Inception Is Brilliant and Baffling
Christopher Nolan’s new film Inception has accomplished the impossible: It’ll make movie audiences stop texting and pay attention.
Nolan, the director of The Dark Knight and Memento has brought new urgency and layers to genre films, and Inception is no exception. It is easily the most complicated blockbuster Hollywood has ever released, and a large portion of the audience is likely to be baffled. In the third act, you may find yourself unable to figure out what major characters are doing or why they’re doing it.
The movie is a sort of Shutter Island times The Matrix — a thriller for viewers who thought MIT wasn’t challenging enough. Leonardo DiCaprio plays a master thief named Cobb who, at the beginning, finds himself washed up ashore half-dead in what appears to be Japan, captured by menacing security guards who note that he has nothing on him except a pistol and a pocket-sized spinning top. Minutes later, Cobb is seen (in flashback, apparently) in business attire pitching a client (Ken Watanabe) on the importance of securing the subconscious.
Cobb is aided by an associate (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who, it soon becomes clear, is actually helping him execute a con game that involves stealing secrets from the client’s dreams while the latter sleeps. Yet Cobb and his associates are also asleep during the heist, and Cobb is betrayed by a mystery woman (Marion Cotillard) who appears to be his double-crossing ex-wife but, as we will later learn, is actually dead.
I think. As in Shutter Island, the movie is a gigantic puzzle in which DiCaprio simultaneously tries to solve an exterior mystery while dealing with a sorrowful interior back story involving a wife who died under harrowing circumstances. This time the main exterior puzzle is for Cobb and his team of associates (played by, among others, Ellen Page and Tom Hardy) to figure out not how to extract information from a sleeping mark (a CEO played by Cillian Murphy) but how to plant in him the idea that he should break up his conglomerate. To do this, Cobb and Co. must create a dream world and inject the CEO into it.
Shutter Island eventually laid its cards on the table (at somewhat ponderous length); Inception never quite does, and after an hour and a half or so, at a point where you hope things start to clarify for the climax, Nolan does the opposite, constructing a dizzying series of action set pieces involving four layers of nested unreality — a dream within a dream within a dream within still another dream — in each of which any character may get so mind-blasted that his waking self is relegated to a purgatory of the subconscious or may kill himself or another person because this is the best way to assure “waking up,” even if waking up simply means advancing one dream-level closer to waking life.
I HAVEN’T GONE TO THE MOVIES FOR YEARS AND YEARS BECAUSE OF THE QUALITY AND SUBJECT OF FILMS IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICA AND THE ABOVE CRITIQUE OF INCEPTION DOESN’T CHANGE A THING. THIS CONCEPT IS AN INSULT TO ANYONE’S INTELLIGENCE AS IT IS SUCH A CONVOLUTED MAZE THAT HAS NO REWARD EVEN IF IT COULD BE FIGURED OUT. WHAT FOOLS WE MORTALS BE TO FALL FOR THIS HOGWASH AND ACTUALLY PAY FOR IT.
I gotcha, so you don’t like movies you’ve never seen. But you need to comment on them. And you call the people who watch the movies ‘fools.’ HAHAHAH! Reminds me of that statement: “A fool does not know how big of a fool he is, because he’s a fool.”
Everyone but you is a fool, got it.
Could you maybe stop shouting?
might as well dismiss absolutely every single creative subjective, intangible aspect of life, while you are at it. lay on a bed, stare at the ceiling, and hook up an artificial eating tube.
I can’t think of one reason I would want to see this. I work hard all day. When I go to a movie, it’s to relax. This just sounds like audience hatred on the part of the producers.
Gee, thanks. Now I won’t have to waste my time watching the movie.
Put two bucks on “flashy mess.” And add the word “pretentious” as a pre-fix.
Just my opinion, but have always disliked dream movies or dream sequences. Nothing has to ever make any kind of sense cause it was a “dream”.
