Imagine a film in which all the characters are manifestations of a single consciousness, and the main way they communicate is by telling each other (and the movie audience) the story in which they, as characters, are participating -- while they are actively in that story. In other words, what if the driving consciousness of the picture belonged to... Basil Exposition!?!? That's my tongue-in-cheek take on a typically brilliant and enlightening shared dream post by Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell on "Inception" at Observations on Film Art.
KT says that the first time she saw Christopher Nolan's multi-leveled narrative she didn't particularly enjoy it until about the last 36 minutes, when the van started falling into the water -- the section that "marks the end of what we've called the Development portion of the film and the beginning of the Climax."
At that turning point, it dawned on me that Nolan has elevated exposition of new premises to the main form of communication among characters. Discussion of their personal relationships, hopes, and doubts largely drops out. As the Russian Formalists would say, exposition, usually given early on and at wide intervals later in a plot, becomes the dominant here. That's an unusual enough tactic to warrant a closer look.
And so it does. I urge you to join them. "Once I realized that this film's plot concerns fiendishly complicated action that requires almost constant exposition from the characters, I enjoyed the rest of it," KT writes. "I saw it a second time and enjoyed it even more. I certainly don't understand the entire plot, and I suspect that's partly because, despite the nearly constant revelation of premises, there were a few left out...."
In the meantime, I don't see why we should get annoyed because Inception doesn't contain rich, fully rounded characters. It's clearly a puzzle film that takes the usual complicated premises of a heist movie and pushes them to extremes. Accepting the flow of nearly continuous exposition may remove some of the frustrations viewers face. After all, there's no rule against it.
Indeed, as DB says when he picks up the thread, those who (like me) didn't actually enjoy the movie very much, might benefit from looking at it "inside-out." He illuminates it from within:
The notion of motivation turns a lot of our usual thinking about cinema inside out. Usually we think that something is present in order to support what the film "says." But actually a lot of what we find in films is motivated, either by genre or by appeal to realism, in order to give us a particular narrative experience.
For a couple of decades, some American cinema (both Hollywood and indie) has been launching some ambitious narrative experimentation. We've seen "puzzle films" ("Primer"), forking-path or alternative-future films ("Sliding Doors"), network narratives ("Babel," "Crash"), and other sorts. This trend isn't utterly new--there are earlier cases, especially in the 1940s--but it seems to have been accelerating in recent years, particularly after "Pulp Fiction" (1994). Christopher Nolan has participated in the trend as well, with "Following" and "Memento."
DB cites a wealth of multiple, embedded or interwoven narratives across countries and film history: Griffith's "Intolerance," Welles' "Citizen Kane," Fellini's "8 1/2," Bunuel's "That Obscure Object of Desire," Wong's "Chunking Express" and ""Ashes of Time," Tykwer's "Run Lola Run," among them -- to which I would add Wojciech Has's "The Saragossa Manuscript," Tarsem's "The Fall" and, yes, "The Princess Bride" -- all threaded stories about storytelling.
The wrinkles Nolan adds, as DB sees it, are the ways in which, "instead of recounting or recalling stories, the characters enter world 'hosted' by one of their number and furnished by another"; and the manner in which we are introduced to the various layers, so that we are "not aware of how many embedded plotlines were in play":
The most intricate embedding takes place in the final seventy-five minutes, most of the second half of the film. Instead of a train, a plane. Instead of four dreamers, six: the target young Fischer, plus all the members of the team, including Ariadne, who will monitor Cobb's subconscious. Each team member hosts one story world, the other members enter it, and Fischer gets to populate it. Yusuf the chemist hosts the rainy car chase that leads to the van's descent to the river. Arthur the point man hosts the hotel scene in which Cobb accosts Fischer. Eames the Forger (or rather the imposter) hosts the snow fortress siege, in which Fischer is induced to confront his dying father (thinking he is entering the dream of the family confidant Browning). Finally, to pursue Mal, Cobb and Ariadne plunge into the beachfront/ metropolis zone of Limbo constructed by the couple during their dream days. It's then revealed that Cobb brought about his wife's idée fixe by planting the idea that dreams could become reality; this showed him, with tragic consequences, that inception could work.
I find these aspects of "Inception" clever -- in some respects ingenious -- even while they didn't add up (or multiply or divide) to a particularly compelling movie experience -- especially when compared to some of its predecessors. Nolan has said he sees it as a metaphor for the process of moviemaking, and perhaps the story is designed (like Ariadne's architecture) for the very purpose of showcasing some tricky storytelling devices. It actually feels that way to me -- that the idea of telling a multileveled story came first, and provided the rationale for the movie. Once Nolan built the structure, he simply populated it with actors.
