Don't know if this has been addressed, but I think that the magic box was how they *shared* the dream, not necessarily how they went under.

The idea of killing herself was that one can't die in a dream. You'll wake up. So that was the way of waking herself up. She wanted to wake up to reality, to the reality of her children.

[velessa.livejournal.com]

Ah, that does make more sense...I guess I was thinking it was sedating them since it looks like an IV.