So, um... it's been a little while since my last post. There are, of course, a number of good reasons why I haven't revisited my lonely little blog in several weeks. Other things just got in the way. You know how it is, right?
I got together with a couple people and shot a new project that I will eventually unleash on my YouTube channel. That took a while to put together. But I'll discuss that in a future post.
I had intended to write up a review of sorts for "Inception", which I saw nearly a month ago, but I wanted to talk about "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" first, because I would rather get the mediocre film out of the way. But after all of this time, I almost feel like anything I might say to the handful of readers I actually have would be rather pointless.
There are many reviews of the film out there, as well as some excellent analysis of the film's themes and archetypes, and most of the stuff out there is more coherent and thoughtful than anything I could slap together. What else is there to say, after all?
But dammit, I am going to force myself to write something about this film.
INCEPTION: What's It All About?
First: What is an "extractor"? Extractors are mercenaries of a sort who enter a target's dreams in order to obtain information that would otherwise be impossible to retrieve through conventional means. Extractors enter their target's dreams though some vague technological means which is never fully explained, but which has its roots in Shared Dream theories.
While inside of their target's dream, the extractor must walk a fine line, because one wrong move will trigger the target's subconscious defenses, forcibly ejecting the extractor from the target's mind. But if an extractor does his job well, he will retrieve whatever information he seeks without incident, and the target will be none the wiser.
Leonardo DiCaprio plays Cobb, a gifted extractor who has fallen on hard times. His poor wife apparently lost her mind and committed suicide, and the American authorities believe Cobb to be responsible for her death. He has been overseas for an indeterminate amount of time, circumstances keeping him away from his two young children.
A poweful business man named Saito (played by Ken Watanabe) approaches Cobb for a very special job, in exchange for the means to clear his name in the US, allowing him to be reuinted with his children. Saito asks Cobb to enter the mind of a man named Fischer (Cillian Murphy), the son of Saito's chief corporate rival, who is terminally ill. Saito wants Fischer to break up his father's business assets, effectively removing his only major competition in the world.
In order to do this, Cobb and his team must plant the idea of dismantling his father's business empire in Fischer's head, an act known as "inception". The concept of "inception" is only theoretical, as nobody has yet succeeded in performing this act. But Cobb accepts Saito's offer, strangely confident that he can succeed where all others have failed.
That's the story of "Inception". But is it really? Filled to the brim with fascinating concepts, excellent acting, and some of the most seamless and subtle special effects in recent years, Christopher Nolan's latest film is so much more than meets the eye.
This concludes the non-spoiler portion of my review. If you're reading this blog, and are one of the six people who still haven't seen "Inception", you can fuck off, right now.
INCEPTION: A Brief (giggle) Summary
I got together with a couple people and shot a new project that I will eventually unleash on my YouTube channel. That took a while to put together. But I'll discuss that in a future post.
I had intended to write up a review of sorts for "Inception", which I saw nearly a month ago, but I wanted to talk about "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" first, because I would rather get the mediocre film out of the way. But after all of this time, I almost feel like anything I might say to the handful of readers I actually have would be rather pointless.
There are many reviews of the film out there, as well as some excellent analysis of the film's themes and archetypes, and most of the stuff out there is more coherent and thoughtful than anything I could slap together. What else is there to say, after all?
But dammit, I am going to force myself to write something about this film.
INCEPTION: What's It All About?
First: What is an "extractor"? Extractors are mercenaries of a sort who enter a target's dreams in order to obtain information that would otherwise be impossible to retrieve through conventional means. Extractors enter their target's dreams though some vague technological means which is never fully explained, but which has its roots in Shared Dream theories.
While inside of their target's dream, the extractor must walk a fine line, because one wrong move will trigger the target's subconscious defenses, forcibly ejecting the extractor from the target's mind. But if an extractor does his job well, he will retrieve whatever information he seeks without incident, and the target will be none the wiser.
Leonardo DiCaprio plays Cobb, a gifted extractor who has fallen on hard times. His poor wife apparently lost her mind and committed suicide, and the American authorities believe Cobb to be responsible for her death. He has been overseas for an indeterminate amount of time, circumstances keeping him away from his two young children.
