Such. A. Good. Movie.

I agree with most of what Mike said, but I'm ok with Ellen Page's character.  In the scene with her and Dobbs where she's moving shit around, he made it clear (to me at least) that what she can do...ANYBODY can do in the dream scape.  He just made it clear that she shouldn't because the more you do that, the more you make the subconscious attack you.  Remember as soon as she started moving shit, his subconscious became more vicious with her.  Additionally since they establish Cillian's character as having stronger defenses than most, they would retaliate harder if they started bending walls and shit.

But yes.  I absolutely loved it.  I love how Nolan makes complex ideas, but with a very emotionally appealing center.  The stuff with Mol and Dobbs at the end really affected me, and the entire time my brain was very happy with a deliberately structured, grounded, sci-fi.  Movies like this (though with its flaws) make me very optimistic about filmmaking going forward.

I didn't feel like it has much emotion, at least none that affected me. The stuff between him and Mol I couldn't really connect with because for most of the movie she was crazed! He even says it near the end that Mol isn't the wife or the woman he was in love with and that he had to let her go.

I connected more between the father-son stuff than the wife-husband storyline. But even that didn't compel to call this a movie with a lot of emotional gravity.

Last edited by SilentBat (2010-07-18 21:42:16)

The nature of the ending we could go round and round on.  You could as easily argue that the movie ends before the top topples over, or that it never topples over.  My wife made the point that at the end, the top does start to wobble a bit before the fade out, where as every other instance of the top in the dream world (where Dobbs performs his first inception, for instance) it was perfectly still as it spun.  That's as valid as any.  I love that it really does not clue you in one way or another.

Saw the movie a second time tonight. I was worried because the first time, the tension in the second half of the movie (adore the multiple ticking clocks) was taking over most of my attention, but knowing what happened the second time I definitely got to focus more on the "rules" that Nolan sets and see how cohesive they are. Surprisingly, though I've heard people say there are "too many holes" I just didn't see that. The time issue that Mike mentions is definitely one, but like he said, it's not one that makes the movie less enjoyable at all.

I will say that on one end, I do think that Cobb does end up in reality at the end. There's too many points that favor that I think. First, the top definitely does wobble at the end right before the cut. It's CLEARLY wobbling. Everybody I've seen it with has said it without hesitation. The other thing I notice is that the children are older, and sure enough the credits actually show two girls and two boys ("Girl at 3 years" and "Boy at 20 months" and "Girl at 5 years" and "Boy at 3 years", or something like that). Everytime Cobb looks at them in his dream-state they are the same young age he remembers them at and are wearing the same clothes, but at the end they are older and are wearing different clothes. There's nothing in the rest of the movie that I could find that would have clued us to why that would be, other than him definitely being in reality.

HOWEVER....I just got done reading this article (http://www.cinemablend.com/new/What-If- … 19638.html) and I must say, it's REALLY intriguing!! I won't discuss what it is in detail, but the concept of the ENTIRE film being Cobb's dream-state and exploring Jungian archetypes is a very very interesting concept. Enough to not let me be 100% certain of my interpretation.

Last edited by lukeslens (2010-07-19 05:21:41)

The world they were in is just "limbo", or the collective unconscious. I believe that Cobb mentions or alludes that killing yourself in that world wakes you up to reality, so you skip other "levels" of which are different than limbo in that they are dream-states. This is why it's still safe for Cobb to go after Seito after saving Fischer while everybody else gets kicked back level by level (which is why Ariedne says "he'll be okay" to Arthur).

SPOILS, DOY.

Whether or not he's dreaming at the end is irrelevant to Cobb's arc and the entire story. He's conquered his emotional demons and let his wife go.

The top at the end rings a little bit of the "What's actually real huh??" question that killed his wife in the first place, but that conversation happened like ten minutes earlier. It's a distracting last second macguffin.

There is so much to like in this movie, not sure why I'm having such mixed feelings on certain things. This tops the summer-movie scale the same way The Dark Knight topped the superhero scale: by delivering a great film in a field of tremendously diminished expectations, a field where the normal distribution peaks around "not terrible I guess."

