Ok. Part 1 is a poorly written, unorganized review of Inception. Part 2 more of the same ole' day to day.

PART 1

I tried to write this post a couple of hours ago and found I couldn’t really get beyond hysterical exclamations of “that was so freakin awesome” and “wow that movie totally blew my mind”. I calmed down after a couple of minutes then frantically ran screaming back towards the local cinema, praying that there was a show time within the next five minutes. There wasn’t, so, dejectedly, I stumbled my way back to my room. It is my goal to try and write a review of this movie that coolly, objectively examines which aspects of the film succeed and which don’t. Here’s a spoiler—I believe this film succeeds. Another spoiler. In order for any of this post to make sense you probably will need to have seen the movie first. It still probably won’t make sense. Whatever. You can skip straight to the end of the post where I talk about how much I miss playing guitar.

I would like to address some prospective critiques of the movie:
1—the characters are pretty much caricatures created solely for the purpose of allowing a bunch of crazy special effects to be made into a movie. They don’t develop and they don’t have unique personalities. If you exchanged one character for any other, the movie wouldn’t be changed in any significant way.

2—the dreamscape that Nolan creates is far too rigid and structured. It follows too closely the actual rules of the real world to be an effective artistic representation of being in a dream. Fair enough.

3—the movie is overburdened by the complexity of the plot. This results in far too much expositional dialogue. Sure.

Now I will try to argue against each point (to varying degrees of effectiveness, I’m sure) in sequence.

1—I felt the human component was actually one of the most effective parts of the movie. In fact, Inception felt a lot like Shutter Island. In both films, the audience is given, bit by bit, pieces of information about the protagonist (played, in both films, by Leonardo DiCaprio). In both films, the audience is constantly forced to question what is real and what isn’t. In both films, much of the emotional pull of the story comes from the interaction between the main character, his deceased wife, and his children. In both cases the husband looks on as his wife becomes insane. Both movies make extensive use of flashbacks to develop the main character’s backstory. But I digress. Both films do it because it works. Call the emotional attachment with Cobb contrived (it effectively utilizes the “aww cute babies” syndrome, an irrational reaction to the sight of small children, to create a sympathetic main character). Call it cheap. After all, the entire movie works on the premise that Cobb, a man effectively banished from the United States, will try anything to get back to his children in America. Just don’t deny that it works. Everyone wants the father to be reunited with his kids. The motivation works. However, not much attention is given to the father / children relationship. Far more of the film fixates on the romantic relationship between him and his wife, beautifully and hauntingly portrayed by Marion Cotillard. This relationship focuses to a large degree on the disjoint between Cobb’s projection of his wife and what she actually was like (another similarity between Inception and Shutter Island). Again, the interaction between the characters works. Cotillard plays her role with the perfect mixture of insanity, sadness, charm, and allure (you’re going to have to see it to find how that mix plays out). DiCaprio does an excellent job, as usual, playing a man wracked with unresolved guilt. It works. The relationship works. The movie is initiated, driven, and concluded by Cobb’s relationship with his family. No, this is not an insightful examination of human psychology. Yes, it has fairly simple desires and motivations for its characters, paying a minimal amount of attention to creating well rounded human beings. Yes, it uses the most efficient means conceivable to connect with its audience (a husband lost his wife, a husband can’t see his children). Yes, characters coast on the charm of the actors rather than the emotional resonance of the script (Ellen Page is very very very charming). And yes, despite all my previous qualifications, this movie works. People were getting weepy (maybe it was just me) by the end of the film. In my book that’s a resounding success.

