INCEPTION - Nolan's masterpiece!

[Pipe]

Re: INCEPTION - Nolan's masterpiece!

The first 15 minutes of this film is a real mind-fuck for someone like me, who never watches trailers and has ZERO knowledge of what a film is about before walking in (I don't even look at the poster when walking into the theater).

What makes this film a masterpiece is the intertwining plot-line with Cobb's wife. Amateur filmmakers take note. This film could very easily have been a simple dream-burglary and it would have fallen very well in with the likes of very mediocre films like Pelham 123 or etc. But the addition of this complex storyline brings this film into the top 1%. And anyone on this board who doesn't grasp the genius of how these plots intertwine or how it makes this film so much better should not be in the business of storytelling.

[Why One]

Re: INCEPTION - Nolan's masterpiece!

For me, one of the additional clever things about INCEPTION is the open ending:

There are lots of clues to hint that Cobb might still be dreaming (e.g. Saito interrupted him when he was about to spin his totem). But there are also plenty of other clues to suggest that he's not (e.g. his wedding ring only worn when he's awake).

The clever thing about the ending is that it appeals to two types of audiences. Although left open, my interpretation was that Cobb did go home. I preferred that kind of ending so I went with that when people asked me whether I thought he was awake. Other people I know that are more "anti-Hollywood endings" interpreted it as Cobb being still trapped in a dream.

Some movies have alternate endings filmed (a good and a bad version) e.g. BRAZIL, THE DESCENT, BUTTERFLY EFFECT. I think Nolan cleverly made INCEPTION contain two accessible endings in a single filmed version.

[Juno Styles]

Re: INCEPTION - Nolan's masterpiece!

best film i've seen all year. hands down. i'd love to see it again. what else is there to say.

[MacG]

Re: INCEPTION - Nolan's masterpiece!

I think anyone who doesn't realise how good this movie is probably just didn't get the brilliant complexity of it.

Are you and your like-minded kin aware of how condescendingly offensive statements like this are? Just curious....

[vstm10]

Re: INCEPTION - Nolan's masterpiece!

And anyone on this board who doesn't grasp the genius of how these plots intertwine or how it makes this film so much better should not be in the business of storytelling.

are you saying I shouldn't be in this business?

[gravitas]

Re: INCEPTION - Nolan's masterpiece!

Are you and your like-minded kin aware of how condescendingly offensive statements like this are? Just curious....

You know, I apologize because I said some stupid stuff in a couple previous posts. A friend of mine, who is a great writer and great analyst of films pointed out some of the things he would have liked to have seen to up the stakes in Inception and a lot of it echoed what posters brought up here. I think it's important to keep it about the film and not about posters or even Nolan himself. So I'm sorry if I came across like this, which I know I did.

[Telly]

Re: INCEPTION - Nolan's masterpiece!

You know, I apologize because I said some stupid stuff in a couple previous posts. A friend of mine, who is a great writer and great analyst of films pointed out some of the things he would have liked to have seen to up the stakes in Inception and a lot of it echoed what posters brought up here. I think it's important to keep it about the film and not about posters or even Nolan himself. So I'm sorry if I came across like this, which I know I did.

Stop being mature, you might start a trend of decency which will not be tolerated on DD!!!

[Architeuthis Dux]

Re: INCEPTION - Nolan's masterpiece!

I liked it!

I like how much of it was unexplained. You could not come up with a rational explanation of a lot of it; if you tried, you would just make it harder to accept. So you get "Here it is -- accept it -- let's get moving!"

Like the machine in the briefcase.
Like Ken Watanabe -- Good guy or bad guy? You never find out.
Like the "chemist" -- a guy who can customize chemicals to work on some parts of your brain but not others. Sure, sure.
Like the "architect" chica -- How the f*** does that work? Who cares, she's easy on the eyes.

I did like very much how the most menacing thing in the movie is part of the protagonist's mind.

The ending was not quite as open ended as it might seem; you see the top spinning, and don't see it wobble and fall, but you do hear it wobbling as the screen goes black.

Anyway, a great time at the movies.

[lordmanji]

Re: INCEPTION - Nolan's masterpiece!