It is lazy film making no matter how visually stunning the dream sequence.
Again, just my opinion and realize that others like this type of plot device.
ps. liked Memento
You seem overjoyed that Hollywood will evolve away from socialist indoctrination mixed with sex and violence into “Shutter Island” times “Matrix”. I am too. But films that tell stories used to me nice as well.
But wouldn’t it be cheaper for people simply to buy kaleidoscopes so they may abstract their own stories from fragments of shards of remnants? That really would be art, wouldn’t it?
Do you think hard metal rock is “art” that has advanced the state of music from the ballad and melody stage.
So, what is the point? Waking up? To what? my wife is fond of telling me about a French movie where you follow a man who has various close escapes from people who are trying to kill him. You never discover why this is so. You never discover who any of these people are or what purpose is served by killing or escaping – and the guy eventually dies from a successful attempt to kill him. Then the movie ends. So what?
It may be existentialism, but so what? There is a point to everything though it may not be apparent to us at the time or ever, as in the case of government actions; but there is always a point, an objective. If the point is telling us that there is none – again, so what? That view does not represent life unless you are an avowed secularist whose life only revolves around their self. But, again, that is pointless to the rest of us.
Television is already merely an electronic programming device in front of which most people waste their free time – time that might be used to better interact with their family, friends, or with books. We need another message about this? Or, is this the message? Do we have a digital reworking of “much ado about nothing”, if only in spirit?
Think I will catch this one on DVD. Given the description in the review, my wife will demand that I explain what is going 1/4, 1/2, and again 2/3 rds the way through the movie.
Rent Transsiberian you won’t be sorry.
Indeed – a very good movie.
For me, the best rule of thumb for determining which movies to watch. The more the critics like a movie, the less likely it is that I will.
I couldn’t care less. Just my humble opinion, of course.
having heard Joseph Gordon-Levitt and his little galpal bloviating about politics in a recent interview, I’ll be skipping this movie, as I do any movie with Leo Di Cap, Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Laura Dern, Mel Gibson, Harrison Ford, and a kajillion other movie stars who have revealed their own contempt for me in one way or another. No, they don’t know me. But if they did, they’d roll their little blue eyes, sneer behind their hands to their companions about what an awful person I am, and resolve themselves to be even more stridently leftist at the very next media opportunity.
Sick place, Hollywood. It’s like a toxic dump, causes mental illness in almost all who are exposed long-term. The few who have come out of there healthy, like Selleck, Willis, Grammer et al are notable for their rarity.
a complex and interesting plot can always snare me. But when the faces and voices acting it out are faces and voices belonging to people with contempt and loathing for folks like me, forget it.
wow..you sound like a douche. IF I didn’t do everything that some hillbilly right wing, conservative contributed to, I wouldn’t do anything.
Incoherent.
I can only wish enough of us right wing hillbillies contributed enough money, time and effort to enough stuff that guys like you would do nothing.
and things are looking up in those areas.
but for now, I reserve the right not to go to movies starring people who think the same thing of me that you do, Chris.
“Douche” is French for “shower”. if you do nothing else, take one of those.
I might not go as far as Chris in name calling, but I wouldn’t let someone’s political and social beliefs stop me from seeing a good movie. Tim Robbins is a horse’s ass, but you’ve got to love Shawshank Redemption.
Actually, Stephen, I would. I am now at the point where I refuse to contribute to a person”s income if that person has gone out of his way to insult me. A modicum of respect for the people who pay for your condo in Aspen, coupled with a touch of humility and humanity would be very refreshing.
We could take a cue from the Roman Republic and have somebody follow the likes of DiCaprio, whispering in his ear “Remember you are mortal.”
These people get rich reciting words other write for them. In the scale of things that’s not more impressive than what most people do daily for a lot less money and none of the adulation. They not any better than the rest of us, and a wet smack in the face from reality is long overdue.