So, I understand (as various online infographics have illustrated) who is hosting which level -- I just don't see why it matters. The rules, and the dreams themselves, strike me as rather arbitrary. What is so Eamesian (Tom Hardy is my favorite on-screen presence, along with Marion Cotillard's Mal) about the snow fortress? Or, wait, is he only hosting that as a Browning forgery, in which case it would be Browning-esque? No, but they're all designed by Ariadne and populated by Fischer, so... so what? Once you put all the pieces together, where does it get you?
DB admires Nolan's use of narrative structures and techniques (from embedded stories to classical crosscutting):
In sum, as ambitious artists compete to engineer clockwork narratives and puzzle films, Nolan raises the stakes by reviving a very old tradition, that of the embedded story. He motivates it through dreams and modernizes it with a blend of science fiction, fantasy, action pictures, and male masochism. Above all, the dream motivation allows him to crosscut four embedded stories, all built on classic Hollywood plot arcs. In the process he creates a virtuoso stretch of cinematic storytelling [in the synchronized kick climax].
David Denby in The New Yorker sees it differently:
Christopher Nolan, the British-born director of "Memento" and of the two most recent Batman movies, appears to believe that if he can do certain things in cinema--especially very complicated things--then he has to do them. But why? To what end? His new movie, "Inception," is an astonishment, an engineering feat, and, finally, a folly. Nolan has devoted his extraordinary talents not to some weighty, epic theme or terrific comic idea but to a science-fiction thriller that exploits dreams as a vehicle for doubling and redoubling action sequences.
"Inception" (not unlike "Splice," a messy, failed film that also took some interesting risks of a different sort) serves as further proof of my maxim that you don't have to particularly like a movie in order to find it worthy of analysis and discussion. This was a movie about which I didn't feel I had much to say upon leaving the theater, but it's generated quite a lot of debate here and all over the Intertubes.
Both KT and DB seem to have enjoyed watching "Inception" more than I did (they went back a second time!), but DB notes:
As Kristin hints, the whole thing might actually be complicated rather than complex; instead of a dense but coherent cluster of principles we might have a shiny contraption, bolting on new premises as it hurtles along.
Nonetheless, if current excitement about this movie is any measure, Nolan has pulled off the big balancing act. The film is redundant and familiar enough to let most of us follow the main trajectories on the first pass. Yet it's enigmatic, elliptical, and equivocal enough to keep many of us talking about it. . . and watching it again. Recidivism, thy name is "Inception."
And there's another fascinating architectural feature of "Inception": It's designed to encourage repeat viewing -- in theaters and, eventually, at home. And if your goal is to engineer a product that will generate maximum revenues (it's spent three weeks topping the box-office charts), that's a smart way to go about it.
26 Comments
i believe you should substitute convoluted for complicated and complicated for complex. inception never achieves the grace of what bordwell imagines; dominated states, levels assigned to an individual's are obliquely known or completely proven (cobb's basement), instead the film is awash in meaningless jabber (the rotor of the helicopter leads to fischer's pic that leads to the pinwheel, how you assign it's value is subjective not objective). it's junk food film under the pretense of literary compositing. cutter's line is "you all want to be fooled" and here it's in full effect
I was surprised that Mr. Bordwell forgot The Saragossa Manuscript, which you mentioned above, Jim. That to me is the epitome of multi-level narrative, "puzzle" filmmaking. What a trip.
Yeah, amazing movie. I think the successor to that film is Six Degrees of Separation, which has a similar flashbacks-within-flashbacks structure.
I go back forth between wondering why some people are so head over heels about Inception and seeing it as really obvious. When I'm feel it's obvious: everybody dreams, everybody experiences guilt, everybody creates their own irrational scenarios in order to deal with the negative feelings in life. There are many phenomenal movies that deal with these subjects much more gracefully and with more emotional impact than Inception (films by Lynch, Bergman, Fellini, and many others), but most people don't want to sit through these movies. They're too weird, too slow, or too confusing. And there's not much action to speak of. Nolan delivers a watered-down, actioned-up film in this vein and people are responding because they've never seen it before. It's kind of like a blind man who is seeing for the first time being amazed by the color eggshell white.
But I sure am glad that I can discuss the film here. I don't know when it happened, or if it's always been this way, but the comments on imdb are pretty horrendous (Example thread title: "If Inception is bad how come I keep going to see it?")
"It's kind of like a blind man who is seeing for the first time being amazed by the color eggshell white."
That's pretty condescending. Why can't you enjoy Lynch, Fellini, Bergman AND Inception? I do.