I liked it!

I like how much of it was unexplained. You could not come up with a rational explanation of a lot of it; if you tried, you would just make it harder to accept. So you get "Here it is -- accept it -- let's get moving!"

Like the machine in the briefcase.
Like Ken Watanabe -- Good guy or bad guy? You never find out.
Like the "chemist" -- a guy who can customize chemicals to work on some parts of your brain but not others. Sure, sure.
Like the "architect" chica -- How the f*** does that work? Who cares, she's easy on the eyes.

I did like very much how the most menacing thing in the movie is part of the protagonist's mind.

The ending was not quite as open ended as it might seem; you see the top spinning, and don't see it wobble and fall, but you do hear it wobbling as the screen goes black.

Anyway, a great time at the movies.

i would imagine she sucks out her brain juice with a needle and the chemist mixes it into his pouch

[Mario_C]

Re: INCEPTION - Nolan's masterpiece!

1) Obviously a life on the run, the kind of life Cobb had been forced to live was not the kind of life he wanted for his kids. He wanted to be with them, but not at the price of sacrificing their freedoms and luxuries. Standard parent logic tbh.

I thought it was the grandmother - she refuses to speak to Cobb and the grandfather is living on his own in Paris, n'est ce pas? She believes the official story that he killed their mother.
Quite a long thread (which itself speaks to the wonderful complexity of the puzzle that is Nolan's script) so I don't know if someone pointed this out already but he appears to be speaking to the kids on the phone and they are considerably older. That's why the end is definitely a dream (even if him gaining his freedom and entering America isn't). Either that or that is a third sibling or cousin he's talking to...gee, I will have to watch again and recall! Twist my arm...

And I haven't even touched on the greater Allegory that Nolan is making here.

No please, go ahead! It doesn't involve alienation, does it?

[gravitas]

Re: INCEPTION - Nolan's masterpiece!

Stop being mature, you might start a trend of decency which will not be tolerated on DD!!!

Haha, I can be immature too, just ask my wife. I almost beat some guy's ass in the parking lot of Sushi Mac the other day. He was giving me the stink-eye.

[vstm10]

Re: INCEPTION - Nolan's masterpiece!

I thought it was the grandmother - she refuses to speak to Cobb and the grandfather is living on his own in Paris, n'est ce pas? She believes the official story that he killed their mother.

wha-? then put the idea in the grandmother's head then...

so that was reality? cobb did his wife's inception in reality, not in limbo?

see, this is what I don't grasp: if he can plant an idea on anybody, why not doing it on the direct source of his obstacle to his kids, like the grandma or the governor instead of a middle person, for a cause that it's not even that personal to him... it just makes no sense to me.

but it will win the oscar.

[NoTalentAssClown]

Re: INCEPTION - Nolan's masterpiece!

Well you should then, because no matter how much you love INCEPTION it's not a film for the mainstream. It simply is not. You can tell yourself it is, but truthfully it isn't. Even people that love the movie have told me "They walked out feeling like they just took a Quantum Physics test." The numbers it will do this weekend will be because of the hype, and the big name cast. After that it will trickle off.

fail.

[Tochirta]

Re: INCEPTION - Nolan's masterpiece!

I agree 100%.

I'm surprised some of y'all are vehemently denying that there are obvious flaws in this movie. On a screenwriting board, no less.

Nobody's asking you to hate the movie. I certainly don't. But to pretend like it's seamlessly written and cohesive is just ludicrous.

The fact that we're debating plot points and character motivations just shows that the movie is not that well written. If it's really a masterpiece as some claim (which it isn't, but it is a masterpiece of clusterfvck), then we'd be talking about other stuff IMO.

e.g. the social ramifications of the movie. what it says about us humans, the theme, general reactions, etc.

And some of you will counter: "not every movie has to have a theme to it", and you're right. But the REALLY GOOD MASTERPIECES all do. Every one of them. The character motivations and stakes are CRYSTAL CLEAR. Unless they're European films written in the "anti-plot"/"miniplot" (a la Robert Mckee) style, which is different.

Inception: great potential, flimsy execution.

