Inception

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28 days...6 hours...42 minutes...12 seconds
Inception



In trying not to give too many plot details away, I'll sum up the story of Inception with this. A team of people use a device to go into another person's dream. While there they can do things such as extract information, or even plant ideas. That's about as far as I will go; it's the basic plot of the film that most people already know. Much like District 9 and Avatar (at least for me) the less you know about the film, the better.

Christopher Nolan, with Inception, has created a masterpiece. It's hard for me to heap such praise on the guy who has a small film resume under his name, but he has, in my opinion, 3 films that will never be forgotten. Memento, The Dark Knight and now Inception are all films that I hold in high regard. It's funny, right after The Dark Knight, I heard Nolan was planning on making Inception, instead of a third Batman film, I was a little ticked off. I wanted another Batman film, not some side project. It's ironic that I enjoyed Inception more than The Dark Knight.

Inception is a multi-layered film that has so much going on that it might seem intimidating. Yet, you never lose sense of where you are. Nolan is able to pull off this feat remarkably. People go into multiple dreams and different levels and the viewer never loses a sense of where. Nolan shows nothing but confidence and creativity in this film. It's not afraid to challenge you a little bit. I'm not saying it dives into deep philosophical issues here, but it is enough juice to get people thinking.

Inception had me giddy and smiling all the way through. It's very hard for a film to do that. There was one scene in particular, where I was not only in amazement at how utterly and ridiculously awesome it was, but how simple it was to achieve. The scene is the hallway fight sequence in which gravity no loner seems to be an issue. The simplest form is used, moving and twisting the set, and Nolan makes it look ten times better than anything else we've seen in recent years.

Nolan creates films that people really need to wrap their heads around. He is the next big thing. Hell, he is the big thing. He is the hottest director right now that has yet misstep. Nolan and his brother have created an original piece of art here, a crime caper if you will, that involves going into the subconscious. The creativity is off limits, as seen by the section of the city overlapping itself. I loved how they have taken things that you feel and think about while dreaming and incorporated it in to the film. In order to wake up you need a kick, that feeling that you're falling. I've felt it and I love that they have incorporated things like that.

There is a lot to talk about with Inception, even the ending, which in my mind was Nolan having a little bit of fun. Obviously that question would pop up sometime in the film, but Nolan knows not to go that route. I think it's there simply to get people talking while he laughs at his own little joke. In any event, I'll through my two cents in by simply saying I'm an optimist.

I hear that people aren't that big a fan of Ellen Page. I think she did fine holding her own against DiCaprio, who shines yet again much like his tortured role in Shutter Island. My one complaint about her is that she was a bit intrusive of characters and their dreams. The film feels a little bit like a Batman reunion. Michael Cain has a small role, but Cillian Murphy and Ken Watanabe both have integral parts to the story. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who I couldn't stand on 3rd Rock From The Sun, is quickly becoming a favourite of mine. Marion Cotillard has an interesting role and her performance, other than DiCaprio, has the most emotional depth to it. Every single addition to the cast is a perfect mold for this world.

I really loved this film, for it's running time, it never drags. It's always interesting and engaging the viewer. It doesn't slow down to explain things, and doesn't really need to. It might seem confusing at first, but like Ellen Page's character, the viewer is a quick learner. Inception is the best film of this year and another achievement that Nolan can be extremely proud of. I like that it's an original idea and it seems to be doing well, we need more films like Inception.

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"A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have."

Suspect's Reviews



First off, Inception was an amazing movie. If you didnt like it then you didnt understand it. I am not bragging or thinking im a movie buff here, because im not at all (I go to a movie maybe once a month at best). I just felt that I actually got 95% of this movie which for me made the movie. If this guide doesnt help you that much, try wikipedia - Inception. So here it is some things in random order, because I was trying to write everything before I forgot, that will help you "get" Inception. Also, there might be some things in here that are completely obvious TO you but I felt a need to put some basics just in case.

