Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010)

[Mr Sausage]

I get your point about how Inception might actually be very "business-like", closed, designed, constructed, but it still felt to me that the movie was telling me it was more complex than this and more open to interpretations. Hence my use of the VG language : there are corridor-movies (maybe "on rails" would have been a better term) where "what you see is all there is" (like The Game indeed), in opposition to freer "Open World" movies where the viewer has space to wander in multiple interpretations and make his own mind (even if you, of course, don't control the movie).
I felt Inception was telling me "there's more to it than this", but was disappointed not to find where or what. Maybe this is, more than any other, my actual basic mistake.

Maybe. It's worth wondering why you felt that way and what evidence there is. Or at least how open you needed this movie about people trapped in subjective mazes of their own design to be.

Inception isn't especially closed off in terms of interpretation. It's far from something like The Master, which is so open it becomes empty, and also pretty far from, I don't know, Battleship Potemkin, which creates an interpretive language for itself and then insists you use it. And anyway 'open' or 'closed' can be useful critical terms, but you can't just use them as de facto value judgements. One of the most closed off, palpably designed and directed works in the history of art, The Divine Comedy, is also one of the widest, deepest, most endless works ever created and better than any film that's ever been made. But then there's Shakespeare's endless openness, which has guaranteed his eternal relevance. So, you know, there's plenty of room for greatness in both modes, and some will have their preferences.

I think Inception is open enough to interpretation to offer good fruit for discussion without being a playground of ambiguity like a Kon or Lynch film. It's more Philip K. Dick than Christopher Priest, an irony considering Nolan adapted the latter's work and shares his affinity for games with time and identity.

But it pains me to see people interpret Inception as a attempt at a playground of dreams just so they can hammer it. The movie is not about the wonderful, open freedom of dreams. It's about traps and mazes, how our subjective realities bind and limit us, and how we pass that on to others. It's also in a way about film. It takes place in dreams, but it could easily take place in virtual reality.

[therewillbeblus]

But it pains me to see people interpret Inception as a attempt at a playground of dreams just so they can hammer it. The movie is not about the wonderful, open freedom of dreams. It's about traps and mazes, how our subjective realities bind and limit us, and how we pass that on to others.

Great point, and I would add that it’s also about how they can set us free, which is why the ending has such a bittersweet feeling

[tenia]

Thanks for those answers. In any case, it makes me think I might certainly benefit from watching the movie again. I might have missed some cues, sope stuff, hence my original reaction, but who knows, maybe now, I'll see them.

Maybe. It's worth wondering why you felt that way and what evidence there is. Or at least how open you needed this movie about people trapped in subjective mazes of their own design to be.

Yes indeed.

[The Pachyderminator]

I plan to sit down with this again to revisit soon, but I always thought that the ending suggests a much more philosophically complex position than most people give it credit for

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In choosing to join a subjective reality and leave any objective one behind, the narrative arrives at the highest level of unconditional acceptance, the surrender of our limitations to attend to what’s most important to us individually. The film has in part been about a man’s inability to confront and forgive himself for his imposition of will on his wife- specifically in forcing norms of an objective world rather than meeting her where she is at. The final choice to live with her, divorced of that tap on the shoulder to forge one’s happiness into a shared universe, is not a defeatist settlement but an achievement in the therapeutic process of ‘letting go.’ It’s embracing a form of ignorance, in accepting that life is comprised of inherent ignorance, and that our subjective realities should be met with gratitude and the most careful attention rather than shame or suppression enforced by the external world that matters much less than we pretend. As someone who believes in the supremacy of subjective realities and relativist meaning, this has always floored me with its emotional intensity.

The question of the totem is unimportant, yes, but only because even asking the question is rooted in the need for tangible objective realities, to prioritize the pull of that false need that drove DiCaprio to misery. The viewer who smiles at its meaninglessness is looking in the direction of celebration for the personal experience of subjectively ‘real’ emotion, instead of resigning to a preoccupation with a logic unable to grasp.

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The problem with this is that the realization Dom came to in his final scene with Mal, the emotional climax of the narrative, is that his personal created reality will never be good enough even for him. He can't ultimately be happy with the Mal of his subconscious mind because he can't imagine her in all her complexity. This isn't about the objective reality of the whole world, but the objective reality of other people, other minds in their stubborn independence. Genuinely meeting other people is the only way to escape from the solipsistic madness of Limbo.

The same would be true of Dom's other relationships, including with his children. He can't generate the richness of their reality from his own mind, any more than Mal's. The emotional depth of his escape from the false Mal of his subconscious is undercut if he then immediately plunges into a false relationship with the children of his subconscious.