For someone who (and this is me assuming by the filmmakers you mention) likes his/her movie characters complex and multidimensional, you do seem to reduce real people to stereotypes.
But that's how the internet works, I suppose.
My comment isn't meant to be condescending toward the people who really like Inception, nor do I say that one can't like the filmmakers I mention and still like Inception (Roger Ebert is a good example). I'm thinking of it in very broad terms. I think it's a phenomenon because most people avoid or never hear of films that have to do with the unconscious, so when they see Nolan's watered-down take on the subject it seems groundbreaking. We can agree all day that it's better to have an Inception than a Transformers, or say Nolan should be given credit for making a smart summer action movie, but I still find the movie itself to be one note all the way through. And for it's length and grandiose conceptions, very little actually happens in terms of story, character-arcs, etc.
Gosh Jim, just watch the film a second time. You just might enjoy it a whole lot better the next time around. I know I did.
Hey isn't the Josh Tyler who help make the infogrpahic also the same guy who wrote Ignore The Dark Knight At Your Own Peril? I'm scared to read anything coming from that mentality.
Western civilization has become self-destructive, and that is the problem. It wants to dignify the 'end of history' real bad. Its nihilists see something audacious and new, their first instinct is to tear it down. This why you end up with too much safe material nowadays, of which Inception is NOT one of those.
I think you touch on something very interesting.
There certainly seems to be a case for your claim. And if Inception is seen through that lens, it must be given credit for a big-budget Hollywood picture with a brain, that is refreshingly original. In all discussions about Inception, I have always tried to point that out; I would rather see a new Inception (warts and all) every summer than a new Transformers sequel.
But there is another trend, isn't there? Perhaps two.
First, we seem to love proclaiming everything new and mildly exciting as 'great' or even 'the best of all time'. A friend of mine, after seeing Inception, told me that he was convinced that Nolan will eventually go down as the best director of all time. I hadn't seen the picture at the time, but now that I have, I have to wonder what my friend was thinking. This picture gave him that impression?!
Second, all debates about film are now at least partially debates on fanboyism/Whitesque contrarianism/bias. It seems as though no one is able to just have an opinion, no matter how well-informed. Although Jim's critiques are much more well-written and well-defined than many of the people who defend the picture, they seem to carry less weight. People just do not want to listen/read/learn. The other opinion is attacked militantly, almost as an enemy. This is true in all things, starting with politics and ending up here, on Scanners.
I don't know how much sense this makes, and if it is appropriate for this post, but your comment about western civilization and the trend towards nihilism and tearing down greatness made me think of these other trends.
The further I get from this film, the more it feels like Titanic: a fairly simplistic film populated by flat characters that relies entirely on impressive visual spectacle and a cleverly nested narrative but is otherwise a film with nothing much to say. I enjoy spectacle as much as the next filmgoer, but I simply don't think this film will stand the test of time.
I'm glad people love this film so much, but the ground-breaking achieve they describe is nothing like the film I saw.
"but the ground-breaking achieve they describe is nothing like the film I saw."
I think ground-breaking may be the wrong word for Inception. What it is dong is going back to the idea of making wide-appealing films (and by wide-appealing, I mean appealing to a wide-range of ages and to both genders) that go beyond entertainment.
Hollywood used to make those films but in the past 10 years or so, it seems only a handful of films have attempted that. Inception's success commerciall moreso critically is what could potentially make it an important film for Hollywood cinema because there is now more hope for ambitious big-budget films.
Now, some people may not care for blockbusters, so perhaps Inception doesn't seem that groundbreaking. Which is fine. But for those who very much enjoy blockbusters, Inception could potentially be something that changes things, and in a very good way.
I posted this in a previous Scanners thread... It's much more appropriate for here. So I hope you'll excuse the re-post:
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1939332
^The "Inception" characters trying to figure out the movie they are in... while they are in it. Also a sequel to "The Dark Knight Is Confused," another Nolan movie designed to confuse you into having to pay to see it again so you can be further confused into paying to see it again, at which point you may start to get that it's just confusing or you may become utterly lost to the loophole abyss. Enjoy.
Ps. Hardy and Cotillard were my favorites too! Between this and "Bronson," Hardy looks like a very solid, committed and witty yet unpretentious character actor and Cotillard, based on her creepy yet touching ghost performance here and "that Lynch purse commercial," needs to work again with Mr. Lynch!
I find the entire discussion around Inception extremely interesting but there is a little detail that keeps nagging at me:
The statement that Nolan is telling a complex story and that it is hard to keep up, is being repeated again and again, even by people who (as in this case) have seen the movie more than once. In this particular case, it is used to explain the choices Nolan made, and generally speaking, it seems hardly to be contested.