A poweful business man named Saito (played by Ken Watanabe) approaches Cobb for a very special job, in exchange for the means to clear his name in the US, allowing him to be reuinted with his children. Saito asks Cobb to enter the mind of a man named Fischer (Cillian Murphy), the son of Saito's chief corporate rival, who is terminally ill. Saito wants Fischer to break up his father's business assets, effectively removing his only major competition in the world.
In order to do this, Cobb and his team must plant the idea of dismantling his father's business empire in Fischer's head, an act known as "inception". The concept of "inception" is only theoretical, as nobody has yet succeeded in performing this act. But Cobb accepts Saito's offer, strangely confident that he can succeed where all others have failed.
That's the story of "Inception". But is it really? Filled to the brim with fascinating concepts, excellent acting, and some of the most seamless and subtle special effects in recent years, Christopher Nolan's latest film is so much more than meets the eye.
This concludes the non-spoiler portion of my review. If you're reading this blog, and are one of the six people who still haven't seen "Inception", you can fuck off, right now.
INCEPTION: A Brief (giggle) Summary
Let's start with our protagonist. Cobb is one of the best extractors in the business. At least, he used to be one of the best. Since the untimely death of his wife, Cobb has been troubled. Not just in his waking life, either. His emotional baggage is affecting his work. The guilt that Cobb carries around with him manifests itself while he dreams, sometimes dangerously.
The manifestation of Cobb's guilt is his late wife, Mal. Cobb is slowly losing control of his subconscious, as the "ghost" of Mal keeps showing up, sabotaging his work as an extractor. She exists as a malevolent force within Cobb's subconscious mind, working against him at every turn.
It is later revealed that Cobb and Mal spent a great deal of time dreaming together. In dreams, the concept of time completely falls apart. Several hours asleep can translate to days, months, or decades in one's dream, so that a person can live lifetimes in just a few hours. Cobb and Mal drifted deep into a shared dream, creating an entire world for them to inhabit. Together, they lived in this idyllic world, growing old together.
The trouble started when Mal decided not to leave their dream. She chose to accept the dream as her reality, rejecting everything else. In order to pull his wife out of the dream, Cobb planted the idea to reject their shared dream deep in her subconscious mind. And it worked. Cobb managed to coax Mal out of the dream world, and back into their reality. That is how Cobb knows that "inception" is possible.
Unfortunately, Cobb's plan worked too well. After she woke up, Mal remained disconnected from her life, growing increasingly unstable, convinced that their entire life was a dream, and that she needed to wake up.
Cobb meets his wife at a swank hotel, where they meet every year to celebrate their anniversary. When Cobb arrives, he sees the entire room has been ransacked, and the window is open. He looks out and sees Mal, standing on the ledge of the adjacent building. She knows that the only sure-fire way to wake up from a dream is to die within the dream.
So Mal plans to leap from the window ledge, falling to her "death" and waking up in the real world. And she wants Cobb to join her. Cobb tries to reason with his wife, but she refuses to listen. She tells her husband that when the police arrive at the hotel, due to the state of their room, Cobb will be implicated in her death. They won't see a suicide, but a murder. she tries to leave him no choice in the matter, but Cobb refuses to follow Mal's insane plan.
Mal jumps, and Cobb flees the country to avoid prosecution. But Mal's presence remains in Cobb's mind, haunting and tormenting him. Throughout the course of the film, she appears in dreams, wreaking havoc with his expertly-planned extractions. So not only does Cobb have to do the seemingly impossible in his mission with Fischer, but he also has to come to terms with his own crippling guilt, before it destroys him.
But before he can do this, he has to assemble his "dream team", a group of talented individuals to help create the perfect, multi-layered dream to trick Fischer into accepting the idea of dissolving his father's business conglomerate.
The first member of this team is Arthur, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Arthur is Cobb's partner, and the one responsible for researching their target. He has to get to know Fischer inside and out, so that the ideal dream environment can be created for their work.
Next is Ariadne, played by Ellen Page, a young student recruited by Cobb to be his architect, the one who creates the dream environment the team will inhabit while they work. It's her job to take the information that Arthur has gathered, and construct a dreamscape that will put Fischer at ease, keeping his subconscious defenses from rising up and attacking the team.
Then we have Eames, played by Tom Hardy, a man with the gift of mimicry. Inside the dreamscape and with the proper research, Eames is the man who can impersonate people that Fischer knows and trusts, further manipulating the target and getting the team closer to their goal.