***OBVIOUSLY SPOILERS***

* ANYTHING MARKED WITH A (?) -mean I am not 100% sure* Please comment below with any additional facts, theories, etc

1) The old man at the end and begginning of the movie is Satio, or the asain guy in the group.
2)All dreams that Cobb, Leonardo Decaprio, enters are under his perception which is why he constantly sees his wife and kids.
3) Satio died on the snow fortress where he went to limbo. He is so old because of the time difference. Satio and Cobb have a conversation when he gets shot saying that he will be an old man and he wont remember the "arrangements" when back in the real world. Satio remembers the arrangements in the end.
4) The top, that Cobb always spins, determines wether he is in real life (if it stops) or a dream (just keeps spinning)
5) The time difference is a key part and as Cobb says an hour in the first dream level is about 5 min. in real life. I believe that the further you get in a dream (level 1-4/limbo) time becomes slower and slower.
6) The girl whos name is apparently Aradnia bulit all the levels (rainy city-hotel- snowfortress) (?)
7) Mal , wife, represents Cobb's guilty conscience
8) In continuation with 7, Cobb performed his first Inception on Mal which causes her to believe that she is in a dream when she is in fact in real life, since the only way to return is to be killed, she jumps off a building.
9)Everyone remebers the dream besides Mr.Fisher (the man whos dream they invade)
10)The mission- to elimate Satio's buisness competition
11)The mission was to set him free because Satio promised to clear Cobbs name...
12)Cobb was under suspicion of murder of his wife...
13)Which explains why he flees to a foreign nation and the scene that is "in" his memory where the guy gives him the ticket and he takes it.
14) A key thing to remeber is that they are on the airplane in real life the whole time, the stages there after are this :
-Rainy City
-Hotel
-Snow Fort
-Limbo
15) A kick is needed to drop down a level, it is explained in the movie as the feeling your falling while sleeping. ..
16) A man must remain behind on each "stage" of the dream to watch over the bodies and must provide the kick back. ..
17) They time the kicks : exploding the snow building, exploding the elevator, and the van falling into water all at virtually the same time.
18) They time this with music
19)Aradnia was needed as a new architect since the old one failed (why?)
20)The cafe scene was "practice" they were in Cobb's dream. She died quickly because she changed too much of the surroundings.
21) One of the men in the group has the power to manipulate ones minds to think they are someone else (acts as Uncle Peter and hot blonde)
22) The opposition is the minds ,Fishers, defenses.
23) Pain is real in a dream and real life, only death brings you back.
24) Extraction and stealing an idea, NOT inception, is what Cobb is good at.
25) Noone but Aradnia knows that Cobb has a problem when facing his past with Mal, which could and does result in an obstacle.
26) Fisher is convinced he is in his Uncles consciene when in the snow base when he is really just deeper in his own dream.
27) The people stare at you when you do something that might cause the dreamer to know hes dreaming, when you change the environment.
28) Since Aradnia built all the levels she knows there is a pipe line on the snow building.
29) A totem is an item each member carries around that will tell them if they are in the real world or a dream.
30) Mal and Cobb were in limbo together for about 50 years. Cobb grew disgust with limbo and planted the seed of inception into Mals mind.
31) THE ENDING - an amazing ending as well as many theories as to what happened. Here are just a couple
- He is still in a dream, since he went to Limbo (met Satio there)
- He is in real life, which could be proven from them waking up on the airplane, the top wobbling at the end (even though the cliffhanger tells us otherwise?)
- Satio shot Cobb and himself, had the gun when he was the old man at the end, bringing them somehow back to real life.
-The entire movie is a dream.
- The top or totem as the movie calls it was Mals, and therefore Cobb never had a totem meaning the top was false.

So thats all for now, I knwo I rambled but wow what an amazing movie. Its going to be hard to top that. Please Please comment on anything I/you missed as well as your idea or theory of what happened at the end.



Wow... You got the movie dude!!..
But guess what, so did everyone...

I hope you didn't feel MoFo is full of dumb "Movie Buffs" who watch a lot of films but don't get them.. (Since this your first post and your opening line was a bit rude..)
But nice for you, I am glad you spent a monthly movie experience well..

Welcome to MoFo BTW, enjoy your stay.. intellectual people are always welcome.



1) The old man at the end and begginning of the movie is Satio, or the asain guy in the group.


Stopped reading after number 1.
__________________
If I had a dollar for every existential crisis I've ever had, does money really even matter?



