Inception (Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio) Grading & Discussion

Discussion in 'Science Fiction & Fantasy' started by Aragorn, Jul 15, 2010.

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Grading

  1. Excellent

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  2. Above average

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  3. Average

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  4. Below average

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  1. Huh?

    Huh? Ensign Newbie

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    Re: Inception (Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio) Grading & Discuss

    Everything in life occurs in real time, of course, but a dream that can seem to last hours occurs in seconds of real time. The movie got that right.
     
  2. The Evil Dead

    The Evil Dead Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Re: Inception (Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio) Grading & Discuss

    What a terrible film. Everyone spent the whole movie napping, it was unbelievably stupid.
     
  3. T'Baio

    T'Baio Admiral Admiral

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    Re: Inception (Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio) Grading & Discuss

    No, it didn't.

    Most studies show that when REM dreamers are awakened 5-15 minutes after the beginning of REM and asked to decide on the basis of the duration of the events in their dreams how long they had been dreaming, almost 90% of the time the subjects answered correctly between 5-15 minutes.
     
  4. Samurai8472

    Samurai8472 Admiral Admiral

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    Re: Inception (Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio) Grading & Discuss

    That just means Freddy Krueger is coming to get you. Nothing to worry about
     
  5. Trekker4747

    Trekker4747 Boldly going... Premium Member

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    Re: Inception (Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio) Grading & Discuss

    I suspect it'd depend on the person and on the dream.

    I've experienced it, I've had dreams where hours or days seemed to have passed only to have far less time occur in "real time."
     
  6. T'Baio

    T'Baio Admiral Admiral

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    Re: Inception (Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio) Grading & Discuss

    So you're saying you palpably felt when you woke up like you had just lived for days? You had experienced every minute of those days? Like Picard in the flute episode...what was it called again? :lol:

    Or are you saying days passed by? Because days can pass, but the moments within the dream in which you're "doing something" most likely did not add up to days. In that case, it would be "doing something for two minutes, then it's the afternoon, and you do something for five minutes, then it's the next morning and you do something for three minutes, and it's a day later." That's not actually having days experienced in your dream, just days pass by.
     
  7. Trekker4747

    Trekker4747 Boldly going... Premium Member

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    Re: Inception (Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio) Grading & Discuss

    "The Inner Light"

    Probably more the latter than the former, I figured much more time had passed because it's the only way for so much to have occured. I "filled in the gaps" as it were. You could also reason that since many people don't even remember their dreams anyway that that time happened we just didn't remember them so from our own POV they never occured.

    But, yes, there's been times when I've had a dream where a lot of time seemed to have passed and a look at the clock upon waking up and was surprised to see how much little time had passed since the last time I looked at the clock (before falling asleep/between sleep cycles.)
     
  8. Canadave

    Canadave Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Re: Inception (Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio) Grading & Discuss

    Personally, for what it's worth, I'd put Inception on about the same level as Moon, and rank it a little above District 9. I haven't seen A Scanner, Darkly, though, so I can't comment there.

    I think we can all probably agree that it's nice to see a well-made, original SF film doing well at the box office.
     
  9. Kegg

    Kegg Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Re: Inception (Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio) Grading & Discuss

    The issue with time is that dreams can play havoc with continuity and progress faster and be more unclear.

    Consider: I had a dream that I was one of the nine original colonists of Mars. We lived there for a very long time (not sure how, but very long) and then finally the other eight departed, leaving me on the Red Planet.

    But the dream is like I said; a summary of data that I sort of was shot through, narrative jolts. Could have been ten minutes, but the story was decades long, but I didn't feel any of those decades, just a vague outline of the story.

    I guess my wording wasn't clear. I was comparing those three films to Minority Report, not Inception (which, yes, was a film I enjoyed immensely.)

    I'm surprised that is - but not that surprised. Nolan is a master and combining smart and popular; and Inception is clearly a shining example of that - psychological problems, high concept, bizarrely thought out ideas... and 'splosions and a heist movie plot.