Yusuf, played by Dileep Rao, is the chemist, the fellow who has synthesized the drug that will allow the team to delve deeper into Fischer's mind, which is necessary because Cobb needs to plant the seed of the idea in the depths of the target's subconscious. The danger in this method is that unlike in standard shared dreaming, if someone dies in Fischer's dream, their mind will become trapped in limbo, a mental wasteland from which there is seemingly no escape.
And of course, there's Saito, who insists on coming along for the ride, becoming the sixth member of the team, despite Cobb's concerns pertaining to his lack of experience with navigating the dreamscape.
Each member of the team has a "totem", or a small object unique to each of them. This object helps ground the team member, because only they know the precise shape and weight of the object. Cobb's totem is a small spinning top that belonged to his late wife, which he spins to help determine whether or not he is in a dream. If the top falls, he is awake, if it continues spinning, then he is still dreaming.
The film's climactic sequence begins with Cobb's team insinuating themselves in the first class seating section of a ten hour long trans-Pacific flight which Fischer just happens to be aboard. They drug Fischer and begin their shared descent into a three-tiered dreamscape designed by Ariadne.
What follows this "down the rabbit hole" moment is one of the most tense, thrilling, and well-choreographed sequences I have seen in a film for years.
The team navigates through multiple layers of Fischer's mind, and the deeper they go, time ticks by more slowly. While the majority of the team is stuck in the third layer, fending off attacks from Fischer's subconscious in a snowy fortress, Arthur is keeping them safe in the second layer, defending their vulnerable bodies in a shadowy hotel, and Yusuf is tearing ass through the first layer, evading Fischer's defenses with the sleeping team in a white van.
In the first layer, moments are ticking away for Yusuf. In the second layer, minutes tick by for Arthur. In the third layer, the rest of the team is holding off attackers for hours while Cobb works to complete their mission. The fluidity of time in the dreamscape allows Christopher Nolan to create one of the coolest "ticking clock" scenarios I've ever seen.
In order to bring the team out of each layer, a "kick" is needed. A "kick" is a sudden, falling movement that will jar the dreamers out of their dream.
Eames has planted explosives that will level the mountain fortress in his dream, Arthur creates a "kick" in his second level by placing the team members into an elevator car, planting explosives on the cables, which will cause the elevator car to plummet, and Yusuf drives off a bridge in his dream, the van careening toward a river.
While the van falls in the first layer, time passes slower in the deeper layers. The sensation of freefall in the first layer causes Arthur's dream to become unglued, essentially switching off gravity. Arthur struggles to set up his "kick" in a very imaginatively conceived twisting nightmare, fighting off Fischer's subconscious projections all the while.
While this is occurring, Cobb and the rest of the team are struggling to convince Fischer to break up his father's businesses in the third layer, using a projection of Fischer's late father to manipulate him. During the conflicts in the deeper layers, the film keeps cutting back to the falling van, inching closer and closer to the water in agonizing slow motion. It's a fantastic tension-builder.
While navigating the first layer, Saito gets shot in a firefight. Mortally wounded, as the team descends into the second and third layers of the dreamscape, Saito buys himself more time. Shortly after their arrival in the third layer with Fischer, Mal shows up and kills the young heir, trapping his mind in limbo. Saito finally succumbs to his injuries shortly thereafter. Cobb and Ariadne descend into limbo in an attempt to retrieve Fischer.
In the broken wasteland, Mal attempts to convince Cobb to remain with her, but Ariadne shoots her, seemingly exorcising Cobb's inner demons. Ariadne then takes Fischer back to the third layer to finish the job, while Cobb remains behind to find Saito. After all, even if their mission is a success, if Saito isn't around, then the entire endeavor would be pointless for the team, and especially for Cobb, who understandably has a lot at stake.
In the third layer, the team manages to pull off their "inception" with Fischer, with the series of "kicks" snapping the team out of the third and second dream layers. But Cobb and Saito remain lost.
We then find ourselves in a sequence that cleverly mirrors the opening moments of the film, with Cobb washing up on a beach, retrieved by two armed men who take him to see an old asian man that seems to know Cobb, remarking that he once knew a man by that name who always carried around a small spinning top. Saito had not been "dead" for very long in the third dream layer, but in limbo he has aged over 50 years.
I suppose there are some members of the audience who don't recognize the old man as Ken Watanabe under a metric ton of make-up designed to make him look ancient, but I don't see how. It's so obviously Ken Watanabe that I refuse to believe that we're supposed to be surprised when the film eventually tells us that the old man and Saito are the same person.
