To distinguish it from the other thread. I won’t see it 'til Sunday (grrrrr) but for anyone who wants to talk about it now, feel free…
Saw it at the IMAX midnight screening last night. First and foremost, let me say that the movie is NOT as confusing as the reviews would have you believe. I’m not really sure about what I was expecting, but as a pure action movie they really don’t get a whole lot better than this.
My first viewing focused mainly on plot but the story, while not hard to follow, is complex enough to warrant further viewings and I’m sure I missed some smaller touches.
Leonardo DiCaprio was great as was the rest of the cast, I absolutely loved the music, and just found myself completely invested for all 150 minutes - what more can you ask for?
Great movie!
(in a rush, more later)
Pretty good stuff and well worth the price of admission but not without it’s faults.
Haven’t had time to fully digest it but I think if you really dug into it you’d find some plot holes in there.
Nolan still hasn’t learned much about how to edit a coherent action scene. You have this whole mountainside battle going on but it’s pretty much wasted since you can’t tell who’s fighting who due to everyone wearing the same white snowpants and parka with the hoods pulled up.
The ending too which could have gone one of two ways went the way I wish it hadn’t. I’d have preferred Dom to seek reality and what we were watching is what really unfolded. Instead we see he chose the limbo world in which case we don’t really know how the story ended in the real world and I felt somewhat cheated.
Still it was a great concept, well executed, and some snazzy f/x even if they didn’t serve a purpose (why did Ariadne pull these massive mirrored doors together other than it looked cool?)
It was good, and I think that it would merit watching a second time.
A bunch of questions I’m left with:
[spoiler]The explanation of ‘limbo’ went by so quickly that I missed it. When Fischer Jr. was shot and ‘killed’ by Mal (inside Fisher Jr.'s own dream, which he was led to believe was Browning’s dream), he went to limbo. So how did Cobb and Ariadne follow him there by dreaming-within-a-dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream? If it was Fischer Jr’s limbo, why was Mal seemingly in charge? Saito also died in that level of the dream, and ended up in the same limbo too. But somehow he ended up much older than Fischer Jr and Ariandne.
Also, why all the business about getting the ‘bumps’ worked out that way? Why not just pull them all back out by having the flight attendant wake their real bodies all at the same time? I enjoyed the visuals of those scenes, but I can’t see why they were plot-necessary.
Also, despite talking about spending a week, six months, and ten years at the various levels, I didn’t get the sense that that ended up happening in the movie. The flight lasted ten hours but each of the other levels only seemed to take a few days at most. The only sense of the passage of great time was that Saito was an old man at the end, but Cobb, Ariadne, and Fischer Jr weren’t despite going to the same limbo level.
Lastly, didn’t all those folks just escape limbo by killing their dream selves? Cobb and Mal got out of their limbo by lying on the train tracks, and Ariadne and Fischer Jr got out by jumping/being pushed from the building, and its implied that Saito and Cobb get out in a similar way. Of course, that last ‘escape’ was probably not real. But it worked at least once for Cobb and Mal, and presumably it worked for Ariadne and Fischer Jr. So why was the possibility of going to limbo so scary? Just kill yourself in limbo and pop back out.[/spoiler]
Any answers would be appreciated before I see the movie again.
I thought about it when it happened, and came to my own conclusion that
it ended up breaking some kind of wall, reflecting the world back on it’s self, after which she was the one in conscious control, as opposed to things happening previously without her really owning it.
That’s what I went with, anyway, and it worked for me.
And yes, I need to see it a couple-few times more, preferably at home where I can rewind and freeze and figure things out at the time. There was some moment toward the beginning where I noticed a guy sliding forward on his knees and folding forward, flat, so easily that it looked fake, and I was thinking ‘geez, this really is dream-like’, though I don’t think it was supposed to be. I really wanted to rewind!
But this is definitely worth seeing a theater <and I rarely think that about any movie> and it’s also the first one I’ve ever thought ‘Ok, this could be interesting in 3-D’ I also, inexplicably, halfway through the movie thought very clearly that ‘This would be a really good book’. I am not sure what that means, however. Just that there is more to it than just the cool environment, I think.
Anyway, thumbs up. Both of them.
I know I missed lots of plotlines, because I tend to just ‘wait and see what fills in’ when I don’t immediately get something, but on this, I think that in limbo, you seem to NEVER know you are dreaming. Years and years of not knowing you are dreaming. So deep into the subconscious that nothing from the outside affects you. It seemed to me as if Mal killed herself in real life for just that reason, that she thought she was still dreaming, sort of the opposite of limbo I guess, really.