    Really it's the treat of the summer, as indicated.
     
  10. stj

    stj Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Re: Inception (Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio) Grading & Discuss

    Reply

    Extensive editing on post may make it clearer.

    As for it being a heist movie, lots of the action sequences are boring. Only the free fall sequence is genuinely successful. The cliches about running from Cobol Corporation are so tiresome as to make people wonder whether the whole movie's a dream. And a good heist movie also has characters in it. The only characters with real life in them are Murphy's, DiCaprio's and Gordon-Levitt's. On the other hand, good heist movies don't generally have monsters in them. Cotillard's character is a monster, albeit a fairly highbrow one. The movie is just wrongin very many ways.

    Trying to find artistic subtlety in a movie with anvilicious names like Ariadne and Moll is a losing game.

    How did DiCaprio and Watanabe escape from limbo?

    A dream "death" would merely wake up the dreamer, according to the opening sequence of the movie. But we learned later that "death" would not wake up a sedated dreamer, but send them into limbo.

    Watanabe's age suggests that a very long subjective time has passed. But this passage of time is supposed to derange the victim trapped in limbo. The mental stress of the situtation to Cotillard is what impelled DiCaprio to perform the first inception on her in the first place.

    DiCaprio and Watanabe would escape when the sedation woke off and the dreamers were wakened and not before. What would DiCaprio do to speed this up? It is not at all clear. Possibly he merely helped Watanabe and himself wait it out.

    But the final scene shows Watanabe grasping a gun. DiCaprio incepted the idea that "suicide" in limbo would return the dreamer to reality. But that was a trick aimed to reconcile Cotillard with limbo life. Upon return to reality, the idea that suicide was the way to return to reality stuck, causing the tragedy behind the whole story.

    If Watanabe and DiCaprio escape by suicide, it contradicts the rules given previously. If they don't escape that way, what is the point of the scene, except to unfairly confuse the viewer?

    Another Way the Rules are Broken

    Page sees DiCaprio "asleep." We do not see the dream until she engages the extraction apparatus. DiCaprio (and the opium den dreamers) have substituted the extraction apparatus for normal dreaming, since they can no longer dream. By the way, that's absurd. The thing is, their dreams are no longer beginning in the middle. These dreamers know how they got to where they were. But dreams are supposed to be identified by the way they begin in the middle, without the dreamer's knowledge of how they got there.
     
  11. Kegg

    Kegg Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Re: Inception (Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio) Grading & Discuss

    You know that did cross my mind during the scene where he's being chased by Cobol. Arbitrary villains... or a nightmare?

    While I had elaborate theories in my head about maybe the whole thing being a dream (and I had a sneaking suspicion that Ariadne = Mol; I can just imagine Cobb being introduced to Mol as the star pupil in Nicholas Cage's class...); I'd generally discount that for the existence of opposite viewpoints in the film.

    They don't. The film pretty much telegraphs this with two very obvious details at the end: That DiCaprio's children are unchanged; rising to greet him just as they may have done but did not in his memory (it's far too picture perfect to be anything other than a fantasy moment), and, of course, the spinning top. While I like to toy with the idea the whole movie is a dream; just cause, the cleaner explanation is that the movie is real and DiCaprio's escape and awakening at the very end is imaginary.
     
  12. stj

    stj Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Re: Inception (Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio) Grading & Discuss

    The top will fall. The precession (the way the axis of spin itself revolves) means it will fall. I don't know whether people don't understand the physics or just didn't see it, but the top is beginning to fall. It is not necessary to see it actually hit the table to know this. The rules of the game say, if the top falls, it's reality.

    As for the children being unchanged, there are two quite simple objections. First, a practical one, which is that insisting that Nolan wait a few more years so that he could photograph changed children seems an excessive demand for verisimilitude. This is especially true when the whole movie is full of so-called dreams that are instead virtual reality fantasies. Changing the children would have made it difficult for the audience to recognize them, especially since their faces were turned away.

