Inception

Well, I finally got around to seeing Inception last night. Even into its fourth weekend I was surprised to see how full the theater got. With a nearly full room there was bound to be a few disruptions during the show but thankfully most of the texting and talking crowd was in the next theater watching Step Up 3D.  Yeah, yet another teen dance off movie... in 3D. Now tell me again how 3D is not mostly a money grabbing gimmick.

Before I get to Inception...

Out of all the movie stars, singers or just plain celebrities on lists A through Z there have always been a few (usually in pairs) who I often get mixed up with each other.  Maybe you get confused sometimes too.  Usually they look very similar or at least have a similar character or personality,  or maybe not, but for some reason they often occupy the same space in your brain. I think the first pair I can remember mixing up were James Coburn and Lee Marvin. Do you even know who they are or are you just too young?  Okay then, some more recent interchangables.

How about Amy Adams and Isla Fisher (Amy)

or Zooey Deschanel and Katy Perry (Zooey)

or Yoda and Fozzie Bear

okay well, maybe they just sound the same but still...

So what do all these pairs have to do with Inception?  Well, one of the actors just happens to be half of another pair of actors I often misremember. His name is Cillian Murphy.

Actually he looks even more like another actor than the one I sometimes confuse him with. That makes a total of three I guess. I wonder if you can guess who the other two are, just for fun.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

SPOILERS AHEAD

Inception may be compared by some, myself included to Shutter Island.  Both movies star Leonardo DiCaprio who has major wife trouble in both and neither story is what it seems at first. Both leave you with the feeling that you need to watch them again but there is a big difference. More on that later.

I have mixed feeling about Inception. On one hand it is a very original story that has obviously had much work put into it. It requires your full attention and even then it is hard to keep up sometimes, at least it was for me.  On the other hand at times it seems to fall back into the typical North American action movie cliche with lots of gunfire, car chases and things getting blowed up real good. Of course some or maybe all of this is happening within a dream so it doesn't even have to make sense, how fortunate.

Inception is all about dreams, dream sharing and dreams within dreams. Leo DiCaprio plays Cobb, the ultimate corporate spy who enters other peoples dreams to steal their secrets. He works for super duper powerful folks who buy whole airlines instead of just a few extra seats just to make getting the job done slightly more convenient.  Cobb's quest is to enter the dream of a dying man's son and instead of stealing information, he is to plant an idea in his head, the idea that he must find the ring and bring it back to Mordor at any cost. Oh wait, sorry. That was something else.  In fact, the quest is to get the son to split up his father's company instead of continuing in his footsteps. Slightly less epic I agree but I suppose we're long past the age of swords, bows and arrows, catapults and prickly elephants so I guess we take what we can get right?

The story and process are so complicated that the actors spend half of the movie explaining how everything works and what will or at least should happen. One important safety tip seems to be to remember that if you die in the Matrix... sorry, getting confused again, if you die while dreaming you end up in dream limbo and have to spend eternity with Marion Cotillard. Hey, where do I sign up?

A main focus of the movie is on people not knowing what is a dream and what is reality.  The plot of the movie involves planting a certain idea into a persons mind and while doing this maybe the film plants into our mind a tiny doubt about our own boundary between dreams and reality.  Several of the main characters have small personal objects called totems they use to help them distinguish between dreamland and real life. Cobb's is a spinning top.

If it gradually slows down, falls over and stops when he spins it that means he is awake. If it keeps spinning like some freaky perpetual motion machine that means he is still dreaming.  Of course the very last shot in the movie is of the top spinning and Cobb has walked away distracted by something else. The movie then ends before we find out if the top stops or keeps on going.

I think this was meant to leave the ending up to us, or maybe to see if we've figured it all out for ourselves. Were we clever enough to know if he is still dreaming or not?

But at that moment I realized something a bit strange, that I didn't care one way or the other.  There had been just a bit too much silly action, a bit too much fighting weightlessly in hotel hallways, an infinite supply of baddies, too much reliance on explanation, too much confounding and cleverness or at least the appearance of such. 

At the end Cobb is finally reunited with his children who are being attended by a character played by Michael Caine. I remembered another Chris Nolan Film, The Prestige, in which Caine also is there at the end of the movie to witness the reunification of father and child.  That time it was so moving and perfect. This time I didn't really feel anything. I realized that I had spent the whole time trying to keep up with the complexity and absurdity of the plot that I hadn't noticed that it hadn't been able to move me.

After seeing Shutter Island you can go back and rewatch it and realize why Leo's character feels seasick even though the water is calm, why the guards are on edge when they land on the island, why he never has his own matches and all the other things. You realize that so many things were not what they seemed the first time. At first I thought I would need to watch Inception again as well but then knew that I wasn't sure I even wanted too.  It wouldn't be a completely different experience like Shutter Island was. You would just pick up a few more things you missed the first time.  The end result and experience would be mostly the same.

I'm glad I saw it. It was unique and sometimes cool. Marion Cotillard was so lovely. That Juno chick was just alright. Leo did well though I thought he did better in Shutter Island.  My favourite performance of his is in Catch Me if You Can. Do check it out. Now if you'll excuse me I need to find a spinning top and check something...