Although there was one audience member, a middle-aged woman sitting a row in front of me, who loudly remarked to her husband that the old man was actually Saito all along. She seemed really proud of herself. Fair enough.
Anyway, Cobb manages to convince Saito that the reality that he has created in limbo is just an illusion, and Saito pulls out a gun and points it at his head. Suddenly, Cobb wakes up on the plane, looking around to see the other team members all staring at him like he has something on his face. A visibly shaken Saito grabs the in-flight phone to make that magic call that will make all of Cobb's troubles disappear.
Now at various points in the film, we see Cobb's children in the man's dreams. The two kids are always in the same place, in a sunny, idyllic yard, their faces always turned away from Cobb. He later confides in Ariadne that he will not allow himself to see their faces in his dreams, because he wants their reunion to be genuine, and not a construct of his psyche.
When he is finally reuinted with his children back in the US, the moment is eerily similar to the image in his dreams. The children don't seem to have aged at all since Cobb has been away, and we can assume that Cobb has been on the run for a year, or more. And if you know anything about kids, you know that they grow fast.
Cobb retrieves his top, spinning it on a table. But he quickly turns his back on his totem, choosing to go to his children, their beaming faces finally revealed. As we hear the sounds of the joyful Cobb family reuinion, the camera lingers on the spinning top, zooming in. It spins, and spins, and spins, only briefly faltering a brief moment before the film cuts to black, and the end credits roll.
The entire audience groaned at this moment. It was a communal experience. Everyone wanted to see that top fall, and when the screen went black, that delightful feeling of playful frustration washed over the crowd like a wave. It was beautiful.
I've always been torn when it comes to Christopher Nolan. "Memento" is brilliant. Just an amazing motion picture that still holds up on subsequent viewings long after the mystery of the narrative has been discovered. Although it wasn't his official debut as a director, "Memento" announced the arrival of a confident and talented new voice in cinema.
Then he made "Insomnia", and I grew to hate the man, a bit. A remake of a Norwegian film of the same name, Christopher Nolan chose to cut the real meat from far-superior original movie, creating a fairly by-the-numbers thriller with a handful of good performances and only one real stand-out in Robin Williams.
In the original film, our "protagonist" is a very troubled detective named Jonas Engstrom (played by Stellan Skarsgard) who becomes increasingly unhinged throughout the story, a man with a clear history of violence and sexual frustration, who gradually unravels due to his own guilt and the round-the-clock sunlight in this town north of the Arcitc Circle.
The manifestation of Cobb's guilt is his late wife, Mal. Cobb is slowly losing control of his subconscious, as the "ghost" of Mal keeps showing up, sabotaging his work as an extractor. She exists as a malevolent force within Cobb's subconscious mind, working against him at every turn.
It is later revealed that Cobb and Mal spent a great deal of time dreaming together. In dreams, the concept of time completely falls apart. Several hours asleep can translate to days, months, or decades in one's dream, so that a person can live lifetimes in just a few hours. Cobb and Mal drifted deep into a shared dream, creating an entire world for them to inhabit. Together, they lived in this idyllic world, growing old together.
The trouble started when Mal decided not to leave their dream. She chose to accept the dream as her reality, rejecting everything else. In order to pull his wife out of the dream, Cobb planted the idea to reject their shared dream deep in her subconscious mind. And it worked. Cobb managed to coax Mal out of the dream world, and back into their reality. That is how Cobb knows that "inception" is possible.
Unfortunately, Cobb's plan worked too well. After she woke up, Mal remained disconnected from her life, growing increasingly unstable, convinced that their entire life was a dream, and that she needed to wake up.
Cobb meets his wife at a swank hotel, where they meet every year to celebrate their anniversary. When Cobb arrives, he sees the entire room has been ransacked, and the window is open. He looks out and sees Mal, standing on the ledge of the adjacent building. She knows that the only sure-fire way to wake up from a dream is to die within the dream.
So Mal plans to leap from the window ledge, falling to her "death" and waking up in the real world. And she wants Cobb to join her. Cobb tries to reason with his wife, but she refuses to listen. She tells her husband that when the police arrive at the hotel, due to the state of their room, Cobb will be implicated in her death. They won't see a suicide, but a murder. she tries to leave him no choice in the matter, but Cobb refuses to follow Mal's insane plan.