Stephen,
I have nothing against anyone with ‘political and social beliefs’ that differ from mine, so long as they do not go out of their way to call me names, laugh at me or tell others I”m dangerous and stupid… What galls me is when they take time and effort to publicly say things that amount to that..
you’d be surprised how many of them do.
Sean Penn, for example. He hates people like me, personally, viciously, and if he knew my name he’d take a swing at me or call me dirty words or try to have me arrested for something. Guys like him would put guys like me in GULAGS. I know this about him, inferring it from the many things he has said about people like me. I will never again spend a nickel that might fractionally wind up in his pocket, or anyone who supports him. He has a chip on his shoulder because his communist father got in McCarthy trouble back in the day. He hates what I love and loves what I hate. HE is the one who has ‘gone too far’, not me.
Not all of them are that bad, but too many are exactly that bad.
btw I”ve never seen Shawshank Redemption, because Tim Robbins is a horse’s ass.
But you get to watch him crawl in a sewer. It is a great movie and…you get to watch him crawl in shit. Win – Win!
Great film, worth seeing. Not worth boycotting all good films because of actor’s political views. Anyhow, Robbins and people like him are funny. I believe he went to the wrong polling station to vote and couldn’t cast his ballot for Obama.
I go to movies for the same reason I go to a church: to try to learn something useful. I get as much out of a good film as I do from a good sermon. I also need to know how it ends before I’ll watch or listen because I’m not rich enough to waste the time required! If it ends in suicide or floating around in heaven or someone waking from a dream . . . well . . . I’ll pass.
Really? To learn something. It is a rare movie indeed where I learn much of anything. Movies are mostly about instilling you with the value system of those who make the movies. Of course that too is what church is about; that and worship. The too have very different sets of values.
Having read your reviews, I still can’t stop laughing about this being “the most complicated blockbuster Hollywood has ever released”. Yeah, I’ll bet. If you want, you can watch it with my five year old son, who’ll help you keep up.
I’ll skip it. The principal actors in this movie have expressed contempt for me and millions of other potential ticket buyers. Screw them.
It may prove a hit, but we’d all be better served if it’s another gigantic flop.
Spot on. These days it pays to filter what you watch by who invested time and money in it. That bunch are useful idiots and anyone wasting time watching or listening [to] them “preach” are members of a very weird church, indeed.
I’ll never understand why actors would want to alienate their audience by making disrespectful political statements. It’s weird that the studios don’t try to reign them in.
Normally, at least for non-movie companies, a CEO or spokesperson would never do anything this stupid when launching a new product.
That segment probably cost the studio $50 million or more.
I’m puzzled by how a reviewer can call a movie both baffling and brilliant.
If you’re baffled, how do you know it’s brilliant? Is it that anything you find baffling must be brilliant because … well, you know. How else could it baffle YOU?
My own experience is that often things that baffle me turn out to be baffling because they are so totally stupid, it only later occurred to me that … well, it was just plain stupid. This happens especially when you expect a lot and get nothing.
Anyway, haven’t seen the moview yet and won’t until I get it “free” on cable, same reasons as the other folks (don’t want to support people who despise everything I stand for).
Question to the author of the review: If you don’t understand it, how can you possibly have an opinion on whether Inception is good or not?
Ha…I wondered that too. It reminds me of all the reviewers claiming that MI2 had a cerebral plot, when really it was composed of a bunch of double talk and plot dead-ends. It’s not surprising that this writer equates being confused with being challenged, given the limits of his cognitive abilities, it’s probably easier than admitting his dim as a christmas bulb.
This is hilarious….the comments on the movie are of two kinds.
A) “I have to use my brain?? Shucks I ain’t goin then.”
or
B) “Damn hippies and their loud music” or “God says if I see this movie I’m goin to hell!”
Get off your high horses. It was an awesome movie from the start. One of the best, thought provoking I’ve seen in quite some time. I’m sure you guys will enjoy the expendables…maybe even Tron!