The OCEAN'S films are by no means high art, but there is more going on than just a bunch of guys stealing ****. ELEVEN and THIRTEEN are actually revenge pictures at heart: in the former, get back at Terry Benedict for stealing Tess from Danny; in the latter, get back at Willie Bank for almost killing Ruben. If just so happens the best way to take down these guys is by going after their wealth.

Cobb getting back to his kids is motivation, yeah, but the stakes aren't that high. There is an artificial ticking clock Nolan imposes with the 10-hour Sydney to L.A. flight that it really can be extended at any time on account Saito bought the friggin' airline. (It would have worked better had, as one of the characters suggested, he merely bought the entire upper cabin; at these there is risk of an outsider popping in and seeing what's going on.) But if he owns the airline -- and even has at least one of the flight crew working for him on the dream-heist, as evident with the stewardess plugging everyone in -- you're telling me Cobb & Saito couldn't come up with contingency plans if they didn't succeed in time? How 'bout having the pilot state some of technical glitch and circle round LAX a couple of times? How 'bout the cleaning crew be barred from the upper level for an extra 30 minutes post-landing? How 'bout telling the driver awaiting Cillian Murphy that he got held up at Customs and will be another few minutes?

Also, Nolan didn't spend ten years writing INCEPTION.

While he was doing INSOMNIA and talking with the WB brass, he mentioned how he had always wanted to do a film about dreams. They said, "great, go write it on spec and we'll take a look."

And even if he HAD spent ten years writing it, so what? By virtue of that fact no one is allowed to criticize him or the film because he clearly crafted the superior story? No one else's idea could possibly be better or less convoluted? Gimme a fvckin' break. By that logic, George Lucas and the prequels should be untouchable since he had worked out a rough back story for them during the writing of A NEW HOPE in '74.

Look, I'm not interested in going around personally attacking anyone for liking the movie, but I resent the condescending tone I pick up from some individuals who clearly look down their nose at people who hated the film and attempt to point out valid weaknesses in the narrative.

The one thing I will give Nolan credit for, though, is making INCEPTION virtually impervious to sustained criticism by having created such a convoluted and messy film. Any time someone tries to poke holes in it, all anyone has to do is talk about the "meaning" behind it all and go off on tangents about what this scene or that scene was really about vs what Nolan put on screen. I'm fine for interpretation in film -- that doesn't bother me, per se -- but a movie should be "intellectually congenial" on its surface. I shouldn't have to read theory after theory in order to come away thinking I kinda-sorta get what happened.

[Tochirta]

Re: INCEPTION - Nolan's masterpiece!

another thing:

I couldn't be the only one who was watching the movie, and while stuff happened, thought: "hmm, interesting idea, so what?"

I was supposed to be worried that Leo and his crew wouldn't get back to the real world but I found myself not giving a sh1t. Partly because the dream and the real were so heavily blurred. It seems like they spent 98% of the movie in the dream, so the dream becomes the new reality.

So my question is, who cares if Leo doesn't return? He himself didn't seem to care. Why would it really bother him that he must go back to real world if he's living out his life in the dream world with no challenges? And from what the movie said, you actually have more power in the dream world. You can build realms, worlds, have children. And if you're with the one you love in a dream world you both share and have power in, why in the hell would you risk her death to come back to a mundane existence?

INTELLECTUALLY, I might care. but EMOTIONALLY, I don't. There are no threats in the dream world.

Compare this to the Matrix. Going back into the Matrix is a serious problem for the audience. Even if we reinsert our minds back in, there's ALWAYS a chance that an agent could overwrite us and kill us. We're not free. There's a general malevolence that's in the Matrix itself. We understand this, and we root for the character to stay away, and eventually conquer it. That's not just an intellectual fear, but a much deeper emotional fear of the Matrix itself.

But I didn't fear the world of Inception at all. I simply didn't see the threat in it. So I mostly didn't give a damn. and it all goes back to STAKES and character motivation.

That's why I find it surprising (and honestly, a bit depressing) when others who should know better champion this movie as a great, borderline classic screenplay

In a way, this is what makes Inception so frustrating and hard to outright hate. You see the potential for greatness but then it makes some of the greatest, amateurish errors a screenplay can make.