The Ashcan

I hate Inception

Posted on 29. Jul, 2010 by theashcan in Film

Simon: You know, I have to say, it’s been three weeks since I watched Inception

and I like, completely don’t care about it anymore.

Jef: hahahaha

Simon: I barely remember what even happened.

I’m just saying, it was good in the afterglow

but it didn’t really leave a lasting impression.

Jef: I get you. The mindfuck was far from tantric.

Simon: I’m just like… ok, I know, it was vague. Fuck.

Jef: I can understand that. The Big Ending with the spinning top was lacking in staying power – it wasn’t frustrating enough to argue about forever, and wasn’t haunting enough to care about for more than a couple days…

Simon: Do you think it’s being overrated?

Jef: Not really.

I always have problems with labelling things overrated though.

It was a good flick, and lots of people liked it. I’m not mad at that.

Simon: True.

Jef: Is there anything you still look fondly at though?

Simon: Well, it was entertaining as all hell.

The experience of watching it certainly wasn’t a letdown.

I just still feel like, as a movie, it’s trying to convince us it’s smarter than it actually is.

Jef: For me it’s similar, but on the originality front. The more I think about it the more I realize it did nothing new at all and then I’m like “Oh.”

Simon: Yea, I mean… didn’t the Matrix basically do the exact thing, slightly better, over a decade ago?

Jef: Right, Matrix + Dark City + City of Lost Children, plus a bunch of others I’m sure I haven’t even caught.

Someone even compared it to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and with that end scene where Jim finds Kate in her house in her brain…I mean, yeah!

Simon: That’s pretty apt actually, it never even occurred to me.

It just seems like, Nolan had kind of an interesting idea

then someone gave him a billion dollars and carte blanche to make a movie about it

and… the idea just wasn’t enough to carry it.

I mean, the under-discussed aspect of the film seems to be the unfulfilled potential of infiltrating dreams? That’s a porn parody waiting to happen.

It’s called INCEPTION for god’s sake!

Jef: I think that porn parody is kind of happening.

It’s called Sucker Punch.

(and I can’t wait for it!)

Simon: I heard that Batman XXX parody is actually mildly amusing.

Jef: I’ve seen it, and it’s amazing.

Simon: The one where porn adam-west-bat…

wait, what?

hahaha

download?

Jef: Hahaha

Yes.

Simon: I didn’t realize it was possible to download entire porn films.

Jef: I have seen every Batman movie, animated or not, why stop now?

Simon: They exist in 8 minute clips only, I was convinced.

Jef: Look how much we don’t care about Inception!

Simon: I’m drinking too.

It’s true. I mean, you can attest that the plot really bothered me the first week I saw it.

I was like, intensely frustrated by incongruities.

Jef: Yes, sum that up if you can.

Simon: I just gave up, decided it wasn’t worth thinking about because it really didn’t make any sense.

I mean, it’s so arbitrary!

And I know that’s kind of the point

but I’m just not convinced every confusing thing is purposely meant to lead us somewhere, or hint at a greater symbolism.

I feel like it’s just… plot holes.

Jef: And that’s the thing:

I did a lot of thinking (and reading) about all the things you felt made no sense and I felt that there were good explanations for most of them. But still…

Simon: Did you at all feel like… you were rationalizing those explanations? Or were you completely content with your conclusions?

Jef: I’m content with my conclusions. But the thing with Inception is that understanding it more (if I’ve even done that) doesn’t make it any better. I think overall the film is kind of cold.

Even if you roll with the theory (like I do) that Cobb was constructing the entire story from the beginning, so what? It’s not nearly as haunting as when we found out the hero in Memento was lying to himself the whole time.

Simon: Cold is a good word.

The experience of watching it actually felt like watching Avatar.

It was a fun ride.

But that’s all it was.

I didn’t care about the characters

and I only cared about the story because it didn’t make complete sense to me.

I think that’s why I feel slightly offended when people laud it with intelligence.

It’s like going to a modern art museum –

people will gush over a plank of wood stapled to a shoe.

IT’S A SHOE!