[therewillbeblus]

But that's the key to my point:

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Dom doesn't know that this is a subjective reality in the final frames, and he doesn't care because he doesn't stop to consider it. The knowledge of objectivity via his memory is what he measures her against, so in fully embracing this "false relationship with the children of his subconscious" he has effectively made it "real" through accepting it as reality. His personal created reality of Mal will never be good enough with the awareness of his memory of what was "in all her complexity" but when he greets his children and is happy, that is possible because it's satisfactorily complex without the hangup of itching for an objective reality obstructing his path to true happiness. He's able to get out of his own way in the final moment, and ignoring the totem is a physical act of letting go of that unattainable past complexity in favor of the here and now. If reality is all relative, and he forfeits his holds on that past reality, he can move forward with an absolute catharsis. I took that "emotional climax" with Mal to be an admittance to his inability to leave behind his memories as the reason he cannot be happy, and the final scene with him able to do this with his kids as a success. Perhaps this is because his memory of Mal is so stained with trauma while his memories of his children are more harmonious (I really need to see this again to remember specifics) or perhaps it's simply his awareness of differentiating between realities to be absent (ignorance is bliss, to be reductive). Either way, it's a grand statement proposing that even if we fail to wrestle and overcome certain traumas, we can still therapeutically prevail and apply those strategies to other areas. The process of healing is complex and often what doesn't work with one domain of pain can still work with another.

[nitin]

hang on did we just sub in dom for cobb? Who incepted that?

[The Pachyderminator]

The character's name is Dom Cobb.

[nitin]

ah right, I never knew it as more than Cobb.

[therewillbeblus]

That's understandable since I'm pretty sure everyone calls him Cobb, except Mal (and Michael Caine in his brief scenes)

[black&huge]

I gotta ask this because it always bothered me: does anyone else think it's super weird how his name is Dom Cobb? and Mal Cobb doesn't mesh either. I wonder why Nolan settled on those names with Cobb. Let's assume it's short for Dominic still doesn't work. Let's assume Mal can be short for I dunno Mallory? sorta works actually but Mal has too many potential suffixes to even really worry about what her potential full first name could match well with Cobb.

I will inject some quick thoughts here: I always thought this movie held up the same way the original Matrix did but alas upon a rewatch over the weekend it does not. The Matrix, between the three mains we that top bill the cast are extremely fleshed out and given equal time to interact with each other and the relationships are incredibly organic. Add to that you have a nice and steady progression of the story on both levels: philosophical and your standard "bad guys vs good guys leading to a climax" working in harmony. Goes without saying that a high concept is nothing if even the basics of storytelling can't function or are lazy within. So on the flipside you have Inception where you got such an interesting idea that Nolan could not ever do anything more than make your standard Hollywood blockbuster out of.

Someone pointed out earlier they didn't like it because it's corporate espionage driven and not fully embracing of the abstract possibilities that could have come with this idea and while I don't disagree and to give Inception some defense it did cement that in the very beginning of the film. We're thrust into a fancy beach side fortress and quickly brought inside like Cobb is only to see equally fancy and sleek architecture and furnishings not to mention a formal party is also happening. But aside from a few "common" looking settings the movie is pretty much constant high-end settings and hell the very plot of the film is one tycoon trying to screw the other to be the dominant world superpower. However this movie did one thing that has been a problem with most of Nolan's films and shifted it into one big chunk.

I always was confused by how Nolan handled the last 30 minutes or so with the tiresome penultimate level of the snow base and just that needless chase to get there. Yes it's supposed to be heavily secure but this is where I feel most of you in that Nolan should have written a more abstract and non-cheap way to really sell the deep-level security that Murphy's character insured himself for. A bunch of trained guards on snowmobiles and tanks and whatnot is just so damn bad it's like an idea a 5 year old comes up with playing with his toys.

The Batman trilogy which I do like is chock full of scenes that overly explain things with grounded "real world" tech nonsense. Things that actually do not need explaining or even shown but Nolan for some reason insists they be anyways when all it does is add even more confusion. We all know the infamous reverse bullet engineering from the Dark Knight but also the whole sonar thing at the end to get to the Joker THEN guess what? there's the ferries happening at the same time BUT WAIT turns out the hostages and armed men are reversed back where the Joker is. There was too many things going on in just those three things because they weren't juxtaposed well at all. And don't get me started on that excursion to nab the Chinese guy.

Dark Knight Rises... the entire nonsensical opening wherein Nolan admitted in an interview he simply always wanted to do a "skyjack" sequence there were so many logistical flaws with pumping the doctor's blood into a corpse that looked nothing like him. At least by this time Nolan wasn't so concerned with explaining away all the fancy new tech Wayne was using but then in place we get exhaustive side stories to flesh out the supporting cast like the whole Selina Kyle kidnapping that guy to get her record erased.

Well to bring it back around Inception saves all of this for that last 30 minutes and I can say that I would rather have had all that clunkiness spread throughout. The climax to Inception is one of the most cumbersome and draining to sit through. The only good thing to say here is that Nolan at least seems to keep up with plot points that he created like Saito's mortality, Berenger's entire use as a character, the resolution of father and son, etc. But we also get weird subversions where it seems like Nolan would explain away needlessly with a 5-10 minute side sequence only to be resolved with a few lines of dialogue one example being how Saito casually says he bought the airline so they could pull off their specific plan of the type of plane and flight path they would need to have ample time to do the inception.