Yeah, most of that's really, really obvious. And some of it's wrong; like #15. You need a kick to move up a level, not drop down one.

Anyway, nice review TUS. Really glad you dug it.



Another great review, Suspect. I too didn't mind Ellen Paige much in the film. She did a bit better than I thought she would, and didn't feel out of place, which is feat given the caliber of actors around her.

Quite surprised to hear that you were initially disappointed that Nolan wasn't doing the third Batman straight away, though. I loved The Dark Knight too, but I would a bit upset had he gone on to do the next one straight away. But yeah, I figured you would like the film and glad that you do. Again, great review kiddo.



I guess the cheese stands alone and I am the cheese.
Bitterly disappointed! Grossly bloated with special effects, overly
saturated with testosterone and ultimately, a rip-off of two former
80's films, Brainstorm and Dreamscape, both of which I found to have
much more substance. With a two and a half hour runtime, it quickly
became no more than an assault on the senses. Once again, I was duped
into wasting my money on an over-hyped behemoth with no redeeming
qualities. As for the performances, DiCaprio came off as being slightly
miscast, it seemed to me that he had to work a little too hard to get
his lines out. It felt like Page, whom I do adore, was thrown in at the
last minute for some token estrogen. I do always love to see Caine in
small but meaty roles, this one was small but hardly meaty. AKA
'Inception: The Imax Experience' says it all. Basically, just a
showcase for SFX on a very big screen.



Just a quick note: did anyone else catch the Inception prequel comic online? It's called "The Cobol Job" and details some of the events leading up to the movie's beginning:

http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/inception-comic.html

I think this represents another noteworthy mark against the "everything we see is a dream" theory, because it establishes a world outside the film, and we see Cobb's totem stop spinning in it, as well.



Just a quick note: did anyone else catch the Inception prequel comic online? It's called "The Cobol Job" and details some of the events leading up to the movie's beginning:

http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/inception-comic.html

I think this represents another noteworthy mark against the "everything we see is a dream" theory, because it establishes a world outside the film, and we see Cobb's totem stop spinning in it, as well.
Thanks for pointing that out, hadn't seen that yet!

I saw the movie Monday night, and needed to wrap my head around it for awhile before I felt like saying anything about it.

Once again Chris Nolan shows that he is a master of utilizing film to tell stories that might be impossible to tell any other way. Unlike the disjointed storytelling in Memento, this narrative begins to make sense quite early on. The pacing is great and the storyline unfolds rather smoothly, but you still feel a bit like you're stuck in an M.C. Escher piece. That the film is surrealist while still drawing the types of audience that typically would spend money on an action flick is a point in it's credit, I think.

The film is peppered with seemingly metatheoretical comments on the meaning of film. When Cobb tells Ariadne that you start in the middle and don't know how you got there, we think back to the beginning of the film, where we (the audience) experienced precisely that. The spinning top seems to remind us that a movie isn't really reality; it just seems real while we watch it. Even the idea of the dream world being populated with projections of the subconscious seems to comment on film: as a viewer, we can only understand the actions of the characters through the filter of our own mind and experience.

It felt great to leave the theater thinking about the meaning of reality, the nature of dreams, even the existence of a higher being (is there are world beyond the one we conceive of as reality? Is Mal there?). I don't think this is going to be a big winner at the Oscars (although I didn't expect Lord of the Rings: Return of the King to get as much recognition as it did, and was pleasantly surprised), but I appreciate a summer blockbuster that makes the audience think. Unfortunately, I could tell that some members of the audience didn't share this appreciation: one group loudly complained that "the ending didn't tell us anything!" (that's the point; also it seems pretty clear that they are in "reality" at the end, whatever that means). Another girl said that they surely had to do a sequel to tie up the loose ends (I sure hope not). Seems filmgoers often expect things to be handed to them, wrapped up in a neat little package. Too bad.



Just a quick note: did anyone else catch the Inception prequel comic online? It's called "The Cobol Job" and details some of the events leading up to the movie's beginning:

http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/inception-comic.html

I think this represents another noteworthy mark against the "everything we see is a dream" theory, because it establishes a world outside the film, and we see Cobb's totem stop spinning in it, as well.
This is cool, my cousin showed me this and said it's official. But who wrote it? Is this Chris Nolan's work? I just want to know if this is part of the official Inception 'canon' as it were. Because if it is, then we can assume not everything is a dream.