Anyway, I am not sure that, when in limbo, there is anyway to know there is another world outside of yours, unless something from that world is there with you to interrupt the continuity. Such as Cobb.
I hope that makes sense, cause I just got out of the theater and am still digesting things.
Was anybody else struck by the similarities between this film and Memento? After the show, I was discussing the abuse of gimmicks in films (having been prompted by the preview of Shyamalan’s Devil we saw before the film, not the actual film itself). The conversation turned to the recurring thematic or dramatic patterns in Nolan’s films, especially w.r.t The Prestige, Memento, and this latest one, and I was interested to discover upon reflection how similar both films are, right down to having a protagonist that broods about his culpability in his wife’s death.
I enjoyed the movie. Seeing it in IMAX is a visual and aural feast, that’s for sure. But so much of it was…oh I don’t know, overwrought? I think Nolan is a great director, but he took a really interesting concept and a great cast and turned it into a Michael Bay action blockbuster.
And, even though Ellen Page does a good job, I couldn’t help thinking of her as Juno every minute she was on screen.( But that’s just me. :p) It’s getting 76% by RT’s top critics, and I think I’d go along with that.
The biggest possible flaw that struck me while watching: When the van goes over the bridge and is in freefall, all the dreamers experience zero gravity in the next dream-level down (where Joseph Gordon-Levitt is awake). But in the next dream-level down below that where the rest of them are awake (in the snow) they don’t experience that zero g. It seems like they should be in zero g since their bodies in the next higher level were floating, just like those bodies were floating because their bodies in the van were ‘floating’ as the van fell.
And regarding Ariadne and the mirrors–it foreshadows the ever deeper layers of ‘reality’ they are about to experience in the dreams within dreams within dreams.
I loved the movie–best thing I’ve seen at the theater in a long time. The actors were all great, especially DiCaprio and Cotillard. She was intense! Ellen Page did really well, too. I wish Michael Caine’s role had been bigger. I was pleasantly surprised to see Pete Postlethwaite and Tom Berenger, whom I almost didn’t recognize.
Knowing Nolan’s films, I didn’t expect a happy ending, so I was not surprised the top kept spinning. I would have preferred it to be left more ambiguous, though. It did seem that the inception plan worked on Fischer, though we don’t know how it ultimately affected him.
I’m definitely going to see this again before it leaves theaters.
The top started to wobble a little. I think it was supposed to be ambiguous on whether it was real or not.
It was good, but not great.
I was really hoping for more, considering the hype surrounding it and the rave reviews.
Confusing? Not really - but it did move rather slowly in the beginning and towards the end, I was wishing they had cut maybe 20 minutes.
One of my nitpicks - does everybody dream so dismally?
I mean, it doesn’t have to be rainbows and unicorns, but those were some pretty dreary locations for the most part.
I would have hoped to see at least some wildly fantastic beaches with perhaps a huge floating glass house above an island, or perhaps dancing polar bears in the background, or people with dog’s heads or…something “fun” every once in awhile.
And yes, I realize the point is to make the dreamworld seem real - but in a dream, people don’t really worry about odd things while they are dreaming about it - only when you wake up do you chuckle and say, “Wow - mom had petunias growing out of her ears!”
So although I don’t think it was a waste of money to see the film, count me as one who was underwhelmed.
Right. But consider the ages of his children. The film didn’t explicitly state how long he had been on the lam, but I think it gave the impression that it had been awhile. However, when he returns to the United States, his children are exactly as he remembered them when he first left. They even strike the same pose. I think that was supposed to clue the readers into the reality of Cobb’s situation. Unless I’m misinterpreting something, which I freely admit is a real possibility.
I have a lot of the same issues as Brossa regarding Limbo, a lot of what happened there and how various people got there and got out doesn’t seem consistent within the movie. At least not on a first viewing and I will wait until DVD to see again. I will second that I thought the ending is ambiguous in that the top seems to wobble some, but it is not clear if it is due to it about to fall or just natural variation as it is spinning. Definitely an entertaining movie and well worth a watch though.
Regarding the time question Brossa raised. If they had let the dream sequences go to their full completion and not get “kicked” out of the dreams (ie wake up naturally) they would of spent that long of time in the dreams (10 years, 6 months, exc). Instead, because they were able to kick themselves out, they only spent a couple hours (or less) in each dream.
A fair point. My argument to the age thing is that presumable he has seen pictures of his kids as they age and so the projection of them in his dreams match these pictures and therefor their current ages. Striking the same pose you can chalk up to, well its a movie and they like dramatic moments like that. I guess I am still of the opinion the ending is meant to be ambiguous, but you make a good argument.
