Can People be Dis-Incepted?
Melanie Graham ·
Aug 2, 2010 at 10:58pm
I went the Arclight to see this as-most-critics-are-calling-it masterpiece. Some of the DRAMATIC dialogue was so DRAMATIC that I got a fit of the giggles more than once and almost had to leave. I had tears rolling down my face at one point. It feels good to laugh like that, but it hurts when you have to hold it in. Key laugh lines (not giving anything away I promise you!): "I was eleven." "Disappointed." Oh there were more, but those two were my favorites.
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Re: Can People be Dis-Incepted?
I still haven't seen Inception, Melanie, and I'm still not sure I will. Its enthusiasts seem unwilling to defend and even praise the film on more than its own terms. Apparently it doesn't need to mean or stand for or point toward anything but the spectacle of its own literal unbelievableness. But I think they are secretly defending the film according to a principle -- that anything difficult that we human beings can do ought to be displayed and celebrated on the low and thin ground of mere human achievement, especially if it's very colorful, loud, and eye-catching. Is Inception, like Avatar, the standing-on-one-leg-for-ten-straight-days of our time?
Re: Can People be Dis-Incepted?
All I can say is bring a fresh legal pad and a few Bic pens to take notes on how this Inception works. And believe me, they will tell you.
Aug '10
Re: Can People be Dis-Incepted?
Apparently it doesn't need to mean or stand for or point toward anything but the spectacle of its own literal unbelievableness.
I think it's the weakest of Nolan's four great films (after "Memento," "The Prestige" and "The Dark Knight"), but I think it IS great. And what's great about it is based on that very "movie-ness" and self-referentiality. "Inception" is a movie about the movie-going experience, and how even a fiction can provide a catharsis for a real psychological trauma. It's "movies as therapy" in the latest guise of the eternal question about art, "is art good?"
Aug '10
Re: Can People be Dis-Incepted?
Some of the DRAMATIC dialogue was so DRAMATIC that I got a fit of the giggles more than once and almost had to leave.
Gee it's almost like the movie is someone's idea of a movie, isn't it?
Re: Can People be Dis-Incepted?
I'm now questioning my own existence.
Re: Can People be Dis-Incepted?
Wait. I'm sorry. I was dreaming. And Rob Long somehow got in there and made a creme brulee. But then he said some DRAMATIC things and took the dessert away.
Aug '10
Re: Can People be Dis-Incepted?
You DO realize, I hope, that questioning your own existence is quite specifically set up in "Inception" as a bad thing to do, right. Hence #5 is not, however snarkily veiled, not a criticism of the film?
As for #6 ... you are also aware that lots of movies, including some of the greatest, are stylized and bear no resemblance to the real world? And even to hope to grasp them or grapple with them, one must roll with their stylizations, unrealistic dialogue being one possible one among many (after all, who speaks like the characters do in Preston Sturges or Ernst Lubitsch movies or in "Bringing Up Baby" or "On Approval," and who would WANT them to?)
Re: Can People be Dis-Incepted?
I've always wanted to talk like those characters. If I could be as snappy as a Lubitsch character, or maybe as witty as Joel McCrea in "Sullivan's Travels," I'd be a happy man. I'd probably also be insufferable, but that's a small price to pay for style.
I still want to see Inception, Melanie. Eventually. Probably when awards season rolls around and they send out the screener.
Aug '10
Re: Can People be Dis-Incepted?
Rob:
Here's my sentence expressed more clearly "who speaks [in real life] like the characters do in Preston Sturges or Ernst Lubitsch movies or in "Bringing Up Baby" or "On Approval," and who would WANT [the characters in those movies] to [speak as real people do]?"
My apologies for the floating antecedents and quicksilver structure.
May '10
Re: Can People be Dis-Incepted?
Melanie, did you, like my daughter, predict exactly how the fillum was going to turn out within 15 minutes of the start? The local reviewer said that the layers were so tricky that no one would ever sort out the plot, even after seeing the whole thing.
Now you know about the reviewers who work at Sir. James' newspaper.....
Re: Can People be Dis-Incepted?
Ah, yes, but either way, as much as I love that snappy dialogue, I'm sure it would get irritating to listen to and exhausting to come up with, day in and day out.
As for "Inception," I loved "Memento" -- mostly because it was a human movie with a great emotional undercurrent told in a complicated but rational way, considering it was about a guy with no short-term memory. "Inception" seems off-putting. Though I'm sure I'll see it eventually.
Aug '10
Re: Can People be Dis-Incepted?
I agree "Memento" is Nolan's best film, for one reason among others because it laid out the kcimmig right at the dne/trats and its recode-everything rug-pulling moment was an emotional-impact monolog saved for the last scene.
A better comparison for "Inception" is "The Prestige," which also has a gimmick, and one related to the form and subject-matter of its story. But both films have elements of "fooling an audience" and so neither can really lay it out until the very end, though each hints at it in ways that, if you're primed, you can get but not really make sense of.
Each does require a second viewing to really GRASP, even if one guesses what the prestige in each film is.
Re: Can People be Dis-Incepted?
Duane, yes, the ending was not a surprise to me. But I was eating popcorn, a smart food, so that may have helped. I thought The Prestige was insufferable, too. But I did like Memento so I'm not a complete lummox.
I think we can agree that movies have dialogue that is crafted and heightened, unlike the way people speak in real life. But sometimes it's really poorly done. Sometimes it's so awful that it becomes one of my favorite bad movies like The Oscar, (1966). If you haven't seen it, treat yourself.
May '10
Re: Can People be Dis-Incepted?
Sorry to resurrect this long-gone thread, but I just realized that Melanie had posted it. And, well, I like Melanie and wanted to read what she wrote.
Will you think less of me when I say that I didn't really "get" this movie? Maybe it was because I was very tired. It was a very long week, and Date Night couldn't come soon enough. The dream within a dream thing got me all confused. By the end of the movie, during the supposed twist, I had no idea what outcome I wanted, because I just couldn't keep it all straight. "Memento," on the other hand, is one of my all time favorite movies. Yes, it was confusing, but I could actually keep up. Then again, I saw "Memento" before I had kids to stick their straws in me and suck away my life force... :-\
Sep '10
Re: Can People be Dis-Incepted?
I am a Christopher Nolan fan but agree with critics that he hasn't yet mastered the film making art. Inception was too clever by half, and is his attempt to have Alfred Hitchcock meet The Matrix and it doesn't work. He had too much going on in the movie and forced the audience to keep too much in their heads to pull off his "stunt". Its equivalent to seeing wires on the puppets in a claymation.
I enjoyed Memento.
Sep '10
Re: Can People be Dis-Incepted?
And no I'm not stalking FelicaB. I just keep trying to log off and then she comments again, so its her fault.
May '10
Re: Can People be Dis-Incepted?
Isn't that what the Follow button is all about? Stalking people? Because I'm stalking you, Kitty! Mwaaaahahahahaha! Kitty want some caaaaatniiiiip?
Sep '10
Re: Can People be Dis-Incepted?
FeliciaB
Isn't that what the Follow button is all about? Stalking people? Because I'm stalking you, Kitty! Mwaaaahahahahaha! Kitty want some caaaaatniiiiip? · Nov 16 at 1:43pm
Ricochet's private messaging should be an absolute hoot when its up and running. Catnip? Never during working hours Lady Ferocica.