Mal jumps, and Cobb flees the country to avoid prosecution. But Mal's presence remains in Cobb's mind, haunting and tormenting him. Throughout the course of the film, she appears in dreams, wreaking havoc with his expertly-planned extractions. So not only does Cobb have to do the seemingly impossible in his mission with Fischer, but he also has to come to terms with his own crippling guilt, before it destroys him.
But before he can do this, he has to assemble his "dream team", a group of talented individuals to help create the perfect, multi-layered dream to trick Fischer into accepting the idea of dissolving his father's business conglomerate.
The first member of this team is Arthur, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Arthur is Cobb's partner, and the one responsible for researching their target. He has to get to know Fischer inside and out, so that the ideal dream environment can be created for their work.
Next is Ariadne, played by Ellen Page, a young student recruited by Cobb to be his architect, the one who creates the dream environment the team will inhabit while they work. It's her job to take the information that Arthur has gathered, and construct a dreamscape that will put Fischer at ease, keeping his subconscious defenses from rising up and attacking the team.
Then we have Eames, played by Tom Hardy, a man with the gift of mimicry. Inside the dreamscape and with the proper research, Eames is the man who can impersonate people that Fischer knows and trusts, further manipulating the target and getting the team closer to their goal.
Yusuf, played by Dileep Rao, is the chemist, the fellow who has synthesized the drug that will allow the team to delve deeper into Fischer's mind, which is necessary because Cobb needs to plant the seed of the idea in the depths of the target's subconscious. The danger in this method is that unlike in standard shared dreaming, if someone dies in Fischer's dream, their mind will become trapped in limbo, a mental wasteland from which there is seemingly no escape.
And of course, there's Saito, who insists on coming along for the ride, becoming the sixth member of the team, despite Cobb's concerns pertaining to his lack of experience with navigating the dreamscape.
Each member of the team has a "totem", or a small object unique to each of them. This object helps ground the team member, because only they know the precise shape and weight of the object. Cobb's totem is a small spinning top that belonged to his late wife, which he spins to help determine whether or not he is in a dream. If the top falls, he is awake, if it continues spinning, then he is still dreaming.
The film's climactic sequence begins with Cobb's team insinuating themselves in the first class seating section of a ten hour long trans-Pacific flight which Fischer just happens to be aboard. They drug Fischer and begin their shared descent into a three-tiered dreamscape designed by Ariadne.
What follows this "down the rabbit hole" moment is one of the most tense, thrilling, and well-choreographed sequences I have seen in a film for years.
The team navigates through multiple layers of Fischer's mind, and the deeper they go, time ticks by more slowly. While the majority of the team is stuck in the third layer, fending off attacks from Fischer's subconscious in a snowy fortress, Arthur is keeping them safe in the second layer, defending their vulnerable bodies in a shadowy hotel, and Yusuf is tearing ass through the first layer, evading Fischer's defenses with the sleeping team in a white van.
In the first layer, moments are ticking away for Yusuf. In the second layer, minutes tick by for Arthur. In the third layer, the rest of the team is holding off attackers for hours while Cobb works to complete their mission. The fluidity of time in the dreamscape allows Christopher Nolan to create one of the coolest "ticking clock" scenarios I've ever seen.
In order to bring the team out of each layer, a "kick" is needed. A "kick" is a sudden, falling movement that will jar the dreamers out of their dream.
Eames has planted explosives that will level the mountain fortress in his dream, Arthur creates a "kick" in his second level by placing the team members into an elevator car, planting explosives on the cables, which will cause the elevator car to plummet, and Yusuf drives off a bridge in his dream, the van careening toward a river.
While the van falls in the first layer, time passes slower in the deeper layers. The sensation of freefall in the first layer causes Arthur's dream to become unglued, essentially switching off gravity. Arthur struggles to set up his "kick" in a very imaginatively conceived twisting nightmare, fighting off Fischer's subconscious projections all the while.
While this is occurring, Cobb and the rest of the team are struggling to convince Fischer to break up his father's businesses in the third layer, using a projection of Fischer's late father to manipulate him. During the conflicts in the deeper layers, the film keeps cutting back to the falling van, inching closer and closer to the water in agonizing slow motion. It's a fantastic tension-builder.