And I just fail to see that all, which makes me somewhat wary of any opinions I have of the movie since I feel I might have missed something big.
My impression was that essentially everything in it is told very straight-forward (if one has knows heist-movies and the matrix, for instance), with certain "twists" hinted at long before they'll actually happen and that the only thing that is makes the plot somewhat more difficult to follow is the confused directing - which is one of the problems I have with the film :)
I'll try to figure out what people are saying later, but for now, I want to add onto David Denby, of the New Yorker, said, which is the following:
I think art should praise art itself.
It's not music if it doesn't praise music itself.
It's not cinema if it doesn't praise cinema itself.
Maybe it [Inception] is about cinema itself, but I'm not so sure that it PRAISES cinema itself.
By far the most interesting comment that anyone has made about "Inception" is one made on a previous post from this blog (I'm sorry that I lack the diligence to go back and find it), in which the person commenting suggested that "Inception" could really be about film-making. Film-making, that is, in the sense of creating an alternate reality, and having a viewer accept this fantasy as reality for a few hours or perhaps even longer. So even if "Inception" does not praise film, it (sort of) questions film. So can you discuss film without praising it? Is questioning film as worthwhile of an achievement as praising it? (Non-rhetorical questions, of course. Your comment got me thinking a bit, and these are the thoughts that came up)
A little more detail would be nice as to how "Inception" does or does not "praise" cinema. In fact, if you could let me know how to figure out if any movie is "praising" cinema so I can delete any that aren't from my favourite movies - because, you know, cinema is supposed to praise itself all the time.
Anyway, I dunno if it counts as "praising," but think of the scene where Ellen Page flips the city. Once it's already been done, there are a couple shots of Page and DiCaprio looking up, and a couple isolated shots of the "sky city"...anyway, the thing is, those shots just show the city by itself - not even the back of Page's head looking up at it - so that the camera is clearly just looking down rather than up. These shots - fairly ordinary - become sort of amazing because of A) what came before and B) the angle at which the camera views its subject. I think it makes a pretty strong case for the, I dunno, PERSUASIVE POWERS of ze Cinema...
As far as art praising art itself concerning cinema, I suppose an example would be, since you would have all of these elements, there would be music praising itself (which you can perceive by counting along with it; it will transcend mere counting); images praising themselves; perhaps effortless camera-swinging; the actors praising acting itself (which you can also tell by counting); all of these happening, not necessarily happening simultaneously, but always praising cinema itself (you could probably tell all this by counting; well I know you can with music).
Okay, so that didn't help too much.
Art is the illusion of spontaneity (japanese proverb; I didn't just read that, I looked for it after I already knew that was what art was...and there it was). So, I suppose this means that art is praising spontaneity itself. God is spontaneity (I've read as a theory); so you might also say that the artist is someone praising God by, in another sense, creating an object of spontaneity as though they were God
This means that art has a strategy. A best strategy I think would be a cool emotional detachment, which could kind of contain great intensity or very little intensity; it all helps the spontaneity, and it all can contain it without imploding or exploding. I suppose with great cinema it would be praising all the elements above, which is really at the service of praising spontaneity, by praising spontaneity through said elements, which would be praising the ability to accept spontaneity with coolness.
What do we like in our leaders? We like a grown-up who can be cool whether it's very intense or not. We like them if they can be intense while being cool or being cool while being intense; so I suppose art is perhaps also a philosophy of what we'd like to be by embodying it or perhaps is praising God who wants us to be ourselves, which would embody it in this way.
Maybe we can forget that last paragraph. But the other parts can stay. Is it still pretty vague?
Okay, then the illusion of spontaneity would mean that pauses would feel like the rug has been pulled out from beneath one's feet (as Mozart said, the space between the notes is just as important as the notes) and the parts that aren't pauses would be praising spontaneity by scintillating little parts here and there while the process itself should also be praised, which you can tell by kind of counting; you have to be active with the process with how it was made to see the praising, which I think would involve numbers; Shakepeare has iambic pentameter and I don't think cinema or probably even life can escape the numbers; click my name if you want to see what I mean.
It's about the journey not the destination, or the journey IS the destination.
"And there's another fascinating architectural feature of 'Inception': It's designed to encourage repeat viewing -- in theaters and, eventually, at home. And if your goal is to engineer a product that will generate maximum revenues (it's spent three weeks topping the box-office charts), that's a smart way to go about it."
I thought the "ending" (and indeed, most of the film) was a cheat, perplexing us for the sake of perplexing us. If I'm to choose my poison, however, I'd much rather see people going back and re-watching a film because it is challenging than because it contains cheap visual gimmicks like 3D. (Even if the challenge is primarily the result of a complacent and sloppy script...)