You’re so impressively smart. Bet you like cubism too. If you don’t understand it, call it “awesome” and strut your smarts.
Yeah, much better to revel in cornpone ignorance and prosaic know-nothingness, huh. Those damn arteests and their hifalutin expressionist ways! Why cain’t they jus’ stick with Elvis on velvet or dogs playing poker?
Because far too many of them are incapable of producing something like a ‘Dogs Playing Poker’. And that’s sad.
This sounds like a movie for people who think they are smart but aren’t. And Johnny your modesty underwhelms me.
Good comment. You too have noticed how certain sophisticates are desperate to flaunt their “intellectual” credentials, and prove that they are among the “smarts”, by hyping this movie. From their shrillness, you would think that Nolan & his actors are entitled to an audience; if they don’t get one, it proves America is a Very Bad, Unsophisticated Country, full of Evil Jesuslanders who Hate Hippies (seriously – where did that come from?!).
Anyway – I personally don’t plan on seeing the movie, mainly because the complexity seems to have been used as an artistic crutch to mask an average plot premise. Memento, on the other hand, had just the right amount of “unconventionality” to make it appealing, as well as a great lead & supporting actors (I loved Moss’s female Jekyll/Hyde routine, & Pantoliano was brilliantly sleazy). Too bad that Nolan seems to have overreached a bit here.
Actually, the concept of looking into people’s dreams, and digging secrets out of them, was used earlier in the Japanese animated film, “Paprika.” I suggest you go out and rent, or buy, a copy of that, and skip the overly-complicated blockbuster. The story actually makes sense, the characters are likable and, being ‘Toons, they haven’t appeared in public badmouthing America.
Ever hear of a movie called “Dreamscape”? Came out in 1984 starring Dennis Quaid. Good movie and you actually care about the characters. I don’t pay to watch leftist movie makers…I also refused to go see Avatar because of Cameron’s political views. Just a hyped up version of “Fern Gully” in my opinion.
That’s true, Larry WB, if it’s baffling, how can you tell if it’s good or not? It might just be, well. . . baffling! The people who made it might just be hiding their own incompetence behind a lot of mysterioso mumbo-jumbo; “Oh, you just don’t get it because you aren’t intellectual enough!” (Not because the thing doesn’t make any sense—perish the thought!)
Rent “Paprika”. It’s probably where they got the idea for the whole dream thing anyway.
Generally, I like movies that make a worthy, though rarely successful, attempt to baffle me (as opposed to merely confuse me through their ineptitude). But earlier this week, I had the misfortune to see and hear the film’s stars attempt to expound on matters about which they obviously know nothing. Their mindless and utter contempt for me effectively dissuades me from financially supporting anything in which they might appear. Producers, you really do need to impress upon your performers that their job is to shut up and act. You should put it in their contracts or something.
Save your ten bucks. “sometimes, there is no spoon”.
I think that sums up Inception. Been there, done that.
Thanks, John Boot. Inception just went to the top of my must-see list.
I thought Memento was brilliant. It described a character who, because of a brain injury, could not form new memories. Since he couldn’t retain anything, he tattooed his body with important messages that provided background to his situation and condition. Eventually, he ended up consciously lying to himself in order to trick himself into committing a murder. Absolutely brilliant stuff — a study of the soul.
BTW – the responses to the review here seem overwhelmingly negative and even silly. The implication somehow is that Conservatives need to check their brain at the door when it comes to culture and media.
Conservatives will fade on the ashpile of history if they can’t figure out how to stretch their minds.
Viva John Boot.
Your implication that conservatives by not embracing Inception show a narrowness of mind that destines them to history’s ashpile seems overwhelmingly negative and even silly.
Unfortunately there are not very many conservatives in the arts. Roger Simon is a notable exception, but there are others.
Why do you think liberals dominate the arts, and by extension the Zeitgeist itself? It’s because “conservatives” are typically disinterested in symbolism, focusing instead on the predictable and the material — subjects where they dominate.