    Second, and more important, DiCaprio will no more accept a false reality than Watanabe would. Watanabe realized it was a dream because the carpet fibers were wrong. DiCaprio isn't going to notice his children never changed? Nor is it clear who would be creating this pretty fantasy, since it was DiCaprio who created one for Cotillard before.

    The DiCaprio/Cotillard confrontation in limbo was pretty lifeless, partly because Page prompted the action, instead of a more organic rejection by DiCaprio of the false Cotillard. Nonetheless, there was supposed to be some sort of catharsis. DiCaprio being satisfied with a dream and refusing to look undoes this decision! DiCaprio moving on because, seeing reality, no longer needs the reassurance of the test, makes just as much sense.

    It is Murphy's catharsis, which raises the question of whether dreams are as good as reality. That supplies all the ambiguity needed. But the movie, despite its originality, just isn't very well written. The point is lost in all the hugger mugger.

    If, however, you insist on thinking the point is that DiCaprio hasn't escaped, doesn't that just leave the entire movie unresolved? By the rules of the game, DiCaprio and Watanabe will awaken, when the sedative wears off. What then? DiCaprio actually has to make a dramatic choice, this time without prompting from Page. Shouldn't that be the conclusion of the movie?
     
    Last edited: Jul 20, 2010
  13. davejames

    davejames Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Re: Inception (Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio) Grading & Discuss

    Same here. There are several scenes (not to mention action sequences) where Cobb is no where around. And while I HAVE had dreams where I became someone else (a character in a movie, for instance), I have a hard time believing Cobb really imagined himself as every one of the characters in this movie.
     
  14. stj

    stj Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Re: Inception (Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio) Grading & Discuss

    As I've made the same point less clearly, obviously I agree. The opening sequence is not very realistic, but Nolan doesn't do realism. Remember it is no more unrealistic than the conclusion. If the one must be labeled a dream because it's unrealistic, then the other must. The movie, however, isn't all that well written: Just because weird stuff happens doesn't mean it's a dream, it may just mean it's badly written!
     
  15. davejames

    davejames Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Re: Inception (Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio) Grading & Discuss

    Well sure, being that it's not a CG effect, it will obviously show physical signs of eventually falling over like any real spinning top would.

    But the question is whether that was the intention by Nolan, or whether we're supposed to suspend disbelief (like in any scifi movie using practical effects) and accept that it actually DOES go on spinning forever.
     
  16. Trekker4747

    Trekker4747 Boldly going... Premium Member

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    Re: Inception (Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio) Grading & Discuss

    Yes. Makes perfect sense. Nolan fucked up the entire ending of his movie because he couldn't edit-in a CGI top, loop the shot of the ending, or do something along those line to make the top seem to spin without failing. Nope, he fucked up and through the editing, screening before signing off on the final edit of the film and all of that he left the failing top in the final cut.

    Brilliant. The ending of a movie fucked up because a director forgot about physics.

    The lengths some people will go to. :rolleyes:
     
  17. Samurai8472

    Samurai8472 Admiral Admiral

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    Re: Inception (Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio) Grading & Discuss

    Someone suggested that Nolan is soon to join the ranks of Spielberg and jump into producing.

    Imagine a tv series produced by Nolan based on Inception

    :drool:
     
  18. David cgc

    David cgc Admiral Premium Member

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    Re: Inception (Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio) Grading & Discuss

    If it had continued spinning perfectly after so long, there'd be no ambiguity that it was a dream. If we actually saw it fall over, there'd be no ambiguity that it was reality. Both would've failed the intent of creating ambiguity. So it wobbles, but it doesn't fall. May recover, probably won't. May disappear and reappear laying on a completely different table.
     
  19. Trekker4747

    Trekker4747 Boldly going... Premium Member

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    Re: Inception (Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio) Grading & Discuss

    There is no top.
     
  20. Samurai8472

    Samurai8472 Admiral Admiral

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    Re: Inception (Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio) Grading & Discuss

    The top is a lie