I've been looking for as many reasons as possible to prove that the plot-line we generally accept as real was not a dream. There was that interview with Yusuf, who says Cobb's totem stops spinning, but people still want to entertain this theory. I just don't think Nolan would create a story in which every person we care about, and all the actions they perform in the film are operating in a dream world. It kind of negates any semblance of emotion in the movie; it has no moral center because it's not based in reality. I wanted Cobb to come to terms with his guilt over his wife and kids, I wanted Fischer to resolve problems with his father and become a success on his own, and I wanted Ariadne to prove she's strong enough to resist the appeal of the pure inspiration and creativity of the subconscious world. On a simpler level, I wanted Arthur and Eames to succeed, I wanted the job to be successfully pulled off to perfection like any good heist movie.

Nolan has been known for his coldness, a quality that I think works in some films and doesn't work in others. But for a movie that spans a plain as vast as dreams and the hopes they can bring, and forces us to become emotionally invested in the characters and their fates, it would be downright wrong for a storyteller to just say, "Fooled you! It was all fake!" We need to know it was all for something.
__________________
"I want a film I watch to express either the joy of making cinema or the anguish of making cinema" -Francois Truffaut



This is cool, my cousin showed me this and said it's official. But who wrote it? Is this Chris Nolan's work? I just want to know if this is part of the official Inception 'canon' as it were. Because if it is, then we can assume not everything is a dream.
"Written by Jordan Goldberg, and featuring art by Long Vo, Joe Ng, and Crystal Reid,


http://www.slashfilm.com/2010/07/13/...c-book-online/

Jordan Goldberg seems to be a long time Nolan collaborator. He has helped produce Inception, The Dark Knight, and The Prestige.



I would have to respectfully disagree, mam. I don't think that the defence mechanism in anyway invalidates the idea of the human mind as powerful. I would say it's the other way around, the fact that somebody would have to train subconscious gives you an idea of just how powerful the nature of dream and constructing dreams is. The fact that you would have to defend against such a technologically advanced forced shows you how far the human mind has come.

It seems that you and a few others may have figured there the film will be a bit more random and you guys may have taken the whole 'anything goes' scenario a bit too literally. I think having such things pop in and out would have been too easy, personally. 99.9% of films that deal depict dreams tend to go a bit too over the top, imo.

It's almost like having someone win the lottery and go on a spending spree with most of the money spent in one day. Nolan showed some considerable restraint while still making the film feel very surreal. I agree that there were more gunplay than there should have been, and yes, I would have like to have seen a bit more variety in the subconcious acts, but, really, do you guys honestly think it affects the film to an extent where you would have to take away a star?
First, hello from me, everybody! I'm new here.

I agree with this post a lot. Although the shooting was indeed too much, it doesn't really take away the brilliance of the movie.



Thanks for the comic link, Yoda. Had no idea about it. It's pretty cool and I imagine we'll be seeing further comics in the future which I will definitely be checking out.



nice reviews I can wait to watch this



Revenge is a meal best served cold.
Awesome movie. Interesting that there's a small class of people that didn't care for it.



planet news's Avatar
Registered User
Yall just didn't "get" the shooting in Inception.

Yeah, I'd have to say that the car chases and the snow shootout were really unnecessary--extra clutter--especially the second time when you KNOW that it's pointless. The 0-G fights were very impressive in the same way the action in the original Matrix was impressive. The Matrix was far better in integrating action into the concept. Inception had a start-stop action kind of feel. "Time fur sum action nao lolz". Not to say that this really affects the rest of the film, but if it was all gone I would not miss it.

I don't think the Mombasa chase was "necessary" to the ambiguity as some claim, in that, if these were projections of the unconscious, there would have been many more, and they would have relentless.

The cinematography was below par for Nolan's perrenial Wally Pfister IMO. The non 0-G action scenes especially were very poorly composed. I did like the clever use of rack focus for most of the closing airport shots. All the effects shots were perfect however, and, seeing as there was much more focus on these shots, it's understandable.

Perhaps the best Nolan script since Memento. Not as good a film as TDK or The Prestige by any means.