But art, filmmaking, media — these are the most powerful and influential tools for conveying information and influencing social consciousness. When rigid conservatives eschew the arts, they are effectively stuffing their fingers in their ears and giving the power to the very people they claim to dislike.
Foolish.
As a political conservative who has been in the Arts, I agree with your assessment. Knee-jerk populist resentment against anything smacking of cultural sophistication or “intellectual” output is a regrettable component of much of social conservatism. But then, that view just makes me a pretentious “elitist,” ’cause I have tastes that range beyond NASCAR and Blue Collar Comedy.
I think you have it reversed, Mr. Kane. Many conservatives are responding to the contempt and outright hatred expressed by ignorant and intolerant leftists by simply tuning them out. Perhaps that’s a mistake, but eventually you get tired of trying to engage people who won’t even grant you the common decency and respect they extend to our culture’s foes. If they gave a tenth of the effort to respect their fellow citizens as they do to pretending radical Islam doesn’t exist or that people sworn to kill us have valid arguments many of the people here might move “beyond” the NASCAR and Blue Collar Comedy which is so beneath your superior intellect.
Spend your time sneering at me, give up any expectation that I take you seriously. I have nothing to prove to the likes of you.
In “the good old days”, the arts were NOT used as strident, predictable, grinding shrill tools of leftist propaganda. Today, there is no such thing as a John Wayne movie about the evils of communism. Instead, the movies are about the evils of people who were like John Wayne, and the essential goodness and humanity of the Castros and Chavezes of the world.
The pro America, pro tradition conservative voices in the arts, which I’d say includes a Normal Rockwell and a Charlton Heston, among others, have simply been STIFLED. Country music is the only venue which currently welcomes artists who do not prioritize “love of their country” lower than leftist pap. Perhaps this explains the massive popularity of country music.
But leftist agitprop in the arts is so pervasive that people like poor stupid Cameron Diaz feel compelled to carry around handbags on vacation that have commie dictator slogans on them which embarrass her in countries where thousands have been murdered by those dictators, all this to be ‘seen as cool’ by the movie genuises who employ her. Like the Che Guevara shirts. Yep, this murderous communist thug who personally murdered God knows how many political opponents is a freakin’ ICON in Hollywood and the arts’ circles.
When the arts can come down off its high horse and address more simple things, like right and wrong, and GOODNESS, and decency, then they can have my attention again. I am not brutish; I enjoy being provoked to think as much as the next person, and to feel, and to have my horizons broadened. But too many ‘artistic’ types think they’re broadening my horizons by inviting me to consider the moral superiority of thugs, killers, dictators, by inviting me to ponder the beauty of masturbation or homosexuality, or explore the magnificence of lust or agonize over the emptiness of the soul… I am not insensate, I see the value of art, but I”m SICK of their presumption that I am an incomplete human being. I have arrived at my view of the world by hard experience, pain and suffering, long hours of careful thought, eye-opening conversations, in other words the whole human experience. And it has made of me a committed conservative. “art” will not “improve me” from this. it IS me.
Conservatives are not underrepresented in the arts. What nonsense.
Conservatives are vastly underrepresented in artistic fields that have been undermined by the left–but can those fields truly be considered ‘art’ anymore?
Much current ‘art’ is hysterical leftist protest or propaganda masquerading as something deeper. Art touches the soul, this leftist agitprop that pretends to it preaches that there is no soul.
Excuse me, but it might have been more useful to have actually seen the film before passing judgment. Apparently there wasn’t anyone of the many who wrote negative comments who actually did. I found the movie exciting from beginning to end and thought-provoking in its depiction of how difficult it is to distinguish reality from dream when one is actually in a dream. It is one of those rare films I would consider ground-breaking compared to anything that has come before, similar to Matrix when it came out, and also one of those rare films I wouldn’t mind seeing a second time. If there was a subliminal political message in it somewhere, I couldn’t see it.
