Inception

I’m way behind in posting about the movies I’ve seen.  It’s been since last month that I’ve posted on this topic.  In that time, I’ve seen about 8-9 movies.  I saw a movie actually in the theatre tonight (it was 102 degrees here and the house was too hot!) and I’ll discuss that one.  I’ll get to the others later.

Inception (2010)

We saw this tonight.  I’ve really been wanting to see Cyrus or The Kids Are All Right but we decided that Inception was one of those movies that might benefit from being seen on the big screen (i.e. not on our TV at home).

I enjoyed the movie.  Along with zombies and apocalyptic films, I’m a sucker for art forms that make you think about your reality. One of the very basic ideas in this movie is that dreams can be entered and manipulated to find or plant information. This can be done in groups in the movie or you can explore your own head.  The dream state and what goes on in the "back" of one's head is a debated and complex topic.  The way this movie manipulated it and explored it was compelling.

There were echoes of two other films: eXistenZ and The Matrix.  I won’t go into the parallels with the reality theme and The Matrix because that’s a much-seen movie.  eXistenZ, however, is a small movie directed by David Cronenberg that I don’t think got much attention, but that I found fascinating – at least in concept.
In eXistenZ, “the world's leading designer of virtual reality games [Jennifer Jason Leigh], is testing a new prototype when an assassin wielding a daunting organic weapon attacks her. She survives the assault with help from her marketing assistant turned bodyguard (Jude Law). But she'll need to ‘portal’ into her own game to get to the bottom of the intrigue.”

The dream-surfing in Inception and the resulting feeling of not knowing which is real – the dream or “real life” – is similar to the game scenario in eXistenZ.  Also, the use of the subconscious mind and what goes on in there as well as the manipulation of ideas (both getting them out of someone’s head and putting them in) is interesting.

As far as the performances go, Leonardo DiCaprio played what’s becoming his typical “serious guy”role and Ellen Page seemed somewhat two dimensional, I expected a bit more from her.  Of course, Marion Cotillard was excellent.

Great review by Roger Ebert here.