While navigating the first layer, Saito gets shot in a firefight. Mortally wounded, as the team descends into the second and third layers of the dreamscape, Saito buys himself more time. Shortly after their arrival in the third layer with Fischer, Mal shows up and kills the young heir, trapping his mind in limbo. Saito finally succumbs to his injuries shortly thereafter. Cobb and Ariadne descend into limbo in an attempt to retrieve Fischer.
In the broken wasteland, Mal attempts to convince Cobb to remain with her, but Ariadne shoots her, seemingly exorcising Cobb's inner demons. Ariadne then takes Fischer back to the third layer to finish the job, while Cobb remains behind to find Saito. After all, even if their mission is a success, if Saito isn't around, then the entire endeavor would be pointless for the team, and especially for Cobb, who understandably has a lot at stake.
In the third layer, the team manages to pull off their "inception" with Fischer, with the series of "kicks" snapping the team out of the third and second dream layers. But Cobb and Saito remain lost.
We then find ourselves in a sequence that cleverly mirrors the opening moments of the film, with Cobb washing up on a beach, retrieved by two armed men who take him to see an old asian man that seems to know Cobb, remarking that he once knew a man by that name who always carried around a small spinning top. Saito had not been "dead" for very long in the third dream layer, but in limbo he has aged over 50 years.
I suppose there are some members of the audience who don't recognize the old man as Ken Watanabe under a metric ton of make-up designed to make him look ancient, but I don't see how. It's so obviously Ken Watanabe that I refuse to believe that we're supposed to be surprised when the film eventually tells us that the old man and Saito are the same person.
Although there was one audience member, a middle-aged woman sitting a row in front of me, who loudly remarked to her husband that the old man was actually Saito all along. She seemed really proud of herself. Fair enough.
Anyway, Cobb manages to convince Saito that the reality that he has created in limbo is just an illusion, and Saito pulls out a gun and points it at his head. Suddenly, Cobb wakes up on the plane, looking around to see the other team members all staring at him like he has something on his face. A visibly shaken Saito grabs the in-flight phone to make that magic call that will make all of Cobb's troubles disappear.
Now at various points in the film, we see Cobb's children in the man's dreams. The two kids are always in the same place, in a sunny, idyllic yard, their faces always turned away from Cobb. He later confides in Ariadne that he will not allow himself to see their faces in his dreams, because he wants their reunion to be genuine, and not a construct of his psyche.
When he is finally reuinted with his children back in the US, the moment is eerily similar to the image in his dreams. The children don't seem to have aged at all since Cobb has been away, and we can assume that Cobb has been on the run for a year, or more. And if you know anything about kids, you know that they grow fast.
Cobb retrieves his top, spinning it on a table. But he quickly turns his back on his totem, choosing to go to his children, their beaming faces finally revealed. As we hear the sounds of the joyful Cobb family reuinion, the camera lingers on the spinning top, zooming in. It spins, and spins, and spins, only briefly faltering a brief moment before the film cuts to black, and the end credits roll.
The entire audience groaned at this moment. It was a communal experience. Everyone wanted to see that top fall, and when the screen went black, that delightful feeling of playful frustration washed over the crowd like a wave. It was beautiful.
I've always been torn when it comes to Christopher Nolan. "Memento" is brilliant. Just an amazing motion picture that still holds up on subsequent viewings long after the mystery of the narrative has been discovered. Although it wasn't his official debut as a director, "Memento" announced the arrival of a confident and talented new voice in cinema.
Then he made "Insomnia", and I grew to hate the man, a bit. A remake of a Norwegian film of the same name, Christopher Nolan chose to cut the real meat from far-superior original movie, creating a fairly by-the-numbers thriller with a handful of good performances and only one real stand-out in Robin Williams.
In the original film, our "protagonist" is a very troubled detective named Jonas Engstrom (played by Stellan Skarsgard) who becomes increasingly unhinged throughout the story, a man with a clear history of violence and sexual frustration, who gradually unravels due to his own guilt and the round-the-clock sunlight in this town north of the Arcitc Circle.
A Swedish cop who relocated to Norway after a scandal erupted following his affair with the prime witness in a big murder case, he and his partner travel to the northern town of Tromsø to investigate the murder of a young girl named Tanja.
