parker’s desk

It’s cer­tainly been awhile since I’ve done one of these (let alone post on here), but I fig­ured this was as good a rea­son as any…gotta love the inspi­ra­tion a well-made film gives you.

For those not in the know:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1375666/

This review is ridicu­lously spoiler-ridden.  If you haven’t seen this movie yet, you prob­a­bly don’t want to read my review.  Why write a review then?  It’s more a snap­shot of my own thoughts after hav­ing seen the film than an attempt to con­vince any­one to see/not see a film.

Christo­pher Nolan has got to be one of the best film direc­tors alive at this point, in my eyes.  Not nec­es­sar­ily the great­est ever, or the most vision­ary (though he is cer­tainly approach­ing that sta­tus level), but because every time I know I am about to sit down in front of one of his films I know I am going to be enter­tained.  Not just on a sur­face level either, oh no — I will walk away from that the­atre or pull my ass up from that couch pon­der­ing the deeper mean­ings of the film at just the right level as to think, not be left per­plexed or won­der­ing about some vague & pathetic attempt at “leav­ing it open for interpretation.”

Incep­tion is a per­fect exam­ple of this, and I am fairly con­vinced when I go see this film for a sec­ond time and later third or fourth years down the road, I will pick up on dif­fer­ent things and mean­ings.  But what makes this level of depth work is I don’t have to care.  I see this and want to explore it because I’m curi­ous, not because he’s force-feeds you a story that makes no sense until you see it another time.  “I Can Feel a Hot One,” by Man­ches­ter Orches­tra is an exam­ple of a piece of work that’s so entirely vague that peo­ple can come up with a mil­lion ideas and con­clu­sions as to what was meant — while I rec­og­nize it takes a cer­tain level of skill to do such a thing, I also think it’s even more impres­sive when you can tell a story that has mul­ti­ple lay­ers you can pull back at your own peril — or sim­ply be left enter­tained from the first layer.

Anyhow…I am rambling.

So, Incep­tion is all about the polar oppo­site of what Leonardo DiCaprio’s char­ac­ter does for a living…in the film he breaks into people’s dreams, steals infor­ma­tion and then turns that infor­ma­tion over to his clients.  He is approached by his most recent vic­tim, how­ever, to do just the oppo­site — he wants him to put an idea into the mind of a tar­get.  The prob­lem with this revolves around how sim­ply the mind can tell when an idea is not it’s own (the film beau­ti­fully makes an exam­ple of this with the “don’t think of a pur­ple ele­phant” trick…you think of the ele­phant, and you KNOW that wasn’t your doing).

Going into one’s mind suc­cess­fully requires a team of spe­cial­ists fill­ing a vari­ety of roles…an Archi­tect for cre­at­ing the dream­scape, a Forger to fake cer­tain char­ac­ters and events, a Chemist for the drugs that put you under, and so on.  With the fake world cre­ated, the tar­get is brought inside and their mind pop­u­lates the world with pro­jec­tions of their sub­con­scious.  Where the absolute bril­liance with this con­cept truly shines is the projections…your sub­con­scious mind will try to repel these invaders (like white blood cells, DiCaprio explains at one point) and Nolan does the most amaz­ing job dri­ving this home.  Pedes­tri­ans on the street, ran­dom peo­ple walk­ing through a build­ing sud­denly start look­ing at you, and even­tu­ally com­ing after you intend­ing harm to repel you from their owner’s mind.  On top of this just amaz­ing con­cept is that some peo­ple have been trained for this very pos­si­bil­ity — and their pro­jec­tions will carry guns and track your ass down the sec­ond you get into their world.

I sup­pose some of the ele­gance of the solu­tion rests with how sim­ple an idea that really is, it’s sim­ple enough to grasp the con­cept imme­di­ately and I’m fairly cer­tain that within that sim­plic­ity lies the rea­son you believe it.  Unlike a clev­erly designed plot point that was done to be cool, or save money, or be sur­real, this basic con­cept is just accepted by you imme­di­ately and helps to immerse you in the film’s world.

Another cool mechanic is how  time works in the dream world…at the first level a dream lasts 5 min­utes but inside of it an hour goes by.  At the deeper lev­els, and under spe­cial seda­tions, it can last years and years.  Essen­tially, just this basic con­cept alone can be applied to explain other things like peo­ple stuck in comas or other men­tal traumas…it’s never really insin­u­ated, but it was a con­clu­sion I came to while watch­ing the film and have a hard time believ­ing oth­ers wouldn’t have too.  Even as I write this, I have to won­der if this was inten­tional or not…I’m often left won­der­ing how delib­er­ate these lit­tle cause & effect moments are when it comes to plot points and devices.

Dreams within dreams become part of the major con as the crew strug­gles to com­plete their task of plant­ing an idea in their target’s head, and the core con­flict that comes from this is how to plant the most basic seedling of an idea that you know will then sprout to grow and become the intended result.  In the story’s case, it’s con­vinc­ing a young man inher­it­ing his father’s mas­sive com­pany to break it into pieces and sell the whole thing off rather than just fill his shoes.  To do this, they come to the con­clu­sion that they must make him believe his father wanted him to become his own man — an idea that is famil­iar if not sim­ple once again, and yet fur­ther com­pli­cated by his strained rela­tion­ship with the man.

In the end, we get a happy res­o­lu­tion — and for this I’ll not spoil, though the final shot leaves you won­der­ing how much of what you watched was, indeed, hap­pen­ing or just part of a larger dream.  I’m hop­ing the answers are there the next time I watch the film but it may be left open for interpretation..a con­cept my own mind tends to dread, I like more con­crete answers, but I’ll live.

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