Qt3 Movie Podcast: Inception

Tune in for our spirited three-way split on Inception, Christopher Nolan’s dreamy mind-bender. We have a “loved it”, “hated it”, and “thought it was okay”. If you haven’t seen it yet, fast-forward to this week’s 3x3 at the one hour and six minute (!) mark. We have an equally spirited discussion of the best last lines spoken by or to a dying character.

Next week: Salt…

my guess is:

Tom hated it, Kelly Wand loved it, Mr. Murawski (Dingus) was ok … can’t listen to the show until July 29 when this movie is coming to Europe…

Your score is one out of three! :) I hated it, Dingus loved it – he characterized himself as “jawdropped” – and Kelly Wand was in the middle. It’s kind of like Platoon, where I’m Tom Berenger, Dingus is Willem Defoe, and Kelly Wand is Charlie Sheen.

-Tom

The Deus Ex of movies.

/me ducks

Thanks Charles, now I have to go play Deus Ex … and see Inception again.

The ending wasn’t a cop out. The point was that it didn’t matter if Cobb is still in a dream or not – the point is that he’s made peace with himself, and is okay with it. That’s why he didn’t wait for the top to fall. He decided to embrace it, dream or not. Probably because he didn’t want to make the same mistake his wife did.

The ending was actually when he walked away from the top, the last shot is just to make you think.

“The daughter’s name was Vanilla sky.” I lol’d.

I agree with you but I think the last shot is there to make people who normally wouldn’t analyze and discuss a movie afterwards think. For some of the viewers (and most of the people around here) the last shot is pointless and cheap because we were formulating theories about what’s happening 20 minutes into the film. But for the average summer movie viewer who was expecting an action film the shot guarantees that they’ll walk out of the theater gabbing with their friends and turning some ideas over in their heads. Don’t get me wrong, I thought the movie was brilliant, but the last shot smacks of someone (either Nolan or an exec) watching the movie and then saying “We have to end on a single shot that’s going to create as much buzz as possible for the movie!”

Everything you say is correct. Except that’s not the ending Nolan put on his movie. In Inception, the top wobbles and the camera cuts before it falls. It’s a stupid pointless tease.

I’m perfectly capable of thinking without being jerked around. There are times Inception does a decent job of encouraging this kind of thinking. Teasing the audience with a wobbling top is not one of those times. It’s Nolan pulling punches just to be provocative and it’s sloppy.

-Tom

It’s exactly the same inception that Cobb used to instill the idea of unreality in his wife.

Dora the Explorer: Incepción

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrYPJ4Yc31g

BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

Yeah, perfect. The ending of the film seems to go out of its way to give itself a dreamlike quality, but there’s nothing there that explicitly denies reality. The wobbling top along with the ethereal quality of the final scene is the culmination of the ‘heist job’ that Nolan is playing on the audience.

It seemed to me that nearly all of the scenes set in reality have a very dreamlike quality to them.

I found this far more enjoyable than the movie.

At least it didn’t begin with an hour and a half of heavy-handed exposition.

Zing! Look at me, side by side with alexlitel, saying snarky things about Christopher Nolan! If you’d told me a week ago I’d be doing this, I’d have never believed it!

-Tom

Surprise!

I reeeeeally wanted to like this, but its like it collapsed under its own weight. Maybe my hopes were too high. Thinking back, I really loved the script and the actor’s performances for the most part. The execution left me wanting. The suspension of disbelief never peaked its head out…and I am usually pretty easy. Since the top was mentioned, I am in the “That is WEAK!!!” camp.

I did not hate it, but sure wish my semi-annual, solo movie outing had been spent on something else and this could have been viewed post-theater. The previews were good, though. ;) Of course, I thought Devil looked interesting, but I have not been nursing the hot-as-the-sun loathing of M. Night that apparently the rest of the cool kids have.

Well, I’ve seen the film twice since Friday and it’s been on my mind nearly non-stop since I came out of the theater the first time.

I’m not going to try to convince anyone about my interpretation, but I think I’ve come to the conclusion that the ending and the other scenes that are portrayed as reality are, well, real, but the use of the children, the strange editing, and other surreal bits are intended to create a dreamlike feeling for the viewer and create a degree of uncertainty. After all, the idea of becoming unable to distinguish dream from reality is brought up a number of times and is a key part of the story with his wife–not to mention the whole purpose of the totem in the first place.

Plus, Nolan has a history of using those sorts of cinematic techniques to play with how the viewer perceives the film. Take Memento for example. By reversing the order of the scenes, the viewer is put in the same position as Lenny: he doesn’t know what has come before and is vulnerable to manipulation by the characters around him, and so are we. Similarly, The Prestige is structured both on a large scale and with individual plot threads as a magic trick. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that he would do the same thing here–especially since it took him ten years to write Inception. I don’t think it’s too far out there that he would try and give an intentional sense of unreality to the entire film. By the way, Nolan has a wonderful commentary track on Insomnia that goes through the film in the order the scenes were shot and I found it fascinating to listen to his almost obsessive attention to the smallest details of lighting, editing, and use of sound. It’s not a particularly warm or funny track, but it’s one of the most insightful and educational ones I’ve heard.

I’ve also been leaning more and more towards the “point” of the film being an act of inception on Cobb. I don’t have a ton of evidence for this–and, as I said, I’m not going to try and push this on anyone else–but Michael Caine’s lines and his connection with Ariadne, and her part in pushing deeper into Cobb’s past and helping deal with his past issues, make me feel like this might be the case. Maybe it’s a stretch, but given the attention to detail in plot and story that Nolan has showed with Memento, The Prestige, and even Following, I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Can someone tell me what the intro music for this episode is ? It sounds like I should know it but I don’t. It’s driving me crazy.