Jef: This happens!

Sticking with Nolan though — what’s kind of disappointing about it is that he’s not really that shallow-gimmick kind of director. I really like Memento, I really The Prestige, and both of those movies are great while still playing in the same sandbox as Inception.

Simon: Except Batman(s).

Jef: Yeah I’m lukewarm with the Batmen movies.

Simon: Inception definitely is closer to Dark Knight than the Prestige.

Jef: Ooh, break it down for me.

Simon: In all honesty,

if Heath Ledger didn’t die

and if someone completely average played the Joker in that movie

it wouldn’t even be a very good movie.

It’s just action porn.

Jef: I feel the same way. Ledger is the only interesting thing in that film, and the Joker role itself is so thin it confuses me that everyone saw that as a plus. “He’s pure evil!” just means he had no character at all.

Simon: Going further, I think Bale’s Batman is kind of a two dimensional bore, just like Leo’s Cobb is another protagonist we don’t know anything about nor care about despite both the movie making mild overtures for the audience to feel otherwise.

How often can you say in two huge successful movies the main character is the LEAST INTERESTING part of the film?

Jef: Mostly in Batmen movies…

Simon: This is true.

But, not to beat a dead horse

but Bale and Jackman are amazing in the Prestige.

Jef: Yes!

My god man, I love that movie.

Simon: That movie is carried by those two characters

just like how Memento is basically a one man play.

Jef: Nolan does this thing where he tries to push his characters to the point of insanity, and the person you’ve been relating to the whole time becomes this disgusting jumble at the end.

And The Prestige is where he really nails that.

Hugh Jackman is a beautiful fucking mess at the end.

Simon: And that’s what he’s going for in Inception.

Cobb just sinks deeper and deeper into his subconscious. We aren’t supposed to know what’s real anymore right alongside him.

Except I don’t give two shits.

Which is problematic.

Jef: Yeah and here’s where I think the difference is: in The Prestige we saw Jackman watch his woman die.

In Inception we’re not even sure if she was ever “real” in that sense, all we know is Cobb’s dreams of her.

It’s hard to care about Moll, or about him losing her.

Simon: She’s like the chick from the Ring that crawls out of the TV

but French!

Jef: Haha yeah, but way sexier.

I mean, unless you’re into that.

Simon: No comment.

Jef: Here’s a question about Nolan: what’s his thing with women dying?

Simon: It’s true, I never noticed that.

Either he really loves women

or he really hates them.

Jef: Haha.

Yo

I’m laughing but I feel bad because it’s entirely possible someone close to him has died and he’s messed up about it.

Simon: I think that’s valid to laugh at.

I mean, sure, it could impact your life

but to base EVERY MOVIE YOU MAKE around it?

Jef: But yo judging from the movies: It’s HIS fault she died. :(

Simon: Or it isn’t, but he feels guilty.

I mean, it’s never directly the fault of the men in his movies.

Actually, nevermind

in Inception it is.

Jef: Memento too.

He also seems to like his women kind of mousey. I’m just sayin.

Simon: Katie or Maggie?

Jef: Both! Mousey mouse mouses.

Oh god, Katie Holmes was Christopher Nolan’s strongest, alivest woman character!!!

Simon: I can’t stop imagining Tom Cruise as Batman.

Instead of a Batmobile, he’d just run down everyone on foot.

Intensely.

Jef: Lol he should totally play a Bat-villain.

Simon: I could see him playing himself, as a Bat-villain.

How awesome would that be?

Jef: Too awesome!

Simon: Yea, so, basically, we don’t care about Inception, hahaha.

Jef: Lol

Simon: Minor Nolan.

Jef: I do care about Joseph Gordon-Levitt though.

I feel like this was his breakthrough-iest role in his long line of breakthrough roles.

Simon: It was one of his least interesting characters though I thought.

Kind of a straight edge.

Jef: Oh yeah the character kind of sucked, but it was cool to see him playing strong and even action-heroish. He’s constantly more versatile than I think he is.

Simon: It’s true. I enjoy his work, but I never saw him as truly being a leading man.