Something, somewhere in the film should have gone more fantastic. The hallway stuff was really cool, but then maybe a chase along the edge of a city maze during gravity shifts so there's huge jumps over, under, and through Escher rooftops and fire escapes, with baddies getting Matrix-glitched down alleys or our heros running up a a flight of stairs to seemingly fall through and cliffhang the next step. Fuck with our heads visually, or show more of the insanity in the human subconscious through character interactions if the worlds have to be so logically coherent and orthogonal. Most of the effects work was wonderful (except explodey fruit stands... oof), but Nolan and Pfister's insistence to capture most stuff in camera may have kept them a little too close to reality.

Also more Paprika.

Last edited by paulou (2010-07-19 16:59:34)

I feel the same way. The same exact way.

I'm finding this thread fun, as everyone is coming down on one side of the split our two local reviewers gave the film. The free weekly Artvoice praised the sucker, while Jeff Simon of the Buffalo News who I trust (well, at least I know well his tastes) gave it two and a half stars. My favorite comments:

"There are, to be frank, critics going around calling this nonsense a visionary masterpiece and thank heaven for every one of them. Here, at last, is a movie that ordinary skeptical citizens of moviegoing America can use to figure out what critics and friends they can truly trust.

Please feel free to reject it if you choose, but my personal advice is to be wary in the future of anyone's judgment and/or veracity who tells you "Inception" is a work of visionary genius. They've taken a leap of faith into pure B.S., and Lord only knows if they'll ever emerge. (Be kind. It's a familiar American location. Of such things are our modern wars usually made.)"

It's very possible he's now just too old a senile

Oh, and I determined that the zero G stuff IS wires, but it's really smart wire work that they shot in smart ways to hide the wire-ness. Specifically, they used the fact that they already had the hotel built on a gimbal and would shoot some shots sideways or upside down, sometimes with JG-L hanging upside-down or on his back but with the camera oriented to look right-side up, so instead of getting the look where the wires are lifting his hips up in every shot, sometimes his hips are being pulled down or to the side or straight back. So even though it's wires it never feels like wires because it's not all the same thing. Very, very smart.

I shouldn't have to, but : SPOILERS

@DorkmanScott:  A couple things I want to clear up...

The movie would not have made sense if Ellen did any of that.  They set up clearly from the beginning that in shared dreaming there is only one "dreamer" referred to as the "architect" of that specific dream.  What makes Ellen's character special is that she is a really GOOD architect, but that does not allow her to change someone else's dream, essentially.  When the team was trying to extract from Saito near the beginning, he makes the comment "well, if this is my dream then I'm in control" to which they reply "that's not how it works.  It's not your dream." And the nameless dude who was their architect states that it was his.  When Ellen was practicing with Arthur, he was set up as the architect, showing her how to make a paradox.  Notice at no point does she try one herself.  She's not the architect.  Her main purpose to the mission was to design the complicated mazes then teach them to the team members who were actually going to be the architects of the respective levels.

If Ellen were the architect during the actual mission, it might have happened.  None of the three members who were architects (Yousef, Arthur and Eames ... forgive me if I butcher a character's name) were as good as Ellen's character.  Also, the subconscious would have reacted in a hostile fashion.  Sure, there were goons already coming after them, but that doesn't mean it couldn't have gotten worse.  The rest of the populace was not coming for them.  They could have all descended upon them like when Ellen was messing with Paris in the test with Cobb, or when the mob came for the architect in Saito's.

Two things.  First, snow level got 60 minutes, not 20.  Yousef mentions when he is introduced that his home-made sedative increased the time disparity to twenty times normal.  Secondly, most of the van chase took place during the hotel level.  They went to the snow level right before he signaled Arthur that he was going to take the van over the edge.  They just got to the third level, so I felt that the slowness of the van going over the edge and falling was appropriate, as now there was a new level of 20x time disparity.

I agree that it doesn't seem likely Arthur could do that in 3 min, though I'm hard-pressed to believe the snow level for the exact opposite reason: it felt too quick for 60 minutes.

Miniseries potential aside (I do agree with you on the potential of that), They were planning on being in the dream for much longer than they were ... but that was before Saito got shot.  Eames even complains that he was supposed to have a "day, at the least" to play out the hostage role with Fischer.  The week, 6 months, 10 years was just a time limit on how long they have to complete the mission.