It's great this thread popped up when it did I had actually planned for a couple weeks before this past weekend to give Inception another go since it's been a while and I'm glad I pour my thoughts out so soon. I would also like to point out that due to the whole fiasco with Tenet's release I connected some dots and realized Nolan is overly protective of not just film but his ideas of how to consume them. It's actually harmful in many ways and just very weird to think about. But for someone so diehard about preserving the cinema experience I wish he made better movies.

[knives]

Dom is short for dominate and Mal is short for bad inclination.

[tenia]

"Le mal" is also the French word for "evil".

[Roger Ryan]

"Cobb", by the way, is an allusion to Nolan's first film Following whose antagonist was also identified by that name.

To me, that's a key to understanding that Inception is less about our relationship with dreams and more, as Mr. Sausage has said, our relationship with films. The set-piece dreams are far more reminiscent of images we've seen before in movies (the James Bond-style fortress being the most recognizable) than the kind of dream world that other directors evoke with more assurance. My favorite moment comes during Cobb's final conversation with Mal...

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...when she reminds him (his own subconscious telling himself) that his supposed real life job as a high-tech mastermind employed by some far-reaching global conglomerate is, frankly, unbelievable. Of course, this is what the film's audience must know as well. The game Inception is playing is the suspension of disbelief. That some of us are willing to give in to it while others demand a more solid grounding is sort of what the film is about.

[therewillbeblus]

Revisited this again tonight, and was reminded just how therapeutically accurate the narrative is, which helps explain the emotionally affecting successes beyond the intellectualizations. The core idea of us being driven by emotion rather than logic, transcribed into dreamspace, is on point; as is the plan of planting a positive memory which trumps negative emotion. The ironic key is that Cobb's own strongest preoccupations are in reliving negative feelings of regret and holding onto memories marked with trauma, which is another reminder that expertise in optimal emotional strategies don't always reflect our own abilities to practice them. Mal's character is also a great example of loving someone with debilitating mental illness (there are some strong addiction parallels, as well as how we influence our partners with both love and harm, intentionally or otherwise, due to their unique forms of processing separate from our own control); and how this subverts her early-installation of the femme fatale cinematic role by giving us someone to empathize with is insightful on multiple levels, and reinvents the 'independence' from that characterization into something both metaphysical and starkly real. The density of the therapeutic process, and dissection of emotional unrest, is a lot more complex and interesting than the dream logic, spy mission plotpoints, or setpieces, and deserves its share of credit in the film's discussions, but all those elements still work for me like gangbusters. This really is intelligent filmmaking colliding with lavish ambition at its best.

[Slaphappy]

Nolan is great with character driven movies with mystifying concepts (Memento and Prestige), but pretty average both as an action director and as an imaginative visionary director. In Inception he tries to bluff his way through a big time prestige act, but fails to hold it together by spamming action and CGI illusions. First time I saw this movie it worked fairly well, but now that I knew what’s coming, I found it often just annoying. The final level of the dream is just really awful. I did still somewhat enjoy the preparation and two first stages of the “heist”.

[bottled spider]

The Royal Ocean Film Society: Inception - Ten Years Later

[colinr0380]

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The game Inception is playing is the suspension of disbelief. That some of us are willing to give in to it while others demand a more solid grounding is sort of what the film is about.

And everyone is afraid (as he is himself perhaps) of Dom losing himself in the fantasy forever, as Mal did.

It is also nice that the 'solid grounding' is literalised as being exactly what none of Ellen Page's iterations have in that final sequence as she 'gets woke' to each layer of reality for the briefest of moments before she slips back up the levels! That's perhaps something that suggests that the level of reality that we are in for the majority of the film is the 'correct' one, though that might just be because she is just a character in Dom's overarching meta-fantasy (making Dom the stand in figure for the director of the film?)

black&huge, I would be curious how you feel Inception might compare to Fassbinder's World on a Wire (or the US remake The Thirteenth Floor). I think that might be just as fruitful a comparison as with The Matrix since it is all about losing oneself inside fantasy worlds until even the real seems manufactured as well. Or more manufactured than usual at least!

[Walter Kurtz]

Cobb talks about the power of ideas and compares them to a "highly contagious" virus that can "grow to define or destroy you". Thus, Mal Cobb is named Mal(lory) because Mal = Malware.

[bottled spider]

Howlception

howlception with cumlord

[Quote Perf Unquote]

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I see now the film's being decried for being "for boys," but the strongest character [Page] is a woman... hmm, might want to rethink that one, lazy critics

15 years later, this film is still peeling back the layers. Well done, Chris Nolan.