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Since Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk has hit theatres, once again playing with time and
how it's distorted amongst the different layers of its story . . . today, I'm going
to talk about my love-hate relationship with Inception.
When Inception was released in 2010, I, and most people I knew, were pumped for it.
The trailers had done nothing but fuel my expectations.
Add to that, we had three of my favorite actors Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and
post-Bronson Tom Hardy were joining the fold.
Admittedly, if you look back at the trailer, it is a sprawling epic, but it feels like
the actual "team" was only Leo and Joseph Gordon Levitt, that it was more of a Heist film
with an illegal element, almost gentleman thieves for lack of a better term.
What we got was an intricate movie that spends the majority of its runtime, giving us spectacle
after spectacle.
It's a tremendous movie with a great structure to it, with multiple timelines playing out
at once, at different frequencies.
In its attempt to make sure we understand every reason why something happens, they leave
almost nothing for us to interpret.
Like a clock, all these pieces have to connect perfectly or else we're left with an incoherent
mess.
Don't get me wrong: I couldn't have been more excited for this movie.
When I first saw it, I had no problem with the technique, and as soon as the credits
hit, I wanted more.
I was enraptured by possibilities and, to be honest, I still crave an Inception anthology
series that features a different heist with a different crew every episode.
Or maybe a BBC style mini-series structure where each team lasts three episodes.
However, upon my second viewing, the excitement and love drained from my body.
There was just nothing more to latch on to.
There are a few small things I'd like to bring up, that can call certain segments into
question, but otherwise the flick is just that: another blockbuster movie, no matter how robust
its fiction is.
For someone like me that studies film, rather than letting them wash over me, this was particularly
devastating.
As long as you're paying attention, the first time you see Inception, you've gained
all the information it has to offer.
Unlike Nolan's other films, the only reason to watch this again is the spectacle.
If I'm going to fire another shot across the bow, it's a similar issue with Interstellar.
There are a lot of interesting ideas in here, but with some research, you find that a lot
of them fall apart under closer scrutiny, especially in the second half of the film.
Check out Twin Perfect's Fridge Logic: Inception video to get a great look at how the rules
are reversed in the second half along with a lot of the other issues with the construction
of the story.
Maybe it was too much to ask with such an in-depth plot that it would have some flexing
room to let you explore the ideas.
And this is where my central problem lies with Inception: the character Ariadne.
She's brought in as an audience surrogate, someone who has to be introduced to all core
tenants of the technology, an outsider that learns as we do.
But, using this crutch throughout the story, we're introduced to concepts so fully and so thoroughly
that they answer every question you might have and leave little to no room for interpretation.
Both of his other impossibly intricate films, Memento and The Prestige, have a large amount
of wiggle room, allowing you to build your own theories over what is happening both on
and off screen.
Memento even had multiple ending commentaries that played both sides of the story, one where
Teddy is lying and the other where he's telling the truth.
It's a great way to extend the dialogue after the fact.
There are several other movies that play with uncertainty in a virtual or dreamlike environment.
Hell, the Matrix or the Thirteenth Floor are great examples of this.
The closest I had seen to the ideas of Inception was David Cronenberg's eXistenZ (1999),
which is in no-way viewer friendly or, if I'm being honest, entirely enjoyable to
watch.
But there's a lot you can interpret and, while it's the ultimate video game that
they're jacked into, it has that same element of being too far lost in the game that the
players can't tell whether or not they're in reality or the game.
While it may not be the most subtle thing, the last line of the movie is:
"Hey, tell me the truth . . . are we still in the game?"
Obviously, Nolan went with a much more resonant way of getting that point across.
The other film that I find has usurped Inception in just about
every way is Satoshi Kon's Paprika (2006).
This was obviously a huge inspiration for Inception, so much so that Nolan straight
up mimicked shots from it.
The main difference, however, is that Paprika plays with surrealism, linking
multiple dreams together, using dream logic throughout and merging somber reality and
insane dreams.
For the uninitiated, Paprika revolves around a research team creating the DC Mini, a device
that allows you to record and jump into a person's dreams, only for it to be hacked
and stolen by a rogue employee.
The titular Paprika is a persona for one of the lead scientists that uses the DC Mini
for therapy in secret.
What follows is a surreal nightmare, where the dreams completely take over reality, causing
people to transform into creations that feel like a modern reimagining of Who Framed Roger
Rabbit?
Unreality takes over and the entire last act of the story is impossible to explain with
or without context, but manages to flow together and make sense, much in the way dreams do.