This does actually happen, but you need to remember that at no point on the three levels is Cobb the architect.  His subconscious can intrude by creating objects/projections ... but he can't do anything structural.  The train is the largest, most intrusive one, but is gone pretty quickly.  On the hotel level, there ARE actually two specific instances (that I can remember, there may be more) of the crossover with the honeymoon apartment.  The first is when Cobb is starting to talk to Fischer in the bar.  He suddenly gets distracted by a very distinct noise: the sound of a crystal goblet crunching under-foot (I wouldn't be surprised if it was the exact same sound-byte as when Leo steps on a glass in the actual suicide scene, and was replayed when Ellen's character intruded into the basement level and stepped on the same glass).  Cobb looks past Fischer and there's the broken goblet lying on the bar.  The patrons all stare at him.  The second instance of crossover is in the room while they're hooking up to go down to the snow level.  Cobb notices the window is open and the curtains fluttering, causing a flashback.  Combined with his children appearing, his subconscious is intruding on the hotel level much more than it was on the first with only the train.  The third level is just Mal, but it is a more drastic intrusion than on the previous levels because of what she does.  Could there have been more?  Yeah.  Though since he wasn't the architect, it was very limited what Cobb's subconscious could do while keeping the movie's rules consistent. 

I can't really talk to your desire for more, or that you felt it was wanting in some areas... I feel similar, though I don't think to the same extent that you do.  My only real issue with the post were the expectations that would actually not have made sense in the movie, due to the established rules.

A lot of what I'm seeing in the thread comes down to confusing the roles of the people attached to the dream machine.  The architect of the dream is the only one who can make large structural changes, and is the one who creates the level.  The "subject" populates with his/her subconscious projections, and then there are the "tourists."  The tourists are the only group not really explained in what they can do, but it is explained what they can't do: the architect's job.  From what was seen in the movie, a tourist seems to have limited abilities to change things about themselves, or to bring subconscious projections with them (though since Cobb is the only one who does this, it may be because of his deep mental scarring)  Let's walk through the scenes to see how this plays out:

Extracting from Saito (level 1)
The architect was revealed to be the un-named guy, was blamed for not getting the carpet right, and was the target of the angry subconscious mob.

Extracting from Saito (level 2)
Since Cobb doesn't build anymore, the architect must have been Arthur.  This would make sense of the part where the building starts to fall apart after Arthur wakes up (gets shot).

Shared Dreaming with Cobb (take 1)
Ellen's character is the architect.  When Cobb reveals to her that it's all a dream constructed by her, Paris explodes.

Shared Dreaming with Cobb (take 2)
Ellen's character is the architect, Cobb is the subject.  Ellen flips Paris on it's head and all sorts of crazy stuff.  Towards the end, Cobb is shouting at her to stop because she made the bridge from a real place and he's freaking out.  Notice at no point does he actually stop or change any of Ellen's changes ... even when he wants to.  He can't.

Shared Dreaming with Arthur
Arthur is the architect and Ellen's character is the subject.  She mentions how her subconscious is more polite than Cobbs'.  Arthur creates and shows her a paradox.  At no point does Ellen change anything.

Fischer's inception (level 1) 
Yousef is the architect.  It's raining because Yousef has to pee, and EVERYONE knows who is to blame for it.  Also, it is why Yousef doesn't go deeper.  He does to some extent, use his ability to change things: he makes the bollards rise on the bridge to cut him off from the pursuer, and then to make the bridge section rise.  When introducing the character, he does mention that he himself doesn't really go into the dream, so I can understand that he might just be a sucky architect.

Fischer's inception (level 2)
Arthur is the architect, and is also the reason why he doesn't follow to the snow level.  When the shit hits the fan, he does use his ability to change the level by inflicting paradox on the agent who followed him into the stairwell.

Fischer's inception (level 3)
Eames is the architect, and is why he stays there.  Saito blames Eames for not dreaming of a beach instead of the snowscape.  Eames created the shortcut through the vent for Saito and Fischer.  Cobb specifically asked Ellen's character if Eames "added anything" to the level.  Back up on level 2, Arthur plays music into Eames' ears, and everyone on level 3 can hear it.

Overall, I really liked the movie (as you can probably tell) ... I don't think it was perfect, but it was really good.

I considered that, but I think what they actually did was hang the hallway vertically and had the two performers dangling head-down, with the camera pointing up the shaft.

I also agree with the critic you quoted, and honestly critics in general who say there's no emotional engagement in the film, despite it being a character's internal journey. It's not difficult to get me choked up by a story, at least a little. There are episodes of Futurama that make me misty for Pete's sake. And don't get me started on TOY STORY 3. But watching INCEPTION, despite being entertained and thrilled and in awe, I never once felt moved by it. Which is okay. Still the best (live action) movie this year, I think.