“The Matrix” was pretentious, overdone, silly. and that was just the FIRST one. I’m just sayin’.
If that’s groundbreaking and thought provoking, I”ll pass.
But I do want to clarify something about my comments here.
I”m not criticising a movie that I haven’t seen. I’m criticising the actors, like Leo de Crapio, who blasts more carbon into the air from his private jet in a trip to South Africa for the world cup than I put into the air with my SUV here in Texas in an ENTIRE YEAR. Leo de Crapio’s private jet was one of dozens of celebri-jets which clogged one airport in South Africa so badly, commercial airliners had to be re-routed. Airliners full of ORDINARY, NON WEALTHY people who had made plans and bought tickets for their once in a lifetime chance to see a world cup football match. Thanks to Leo de Crapio, they wasted their money and their plans were frustrated, and they had to go back to work the next week, while he flew off in his private jet, no problem. And probably gave another speech on the evils of carbon dioxide output and how we all have to cut back.
I saw the video. No thanks:
John Nolte at Big Hollywood: “Well, here’s one way to entice Middle America into your film, insult them by having your three main stars hit the promotional circuit and savage Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin as stupid and evil.”
http://www.breitbart.tv/dicaprio-and-inception-co-stars-trash-bp-cheney-and-palin/
I am sorry, are you a multinational oil corporation? You and many other people seem to take things personally that were not targeted at you. Oh wait you must be a former vice president. No, you say. Well, you people need to stop whining if someone dislikes your ideals. Such thin skinned skinned people here.
This sounds like the worst piece of pretentious BS ever produced by navel-gazing Hollywood freaks, and that is really saying something.
Here’s the Rule For Hacks: When you can’t figure out what to do, use amnesia or dream sequences. It’ll have the idiots thinking you’re smart and the intelligent people fleeing the theater, too ticked off to talk about it.
As we used to say in Queens, Not with yours.
I thought Inception was good, but not great. It’s kind of matrix meets Shutter Island. Reminds me a bit also of Cronenberg’s Existenz. The theme of dream vs reality is nothing new. The subplot with the wife was too much like Shutter Island for me, although it was also similar to the wife subplot of Nolan’s own Memento. The ending is good.
As with Matrix, there are several things that don’t make a lot of sense in a second analysis, such as the need to use machines to dream inside a dream, and many other things as well. But who cares, it’s a film.
Analizing movies through wether they are “liberal” or “conservative” is stupid. Inception is neither. It’s just an interesting gimmicky film.
I’d rather send the amount of overblown gimmicked movie to a Tea Party candidate. Someday it will be on TMC.
And people complained that Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was too complicated…
Question: how many people will try to “wake up” by killing themselves because of the idea implanted by this movie?
Probably about the same number as those in therapy because Avatar isn’t real.
I saw over half of this movie last night before I walked out of the theater. An hour in, I was still trying to care about the characters & the plot (& I love DeCaprio as an actor), but I still didn’t. The special effects were good & the acting OK, but the premise just did not capture my interest. The movie is a showcase for all the special effects they can do now with a thin, silly, over-contrived plotline as an excuse to string them together. They bored me without a good storyline & characters to back them up. The first rule of movie making is to bring a story & characters that viewers care about.
By the way, I noticed all the mean spirited comments on the political views of some of the actors involved. All of these views on both sides are a useless exercise of ego. The continuing ideological fight between the two political parties gives people the illusion they live in a democracy, where their views matter. They don’t. In reality, corporations & banks (old white men with $$) run everything–they always have, from the founding fathers onward, & they always will–unless they are stopped. All the talk in the world will never change it–only action will.
Pollyanna, thank you for revealing the truth! Can’t imagine why I didn’t see it before: Barack Obama, president of the United States, and Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, and Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense, and Eric Holder, Attorney General of the USA, not to mention Sotomayor and Kagan … they’re all really old white men with $$$! I must say, though, the makeup they use is incredible. Can’t tell.