In an attempt to ambush the killer, Engstrom and his partner chase after the suspect in a dense fog, and Engstrom pulls his gun and fires at a shadow in the mist. He quickly realizes that he has gunned down his own partner. The murderer, a crime fiction author named Holt, witnessed Engstrom killing his partner, and later blackmails Engstrom to help him frame Tanja's boyfriend for his own crime. He confesses that he killed Tanja in a fit of rage after she refused to sleep with him.
Before this plan can come to fruition, evidence implicating Holt in Tanja's death comes to light, and Engstrom tracks Holt down, aiming to kill the author before the police can arrest him, at which point it's only a matter of time before Engstrom's own crime will be revealed.
Holt escapes, but falls through a disintegrating pier, striking his head and drowing. Engstrom returns to Holt's house, finding the dress that Tanja was wearing the night that she was murdered. He turns this evidence in, and Holt's body is found. Case closed.
He's not a sympathetic character, and the film never tries to make him one. At the end of the film, Engstrom escapes any punishment for his misdeeds, left only with his guilt. It's a small but powerful film with an amazing central performance by Stellan Skarsgard.
In the remake, the detective is Will Dormer (played by Al Pacino) is already under investigation by Internal Affairs for planting evidence to secure a conviction in a murder case. Dormer's partner has been offered immunity by IA in exchange for testifying against his partner, and he tells Dormer this early in the film.
In the remake, the detective is Will Dormer (played by Al Pacino) is already under investigation by Internal Affairs for planting evidence to secure a conviction in a murder case. Dormer's partner has been offered immunity by IA in exchange for testifying against his partner, and he tells Dormer this early in the film.
When Dormer chases the killer through the fog and ends up shooting his partner, the film tries to play the shooting as ambiguous. Did he shoot his partner on purpose? It's an interesting wrinkle, but we're never led to believe that Dormer intentionally shot his partner. It's never really explored, and adds up to nothing more than a wasted opportunity.
Aside from that, Dormer is portrayed as essentially a good cop and a good man. There are no shades of grey, here. The killer Finch (Williams) is a twisted monster, and Dormer is the moral but occassionally misguided detective determined to get his man. This is a massive disappointment.
Even more disappointing is the climax of the remake, involving a shoot-out between Dormer, Finch, and a local cop named Burr (Hilary Swank). Burr has evidence that implicates Dormer in his partner's shooting, and Dormer has a tear-stained breakdown. This is interrupted by more gunfire, and both cop and criminal are mortally wounded, Finch falling into the drink.
Burr goes to Dormer, ready to throw the evidence, a shell casing, into the water. But Dormer stops her, because he doesn't want her to end up like him. Then he dies. And I am relieved, because it means the fucking movie is over.
Nolan completely missed the point in his remake. His film is a pale imitation, a lackluster movie that carries no weight. I hated Nolan's "Insomnia" with a passion. And I still do.
Then he made "Batman Begins", and I don't particularly care for that one, either. An overly-long film that explains everything in excruciating detail, with choppy, incoherent action sequences and a central performance from Christian Bale that brings nothing to the table. There's no life to the film. And I was starting to think that "Memento" was just a fluke.
"The Prestige" followed, and I loved it. It deviates from Christopher Priest's book a lot, but the story that Nolan derived from the source material was engrossing. Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman played off each other very well, and throwing David Bowie in the mix as Nikola Tesla was just icing on the cake. A return to form for Mr. Nolan.
We all know about "The Dark Knight". It broke box-office records, thrilled audiences, and even earned Heath Ledger a posthumous Academy Award for his unforgettable portrayal of The Joker. Most folks seem to think that the film is something of a masterpiece. I... don't. I think it's a very good movie, anchored by Ledger's astounding performance, but it's far from perfect. And once again, Christian Bale fails to do anything memorable with his role.
And that voice... that fucking Batman voice...
But "Inception"? This film may be his masterpiece. I can't say, for sure. I don't even consider using that word until I've seen a film several times. And I need to see "Inception" again. On Blu-Ray. As soon as possible.
The performances in "Inception" are great across the board. Leonardo DiCaprio brings a lot of pathos to his character Cobb, and every time Mal shows up in the dreamscape his face becomes a mask, barely concealing the pain underneath. But DiCaprio is consistently great. He's just a damned good actor.
Also notable is Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Arthur, Cobb's right-hand man. I remember Gordon-Levitt from TV's "3rd Rock From The Sun", where he played Tommy Solomon, an older and distinguished alien stuck in the body of a teenaged boy. He displayed a lot of natural charisma and a real talent for comedic timing. After "3rd Rock" was cancelled, I hoped that he would pop up again, somewhere.