That’s exactly how I read that scene as well. That was the “one moment” that Cobb had talked about with Ariadne. How he deeply regretted not calling out their names so they would turn and he could see their faces one last time before he left. The ending is Cobb reliving that moment, but getting to see their faces and not having to leave them.
Regarding the whole 10 years thing, they were originally going to spend more time in the dream, but they weren’t expecting the “security.”
I guess I’ll be the contrarian and say that I didn’t like it that much.
The story seemed as if they simply took the screenplays of “the Matrix”, “ExistenZ”, “Total Recall” and “the Cell”, a few Bond films, and a dozen low-grade SyFy channel knockoff films, ripped the individual pages out of their binders, tossed them into the air, randomly picked up pages from the floor and called that the screenplay. I followed the basic premise, but keeping up with the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink plot twists took so much concentration that I couldn’t get absorbed by the story. After a while, I stopped caring about what was happening, and couldn’t develop any empathy for the characters.
Watching Leonardo DiCaprio acting is a torture in itself. He gives the same wooden, one-note performance that he did in “Shutter Island” and pretty much every movie I’ can remember seeing him in. He’s as stiff as Tom Cruise, but quite frankly not aging as well.
Lots of poorly filmed action scenes with frenetic, but very indistinct action where its’ difficult to figure out who’s chasing who, who’s doing what to whom, etc.
The bottom line for me - I am sick, sick, sick, SICK of “Matrix” type movies, where characters have some way of accessing dreams or the sub-conscious, or some virtual reality universe as solely an excuse to show lots of the same old slo-mo “floating around in mid-air” CGI effects. If Hollywood insists on making CGI “dream world” type flicks, can’t someone come up with a dream effect other than everyone floating around in the middle of the room?
For Jorge_Burrito and enalzi - I see your point about their getting out ‘early’ because they can wake themselves up from inside the dream. But this seems to be subject to some significant limitations that I don’t think were addressed:
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Call the real world, on the plane, level zero; the rainy city is level one, the office building is level two, the arctic hospital is level three, and limbo is level four. They can’t wake themselves up from level one to level zero; they have to wait for the end of their sedation, or for the flight attendant to wake them, or for a big enough jolt on the plane to trigger their ‘kick’. They can’t just kill themselves to wake up to level zero, because their sedation ensures that they will go directly to limbo, not passing go or collecting $200.
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They can leave a man behind at each level, whose job it is to wake the deeper sleepers at the proper time. That person warns the deeper ones that a kick is about to come with some clue. So they can go from 4 to 3 and 3 to 2 and 2 to 1 on their own initiative, but only from the ‘top down’; they can’t signal for retrieval, they have to depend on guesswork and timing from the level above.
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So, they arrive in level 1 expecting to stay in the dream for a week, but they find that they are attacked immediately by projections. They hide in the warehouse for a while (seems like hours but it could have been days, I suppose) and then the chemist Yusuf drives them around in the van while they proceed to level 2. The car chase with the projections and the van, which ends with the van dropping off the bridge, probably takes less than a couple of hours; maybe even only a few minutes. During which –
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In level two, they leave Arthur behind and proceed to level three. This takes a couple of hours, tops. In level three, they spend an unknown amount of time breaching the arctic hospital and then they leave Eames behind and go to level four, for who knows how long exactly.
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This is where things get fuzzy for me. Instead of Eames waking Cobb and Ariadne, they seem to wake themselves, maybe. It would make sense to me if Eames woke Cobb and Ariadne (along with Saito and Fischer Jr, somehow), then Arthur woke E, C, A, S, and F; then Yusuf woke them all and they waited in level one until the end of the plane ride, for a total of about a week spent in level one altogether. These wouldn’t even have to be tightly coordinated; they could spend a day or more at each level, milling around until being kicked up a level. But the movie plays out as though each of their wakings happens hard on the heels of the last one, like they are right up against their time limits at each step and they have to eke every last possible second out of that particular level.
I think that Cobb and Ariadne going down to level 4 and coming back out by themselves didn’t make sense in the world of the movie unless something else was going on.
I will say this, since Nolan loves to reuse actors, I have great hope for Levitt ending up in Batman 3, preferably as the Riddler. After seeing this movie, I think he can pull it off. And that Forger guy could be in it too.
Also, regarding the kids at the end, IMDB has a cast listing for the kids at two different ages:
Claire Geare ... Phillipa (3 years)
Magnus Nolan ... James (20 months)
Taylor Geare ... Phillipa (5 years)
Johnathan Geare ... James (3 years)
So they were older at the end, but only by a couple years.