I´m surprised about what some people say about the plot of "Inception": that it doesn´t add up to anything else than smoke and mirrors.
I suffered from schizophrenia for many years of my life, and maybe I will again, even though I feel healthy these days, and this movie filled me with deep sadness because some time ago I had experienced dreams that felt like reality even when I was awake. It was a terrible feeling, knowing that you don´t sleep but are lost in a world of psychotic nightmares, where you don´t know anymore what is real and what is not - and "Inception" brought this feeling back to me.
That´s why I think of it a a powerful film. The hero of "Inception" can´t wake up anymore, he can´t dream anymore, he´s floating between these two worlds, his life is hell.
This is what I took with me after watching this movie, and it´s enough to make me frightened for weeks or even months.
I've seen you describe this movie as what is essentially an intricate puzzle box on this blog again and again and that's why you don't like it much. It's much to clever but not actually "good". That is precisely why I like it so much. We see lots of good movies that touch upon our emotions; it's nice to see a good movie so focused on something else. A cool puzzle. Maybe the movie you wanted to watch cares more about its characters and themes then its storytelling structure and rules. That's not the movie Nolan wanted to make. He's one of the few masters of puzzle-like storytelling and this is a return to form for Nolan after his disappointing take on the Batman franchise. Nolan's Memento is still the king of this type of movie but this is certainly a good entry. I'm glad there's a talented film maker out there who cares about this type of movie.
What if "Inception" had been more like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1D3a5eDJIs&feature=related
Now THAT would have been interesting.
"Nolan has said he sees it as a metaphor for the process of moviemaking, and perhaps the story is designed (like Ariadne's architecture) for the very purpose of showcasing some tricky storytelling devices."
When did Nolan say this? Can you link me?
Whether he said it out loud or not (I dunno if he did), it's pretty clear watching the movie that that's what he's going for. But I think what's important to remember is that Nolan is a pop filmmaker who loves pop filmmaking and that's the kind of filmmaking that "Inception" is a metaphor for. A Tarantino or a Scorsese will let you know he's behind the camera, and that watching the movie is sort of a process of communication between you and him, but those aren't the kind of movies Nolan makes. By not expressing an immediate point of view on the material with his camera, Nolan makes it about the material itself, the story, so we're not thinking about what the artist is saying, and the story engenders our experience of it. This is why Nolan is so divisive, I think, because if you don't like heist movies just for the sake of heist movies, or superhero movies...or movies in general...than you probably won't respond to his stories.
"Inception," is at once Nolan's most self-conscious movie and his most baffling, cold and distant (note: I haven't seen "Following"). In the way that Ghostface Killah's rapping is simultaneously a statement on itself ("I'm the best") and proof of that statement (he is the best), "Inception's" story is about "Inception," which is about the process of story-telling and story-hearing, which is what almost every movie is about, when it all comes down to it. No wonder we can't tell what's real, even if we know that kids = good.
I'm not sure how you can say the film doesn't have much to say when the underlying theme and an entire monologue is devoted to the nature of reality. It is perhaps not as relevant to us as an audience (internet addiction being about the closest you could get to Cobb's struggle) but it is there.
But even if Inception didn't say anything at all it doesn't need to to be a great movie. It might just be a unique heist film like Raiders of the Lost Ark which is as well regarded today as it was when it came out nearly 30 years ago.
I would say the Powell/Pressburger film "A Matter of Life and Death" has a lot in common with "Inception," both about a single story that occurs on different levels of existence (also: "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me" in the way the dreams have a direct effect on the reality).
Fans of the P/P film will remember that film's use of vibrant colour for the real-life scenes and relatively unspectacular black and white for the dream sequences. I think Nolan's use of the same "realism" (for lack of a better word) for both the dream and reality sequences in "Inception" is just as original, though in a completely different way. I'm not one who thinks Nolan is tricking us, I think what's real is supposed to be real and what's a dream is supposed to be a dream, but since it's all presented in exactly the same style, with about the same degree of realism, it allows the audience to view it "of a piece." The nature of dreams (which in this movie are a stand-in for movies, TV, video games or the internet) and the nature of reality are intermingled in "Inception," which is obviously a big part of the film's theme.
This is what I've come to about the last shot: the top wobbles. When you see a top wobble, you know it's going to fall. But since Nolan ends the movie some seconds before that happens, the top does not fall. Sure, we know it "will," but the top ceases to exist after the final black-out, and so it's forever spinning. I think that counts as a statement, or a metaphor, about something. God I love that movie.
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