2—Nolan wasn’t trying to create a film with a dreamy, surreal aesthetic. He was trying to make an awesome science fiction movie that blew people’s minds and stuff. You can’t throw an audience into a completely unfamiliar world and expect them to follow you along through a complicated, intricate maze of plot. The world has to make sense. It has to be different enough from reality to be amazing and interesting yet understandable to the audience. In this movies case, the plot AND the world was extraordinarily complex. One of the most spectacular parts of the movie was that Nolan was able to extensively exposit while holding the interest of the audience and developing the bamboozling plot. There had to be strict rules to the dream world. The audience was expecting as much. It’s like Star Wars. Lasers don’t make sounds. Stuff exploding in space doesn’t make noise. However, it would be pretty dull to watch Star Wars without the zooming sounds and the zapping laser noises. The audience expects there to be sound, so there is sound. Similarly, the audience expects dreams to be fairly logical, with the exception of a twist. There should be one twist. Maybe everything is a different color or people wear bizarre costumes and play sports using hedgehogs as balls. In this movies case, the twist generally involves messing with gravity. It makes sense. It works. It gives the film a unique visual style while simultaneously allowing for the creation of tension through the character’s interactions with the dream world. It is unfamiliar enough to hold our attention and familiar enough not to completely baffle the us.

3—Yep, the movie is complicated. As previously mentioned, this film immerses the audience in an unfamiliar world with its own rules and boundaries. It is, at its most basic level, a heist film. Think about Ocean’s Eleven or something similar to that. The plan needs explaining. Something goes wrong when the plan is being executed. That thing ruins everything, forcing the characters to improvise. All the while, you are developing the characters, and in this case, fleshing out the backstory of Leonardo DiCaprio. It isn’t easy. It’s a juggling act trying to keep the plot moving, trying to explain the world, and trying to create a human connection with the main characters. This movie succeeds brilliantly where Avatar: The Last Airbender spectacularly failed. While at some points the movie loses the audience completely, we go along with the characters. We trust them enough to believe that when they spout nonsense they really know what they are talking about. We trust that they know what they are doing, even if we don’t quite understand. It works. When we are given individual pieces, individual cogs, we don’t understand what they do or where they go. When we have the entire watch, though, it all makes sense. Similarly, while some parts of the movie aren’t easily comprehensible (at some points the audience simply doesn’t have enough information or perspective to make sense of them), all the confusion is worth the moment when the pieces fit together at the end.
Enough of confusing and nonsensical thoughts about the movie (perfectly appropriate given the subject matter). Go see this film. Even if I was like really good at explaining stuff (which i'm not) I wouldn't be able to do justice to this movie.

PART 2

So far my brilliant deprivation strategy has been working well. I have been quite impressed at how much I've written (I probably have written over 5000 words for classes not to mention my sblagh and various other writings) and read (again, lots and lots) now that I have left my beautiful guitar all by herself. However, such deprivation comes at a price—I am experiencing withdrawal symptoms. In my desperation to play guitar I keep getting these urges to:

1-Accost a busker, stealing his/her (yes, I would steal from a woman) guitar, running away, hoping I don’t get caught, and spending the rest of my trip locked up in my room annoying all my hall mates and probably everyone in the entire building

2-Pay a busker, asking them to lend me their guitar for at least an hour and promising them the proceeds from my busking

3-Pay a ridiculous amount of money to take a bus to London, find a music shop (To my knowledge there are no instrument stores within something like a 15 mile radius. I checked online, though I could be wrong), hide somewhere (maybe in the bass section, no one is likely to check there) until closing time, and spend a blissful 30 minutes playing until someone notices the sound and calls the fuzz. Maybe they’ll let me keep the guitar while I’m in jail.

4-Build my own guitar out of pencils and rubber bands. Unfortunately, I was never really good at building anything except awesome improvised Lego structures. Maybe I could build a guitar out of Legos instead. Hrm.

Luckily I have an assortment of delightful distractions to temporarily pacify my horrible longings. So far, these have included sleeping, writing songs for my guitar, writing in my sblagh how much I miss my guitar, day dreaming about my guitar, banging my head against the wall until I knock myself unconscious (so I don’t have to think about how I can’t play my guitar), watching hours of How I Met Your Mother and pretending that I am Ted and my guitar is, well, The Mother, reading horribly sad short stories about music (Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro, highly recommended), and walking around searching for romantic vistas by the riverside, candlelit balconies, and open windows for heartbroken sighs and wistful stares.

*Sigh*


Oh I forgot. Jeremy Lin signed with the Warriors. Here's the story and a nice little video interview.

http://www.nba.com/2010/news/07/21/warriors.lin.ap/index.html