But this made it seem more possible.

Do you think Nolan made multiple endings?

Jef: That would just piss me off.

Simon: Like, there’s a version where in the end, Cobb wakes up in bed in cold sweats

and Mol is like, honey, you were just having a bad dream!

Then he looks into the camera and it cuts to black?

Jef: And then Ellen Page wakes up and Joseph Gordon-Levitt is like, “Good job! You’re getting good at this!”

And then I wake up, and I want my money back.

Simon: Those two would make a cute couple.

Jef: Barfy cute.

Simon: I don’t get how totems work still.

Why do you need an object to be unique?

Jef: Here we go!

Simon: Can feelings be unique?

Nobody can recreate how I feel when I take a dump.

I don’t need to have my own chess piece.

Jef: But can you force yourself to take a dump whenever you want to? Don’t answer that!

Simon: Perhaps. But my point stands!

There are lots of things in life nobody else can recreate.

Forget the texture of a rug.

Jef: I heard Nolan worked on Inception for like a decade. This is pretty much just what happens when a director becomes a huge star, they go: “Now I can film that screenplay I wrote that nobody wanted!”

Like when the Scream guy did Teaching Miss Tingle.

Simon: But there’s a reason nobody wanted it!

Two Katie Holmes references!

Jef: She’s my totem.

Simon: I also don’t get limbo.

Is it just the 4th level of dreams?

If so, why didn’t anyone just say so?

They make it sound like some impossible place to get out of.

People are getting out of there left and right!

All you do is kill yourself.

Jef: …

I hate Inception.

Simon: Did I win?

Jef: Well, the real answer is that there are two dangers to limbo:

1) If you’re sedated, which means you have to wait until the sedative wears off, which is YEARS in limbo

and 2) Even if you’re not sedated, because it’s pure sub-conscious so it’s easy to get lost and lose sight of the fact that you’re in limbo at all (or so they say), and you end up just staying there.

Simon: But at the end

outside of Sato

everyone seemed pretty clear they were in limbo.

They went there on purpose.

Even when Cobb and Mol first went

they knew.

They just liked it and didn’t want to leave.

Jef: Right, and Moll lost touch.

Simon: But she CHOSE to lose touch, no?

Jef: I get what you’re saying, it’s not 100.

But it’s not as haphazard as you’re saying either.

Simon: She decided, consciously, that the limbo reality was better

by locking her totem up.

Jef: Right, and she locked up her totem.

It’s Nolan’s old thing about lying to yourself to the point where it becomes truth.

She basically did her own form of “inception” which is all ooh-aah and shit, I guess.

But that only shows that yes, you can get lost in limbo.

Simon: For something that everyone says is impossible

inception seems to happen a lot.

Jef: This is why it all comes back to Cobb having been doing it the whole time.

Are you really against that theory?

Because it works really well.

Simon: That the whole thing is a dream?

Jef: Yeah.

Simon: I’m not against it.

I just can’t decide if I like it or hate it.

Jef: Oh yeah, I’m not saying I like it.

Simon: But I totally get it.

Jef: As people have pointed out, even in the “real world” parts we had the alleyway getting tight and the Japanese dude showing up out of nowhere to save Cobb.

It was all mad dreamish.

Simon: See, when I watched the movie

those things didn’t seem peculiar.

I just thought, oh, this alley gets narrower.

That’s a common chase scene ploy, I find.

Or people showing up in cars to save people in danger?

That happens ALL THE TIME in movies.

Jef: Right Simon, and you’ve just entered the next level here!

Inception is about movies.

Simon: blink blink

Jef: Nolan is tying together dreams and movie making.

Simon: Because he always dreamed of making this movie.

Jef: Hahahaha.

Do you really want to go into it?

I mean, like I said…none of this makes it a better movie.

Simon: What about movies?

I almost don’t want to believe he put that much thought into the film.

I feel like this is going to be an attribution of undeserved artistic merit.

Jef: Films are like dreams in a lot of ways — they break rules of space and time, and we feel personal connections to characters and situations we’ve never experienced before.