Then he starred in "Brick", and he was a revelation. If you haven't seen "Brick", Dear Imaginary Reader, then why the fuck are you reading this blog? Go see "Brick". If you have seen "Brick", then you know what I'm talking about. He's amazing in "Brick".
He manages to bring everything he's learned so far in his career to his role in "Inception". The intensity of "Brick", a dash of humor from "3rd Rock", and even manages to look suitably badass in the spinning hotel sequence I mentioned earlier, a moment that will be remembered by everyone who sees the film. Unforgettable.
The rest of the cast does not disappoint, and they all get a moment to shine. Ellen Page even plays a character who isn't hilariously cynical! Tom Hardy's character brings the most humor to the film, as a flamboyant, well-dressed actor who likes to drink.
Inside the dreamscape, when Arthur is fending off attackers with a pistol, Hardy appears with a rocket launcher, saying "You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling!" This moment killed the audience. I was shocked to find myself laughing in a Christopher Nolan movie.
It seems that Mr. Nolan actually learned how to shoot coherent action in the years since "Batman Begins", because the action in "Inception" is actually gripping. That also shocked me. The action gets a tad chaotic during the siege of the mountain fortress, but that's the only real complaint I have. Everything else works like gangbusters.
The special effects, when used, are almost uniformly photo-realistic. Very well done. A lot of money was spent on this movie, and it's all on-screen. Aside from the effects, Nolan took his cast and crew all over the world to shoot "Inception", and that's production value that you just can't replicate on a backlot in Hollywood. Technically, the film is impeccable.
INCEPTION: What's It Really All About?
"Inception" is a heist picture. Think "Ocean's 11" having dirty, dirty sex with Dennis Quaid's "Dreamscape". Leonardo DiCaprio has to recruit an all-star team to pull of the crime of the century, only their target is not a high-security casino, but the mind of the grief-stricken heir of a multi-national business conglomerate.
But is it, really?
In the end, when Cobb is finally reunited with his children, is this moment really a dream? Will the top keep spinning, ad infinitum, or will it fall? Is he actually trapped in limbo, moving on with his life in the only way left to him?
Of course, there's the possibility that the entire film is a dream. What if Mal was right? They may have both been trapped in their shared dream, and Mal found a way out. Cobb says he planted the idea of their life together in the dreamscape as an illusion. What if their life together in "reality" truly was just another layer of their shared dream, and Cobb refuses to accept this?
In the film, even the events in the so-called "real world", strange, dream-like images and coincidences keep popping up. Are these intentional clues, or just by-products of the shorthand that is the language of cinema? And what about the actual technology that allows extractors to enter the dreams of others? It's never elaborately explained, left frustratingly vague, a macguffin, of sorts.
Mal may still be waiting for Cobb to wake up, to return to his family in the real world. At the end of the film, he may just be accepting his dream as reality, forever closing himself off to the possibility of a true reunion with the people who love him.
At any rate, the story of "Inception" can easily be interpreted as a metaphor for filmmaking, itself. Cobb represents "The Director", Arthur "The Producer", Ariadne "The Screenwriter", Eames "The Actor", Saito "The Financier", with Fischer left as a stand-in for the audience.
Cobb has a conversation with Ariadne where he tells her than when constructing a dreamscape, one must be careful not to introduce any extreme elements. You can only push things too far before the dreamer begins to reject the world that the architect has constructed. That is a clear metaphor for the job of the filmmakers, who have to walk a tight rope in creating their own stories, lest the audience reject their worlds.
The fact that the film can be dissected on multiple levels means that Chrisopher Nolan has done his job well. Is "Inception" really just a complex heist film? Yes. Is it really the story of a man lost in his own dreamscape? Yes. Is it a metaphor for the art of making movies? Yes. It's all of these things. It's whatever you want it to be.
If you choose to view the film as a thriller, with Cobb's joyful reunion as a real one, you can do that. And it's a valid interpretation. If you want to dig deeper, you can do that, as well. And your new view of the film is just as valid. It's a wonderfully ambiguous film. When the film ends, we're left to contemplate what we just saw. To discuss it with friends. To share our own theories. That's the brilliance of "Inception".
After all, the point is not whether the top keeps spinning, or if it eventually falls. The point is that for the audience, the top never stops spinning.
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