Pollyanna,
so.. what do you propose, “action” wise? To stop the rich old white men who are running everything, I mean….?
Obama seems to have succeeded. White? No problem, new black president appoints all new black cabinet members. Banker? No problem, Obama passes draconian new banking regulations that make all bankers essentially report to the White House. Corporations? No problem. Obama owns General Motors now, and Chrysler, and GE seems to report to him, and he probably will own BP soon enough. He’s just taking them over from the rich white men.
So far, so good, for him. But what action did YOU have in mind?
Far more baffling than brilliant save your doe and take a pass on this forgetable film. It gives the dream state a bad name.
All I can say is go and watch the movie. It’s worth every penny and every minute of your time.
The more I think about it, the more I dislike this movie. Paper-thin characters who are defined by their high cheekbones, scowls, and slick suits. A paper-thin shell of a “heist” for plot, with endless convoluted explanation of “dream infiltation” to assure confusion and boredom throughout. The usual OMG ITS ALL A DREAM OR IS IT twist at the end. Soulless, sterile, and incredibly pretentious. I thought much the same of Memento, so if you liked that movie, you will probably like this one too.
Thanks for letting me know that my perception of the movie wasn’t misguided…now I’m REALLY not going to see it…lol
“A dream with in a dream”….why not something more compelling….I mean “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar” from an old fart who was a drug addict and from that quote questionably gay. Is more compelling….I contest we need entertainment media that reaches a little deeper. I’m bored of Freddy Kruger and half assed reincarnations of The Divine Comedy.
Waste of time, money & screen talent. Trite in places-Eidth Piaf trilling….father/son conflict-unoriginal. Too loud and badly scored!
Just saw it and I highly recommend it. It was unbelievably disorienting, so much so that I felt like I had awoken from a long dream when it was over.
The one part of the movie that bugged me was the treatment of the executive’s son (played by Cillian Murphy). He was, in a sense, the one “good” character in the movie, and the entire film is constructed around manipulating him like a puppet, toying with his emotions in a very cruel way. But in a way, that made the ending much more satisfying, although I really don’t want to say more than that (spoilers and all).
One other point. Since I became a dad, I’ve seen exactly 4 movies in the theater; three of them were Nolan directed (The Prestige, The Dark Knight and now this). Nolan isn’t just a great filmmaker from a visual/ aesthetic standpoint, he is a very thoughtful and intelligent director who manages to address serious topics in his movies without coming across like a glib purveyor of agitprop. Nolan’s Batman movies, for instance, work as a pretty good allegory for terrorism and society’s response to terrorism while avoiding the kind of easy cliches the likes of Tim Robbins; Oliver Stone; et al. revel in (one of the most chillingly accurate touches in The Dark Knight was the way the citizens of Gotham directed their anger at the Joker’s reign of terror on Batman, rather than the Joker — and Michael Caine’s “some people just want to watch the world burn” speech still gives me the chills). To punish one of the few directors who isn’t a knee jerk leftist because of the Moonbattery of his actors seems like a bit of cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Frankly, I sympathize with those who refuse to see films populated by actors and actresses who publicly, loudly, and repeatedly scorn the views and beliefs of the people they want to go see their movies. Also, some directors are not worth watching at all. For example, Oliver Stone movies purport to be historical, but actually distort history in the pursuit of leftists propoganda.
It is not reactionary, or ignorant to refuse to provide material support to those who despise you. It is actually quite normal. To suppose that because the product being offered is “art” excludes in from legitimate boycott is ridiculous. It is just as legitimate as boycotting Progressive Insurance because its CEO is so committed to leftist causes, boycotting Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, Ted Turner outlets, etc. There is no “right” that “Artists” have to my hard earned money.
