Inception (2010)

((SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!!!))


Before I actually go into my review of this film, I want to take the time to share a little something I found on the internet: 

It pretty much sums up my feelings about Inception (except in a much cuter way that I could express)- it's an enormous, two and a half hour mind fuck. 

How do I go about describing my experience? Well, other than being detained in a bathroom for fifteen minutes due to a tornado warning (after listening to a collective "ugh!" from the audience when the screen shut off just as Joseph Gordon-Levitt is floating through the air with a semi-automatic), I haven't watched a movie that made me think that much in a while, and that's a good thing. I have to say that I'm pretty impressed.


Also, let me just say that this movie should be a testament to all the Hollywood producers that think we either need dumb action movies or intellectual “conversation” movies. I enjoy them both, but sometimes I really hate that in order to see an action film, I have to sit through Wanted and to see an intellectual drama, something like Frost/Nixon is automatically on the agenda. I loved being able to see a movie that encompassed both. I know, I know. You’ll undoubtedly say, “But there are lots of movies like that!” Not blockbusters that I’ve seen. And not in the past few years.

Let me start with the beginning… which is actually the end. At first, when the movie finished, I thought, “that isn’t necessary. This movie would have been intense enough without doing the start-from-the-middle gimmick.” But then I thought about it, and I realized that there was no flashback indication, no “36 hours earlier” text at the bottom of the screen, which made me think that maybe the beginning was actually the end of the travelled levels. Think about it- if Cobb was going to go anywhere else and we were supposed to see where he had been leading up to it, wouldn’t they have shown a different scene?

See, I feel there are three ways you can interpret this movie and its open end:

1. Cobb made it home to the real world (in my opinion, not likely- I mean, come on, his kids didn’t even age)

2. There is another level above the ending of the movie that started before the movie started that we didn’t see (i.e. Mal was right all along), or

3. He never made it out and is still in dream limbo.

To me, because of the start of the movie, the third option seems most likely. I loved seeing this movie in the theatre because when the top was spinning and spinning and the scene cut to black, the entire audience went, “Augh!” in frustration that we don’t get to see if it actually stops or not. As I alluded to before, I personally think it doesn’t.

My other thought is, if you need to be in dream limbo with someone who’s been there before and who has built some sort of structure, and the spinning top was Mal’s to begin with that he intercepted and took from inside her own thoughts, was that actually her mind they were entering into? Or did he just think it was hers, and it was actually he who was convinced that everything was not real? After all, when he was on the phone with his father he said he had to get back to the real world, and that his kids were the only thing real to him anymore. Just something to think about.

This is one of those movies where you come out of the theatre having an intense discussion, and then after it falters, you actually want to continue talking. It isn’t even that you want to understand the movie, it’s just that secretly, you want to be more confused. At least, that’s how I feel. I love spending hours just having my mind go in circles about all the different meanings a movie could have. To me, that makes a fantastic film.

And now, the million dollar question that has nothing to do with the plot of the movie but is still burning- did they use Edith Piaf as the indicator that time was running out as a nod to Marion Cotillard’s Oscar?

Tell me what you think! If you haven’t seen Inception, go see it! Although I doubt anyone would have read this post if they hadn’t seen it because of the spoiler warning (well, they’d probably just be confused as fuck because it really doesn’t make sense if you haven’t seen the movie). 

Peace!

The Movie Mistress