If you look at Cillian Murphy as an audience member, Cobb and his storytelling team take him on this fantastic journey that involves car chases and strange hotels and a shootout in the snow.

None of that is real, but he has this VERY REAL moment at the end where he cries about his father. This is what happens every time we connect with a film — it’s fake but it’s real to us, on some level.

I think what Nolan is saying is that yeah, Cobb has been spinning dreams this whole time, but like with movies, that doesn’t mean what we go through isn’t “real.”

He’s trying to do this thing where everything is fake, but the emotional and suspenseful payoffs still carry weight. I don’t know that he’s successful, but I agree with others who have pointed all this out that that’s what’s going on.

Simon: So the spinning top doesn’t indicate reality as much as it indicates Cobb’s acceptance of a particular reality.

Jef: Right. Cobb is our spinning top. The main character of a movie usually is — keeps us separated from the dream (i.e. This is Bruce Wayne’s story, not mine), but like Cobb did, as audiences we lose touch with our totems (i.e. But damn, I also have fear in my life and want to overcome it!)

Cobb forgetting to check his totem at the end is us as moviegoers giving in to the illusion of cinema, and having “a moment”, to put it lightly.

Simon: But isn’t that kind of the rub?

If Cobb is bullshit

and he’s our totem

and totems are bullshit

the movie is absurd.

Jef: Well, yeah.

Simon: Like, superficially.

Unless you get to this level of analysis

which 98% of the audience won’t.

Jef: Like I said, I don’t think Nolan was successful in fully realizing this, not without strong characters.

Simon: And, to be honest, it still feels like a bit of rationalization goes into this theory.

Jef: I don’t think so though — I think there are pieces of this in Memento and The Prestige as well, and many filmmakers are obsessed with movies to the point where their movies are about movies.

I don’t think saying all this is to also say that Nolan is particularly smart or anything.

I like the ambition though.

Simon: Yes.

I agree.

I guess to me, the movie itself is so raggedy that if Nolan came out and explained, “Yes, that’s exactly what I meant,” I almost would be inclined to think he read it on the internet and was taking credit for it.

The subjectivity of art is what makes it art though.

So I buy that.

Jef: Well yeah, there’s that.

What I did like about Inception a lot was the audience response.

I’ve never been in an audience that engaged so much with a film right after it ended.

And this was the multiplex, not a film fest or anything.

Simon: Word. I heard multiple “Christopher Nolan is a genius” comments immediately walking out of the theatre.

Jef: I heard a range, some people loved it; some hated it so hard.

But everyone was talking about it and more importantly had reasons for what they were saying.

If anything, Inception kind of proves that moviegoers aren’t as passive as Hollywood thinks they are.

Simon: I mean, I agree with you

but having people talk about your film, and inciting people to talk about your film are mildly different.

Jef: I see what you’re saying. The ending was totally a nudge yeah, but I like living in a world where people like thinking about movies and reading them in different ways.

I’m happy to lie to myself to believe that’s the world I live in.

Simon: A friend of mine was like, I only have one question:

Why was that original Japanese company trying to kill Cobb?

And at first, I was like, well, because he failed their mission.

And she didn’t know why that meant he had to die.

I kind of explained that’s just what action movies do

but the more I thought about it, I realized that whole thing could have been a red herring.

The whole subconscious-attacking-an-intruder-irrationally type of thing.

I don’t know, just a thought. But stemming from something totally innocuous.

Jef: I think both explanations work at the same time — subconscious attack, because Cobb is constructing like crazy, and that’s what action movies do, because the whole thing is a comment on movie logic.

Moll kinda explains the thing away at the end when she tries to convince him he’s dreaming, like “Really? You think you live in a world where you’re being chased around the globe by some evil multinational corporation?”

Anyway. Is this long? Should we wrap up?

Simon: I never want to talk about this movie again.

Jef: And we never shall!

(image via)

Tags: Bat porn, Christopher Nolan, Cobb, dreams, Ellen Page, female characters, gahhh, Inception, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Katie Holmes, limbo, Memento, The Dark Knight, The Prestige, totems