Having said that, I enjoy a thought provoking movie as much as the next guy. I thought the Matrix was brilliant both from an artistic POV, and a storyline POV. The first Matrix movie drew on old Good vs. Evil imagery, and incorporated very religious themes throughout the movie. However, Matrix II was atrocious, and Matrix III was an abomination. What started in Matrix I as an unambigious fight for freedom and against tyranny morphed into a cold stale barf-inducing “lesson” that you cannot defeat evil, (in fact, evil was no longer imputed to the machines for enslaving the human race), and you must somehow find a truce.
Well, truce with Evil is not something that most people aspire to, and definitely does not inspire anyone. Victory over evil is worth it. So, the Matrix series revealed that the authors of the original story were frauds, borrowing religious and Good vs. Evil imagery to entice an audience, only to convert the storyline into a lesson in moral relativism. Ugh. But…
I still say that the first Matrix movie was brilliant.
My 20 yr old son called me just before I read this review to recommend that I see Inception because he thinks I will like it. And I may go and see it just on his recommendation. It sounds interesting from a puzzle solving POV, and since I do logic puzzles for relaxation, I might enjoy it.
As for those who automatically think anyone who is conservative is ignorant and reactionary, let me say this. As for ignorant, I read probably 6 hours a day, I teach in college, majored in Physics, and scored a perfect score on the SAT. So I am not ignorant. My conservatism was thoughfully arrived at.
On the other hand, I had a 62 yr old uncle, who was a very talented artist and well connected in the fashion world, and in Hollywood. He died last week. The chief editor of Vogue magazine called to talk to him in the month before he died, and after a high profile 20 year career as a fashion photographer in NYC, he moved to Hollywood, and starting making documentary films that have been aired on the History Channel, and others. He spent a good amount of time flying around Afghanistan with Dan Rather filming his visit over there after Rather got the boot from CBS. And after spending 35 years drenched in the art world and Hollywood, I have to say he was one of the most arrogant, condescending, close-minded, reactionary, and reliably leftist jerks I have ever known. And although all that is true, I still loved him because he was my uncle.
So, we all have a decision to make. Should I despise my uncle for the company he kept, and the far left views he had? Or should I appreciate who he was, and willingly acknowledge his artistic genius? Or maybe a little of both? Anyway, I choose to judge each situation independently. But I certainly don’t think it is inappropriate to withhold financial support from those who openly despise you. That is what freedom is all about. And ridiculing someone for exercising his freedom is anti-American.
I don’t know Ben & Jerry personally. And I don’t know the CEO of Progressive either. If I did, I might genuinely like them. But I still wouldn’t give them my business solely for the reason that I don’t want MY money going to those who would use it against me. I think that is pretty sane, don’t you.
Respecting creativity, George Washington, and the U.S. Constitution, I still enjoyed “Inception.” Don’t know much about the actors, and don’t care; DiCaprio looks good and is good at pretending to be normal, even if he isn’t. Hollywood phonies are welcome to stew in their mindless, totalitarian group-think fantasies. Got a bit lost in Nolan’s plot, but so what? It’s a fantasy; there’s nothing to take seriously, and their “Big Oil” bugaboo is no more trite than expected. Spending $5 for 2.5 hours of distraction from reality on a muggy summer afternoon is not a bad deal. Great special effects! Boycotting movie jerks is not what’s going to save this country – only determined political action.
I saw Inception the other day and found it to be fantastic! The kind of movie that is worth every penny to see in the theater. The wife and I talked about it for a while afterwards, and I can’t wait to get it on DVD.
Of the criticisms, the characters are a bit one dimensional. There just doesn’t seem to be enough time to develop them though their development would add pretty much nothing to the overall story. Unfortunate, but there is only so much time in a movie. Most of the characters are believable, and of them (besides DiCap, who is a much better actor than when I was rooting for the iceberg…) Page and the Third Rock guy were pretty good. All in all, the interactions between them reminded me of the haplessness of Ronin, but this movie was much better than Ronin. Just my 2 cents…