My issues with Inception did not spawn from my love of Paprika, but its existence shows
a lot of the issues with Nolan's city warping epic.
For the most part, Inception leans on its rule heavy logic.
Dreams do not function this way, but I'm able to put that aside.
The real issue is that it sets up these rules but doesn't actually follow them in the
last act.
At one point, I started working on a Fanedit of Inception.
It fell apart rather quickly, especially in light of the Fridge Logic episode I mentioned
early, but I had gone through the movie a couple times, made notes with quick fixes
as well as more systemic issues, and split the surround sound audio so I could cut audio
without interrupting the music.
As I've stated the problem is the rules and Ariadne's being brought into the fold.
Everything is explained to her, so one of the biggest corrections could be to strip
out her discussions, giving only the barest of information as we need it to set the stage.
If I could change anything about the execution of this spectacle, it would be to eliminate
or drastically reduce her exploration of the group.
One example of a broken system is the kicks.
If it had been handled correctly, it would completely change how the last act of the
film played out.
In the first half of the film, you have to kick someone in an upper layer to bring them
out of the lower layer.
That's why we get the awesome water kick in the opening, that kick pours water through
the castle, as Cobb is awoken in the bathtub.
Give him the kick? "What?"
"Dunk him."
Even in the montage segment, we see them consistently being tipped in the effort to wake them up.
However, at the end of the mission, their
plan is to kick themselves from inside the dream, up to the next layer, then to the next.
As an added issue here, they essentially are killing themselves in the process, which should
be taking them down to Limbo.
Limbo is an issue on its own.
But, let me ask you this: if all it takes to escape Limbo is to kill yourself, then
why are they so worried about dying and going to Limbo?
The threat they highlight is that you get lost in the dream, but they've been prepared
for this and could easily kill themselves as soon as they hit Limbo and then they're
out.
It's a mess.
Totems are another big part of the systems here.
Over the various explanations of them, we learn a couple of key facts:
One
Totems are used to verify your reality.
Two
Everyone has their own totem.
Three
Each totem has a defining characteristic, such as weight.
Four
You cannot let someone handle your totem, because that can be used against you.
What's interesting about this is Cobb presents Mal's totem as his own.
He explains how it works, allows Ariadne to handle it, and continues to use it until the
end to make sure he isn't dreaming.
So, there's a big issue here and a fakeout, but if we take for granted that Cobb has taken
Mal's totem as his own, then there's an interesting confluence of events that call
the back half of the story into question for me.
After multiple dream sequences, Cobb ends up in Mombasa in an effort to complete his
team.
During this chase, there's an odd moment where he gets trapped in a narrowing alley,
much similar to a dream.
For some reason Cobb gets stuck in it and is almost unable to extract himself from it.
In the original script, there was even more of a nightmare element to it where the crowd
had followed him into the alley and were ripping at him as he struggled to escape the gap.
"Cobb sees a SMALL GAP between the buildings at the narrow end - he THROWS himself into
it - gets STUCK HALFWAY . . .
The crowd bears down, GRABBING for him as Cobb struggles to SQUEEZE HIMSELF through
the gap . . . Cobb's moving INCHES as his pursuers gain YARDS . . . the Crowd is upon
him.
. . he BURSTS FREE.
TUMBLING onto the next street, ROLLING out of sight."
Afterward, when meeting the chemist, Cobb is introduced to the equivalent to an opium den
where eighteen to twenty people all dream together.
He joins in, only to be woken by the mysterious train.
Once he's out, he tries to spin the top to verify he's awake, only for Saito to
interrupt him and it falls off the counter, making it impossible for Cobb, or us as the
viewer, to know if anything is real.
After that point, we never see another successful reality check from Cobb.
That is all assuming that Cobb has adopted Mal's totem.
However, and this is one of the few things that helped recreate that awe for me during
that third viewing, Cobb has a separate totem that allows for us, as the audience, to differentiate
between dreams and reality for Cobb.
But before I tell you what Cobb's actual totem is . . . the credits:
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So you're asking: What is Cobb's mysterious hidden-in-plain-sight totem?
His wedding ring.
It only appears when Cobb is in a verified dream.
When he is in the real world, he isn't wearing it.
This is really the only bit of extraneous story telling that isn't explicitly pointed
out and allows you to study the film.
But, after you've discovered that, that's it.
Everything else is explained straight up from top to bottom.
As long as you were paying attention and internalizing the rules the first watch, there's really
no reason to ever watch this again.
As I said, for someone like me who studies film, it's a bitter pill to swallow.
And that'll do it.
This has been Dubious Consumption.
And I'm outro.
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