Definitely worth your attention: Inception. Your mind will come back fully stretched and blissful. Yes, there is intelligent action, and much like Total Recall it would only sound silly if you would recount it. I hereby congratulate Christopher Nolan not only for a good movie, but also for freeing us from what I would call ‘the one sentence business philosophy’. Good god, was that ever necessary.
You know what I mean: These days it doesn’t matter if you start up a business, apply for a PhD grant, or want to make a movie, your project must be decribed in one sentence. Meaning: If a project can’t be understood by a very dumb person, you’ll fail, no matter that there are 87% not very dumb persons left out there who would love it.
Next time someone asks you to follow that rule, you simply say: And the success of Inception? The plot of this movie is way to complex to fit in one, two, or even three sentences – and utterly successful. Each trailer sends you in wrong directions, trust me, Nolan is clearly revolting against this attitude. Lovely.
While some criticize the movie as being not emotionally involved enough (and I see what Mendelson means), I must admit that I might be spoiled simply because the movie evolves around a concept that gets me excited: the thesis that once you have an idea in your head, the world will never be what it was before. Whomever has experienced that, and I did a couple of times, knows the force I am talking about. It is as beautiful as shocking, a truly revolutionary experience (you might get hurt by your own conclusions).
The movie manages to put enough details around that concept to keep you busy, and they fit most of the time. From using dreams to forming a gang of crime to visually fold up Paris to Leonardo di Caprio’s furrow to Blade Runner unicorn like symbols and open endings, even if the James Bond everywhere around the globe setting isn’t even necessary; the concept of playing a game/dreaming a dream on different levels is so familiar by now.
Interesting, though, if it comes to the driving vision of the movie itself, we get lost in the maze of dreams.
While Total Recall was about starting a revolution on Mars to help the poor and the weak for a better living, the inception is needed because of private business interests, only slightly driven by the fact that the world needs to be saved from a new superpower this business organisation is going to be. In the end, all of this is rather irrelevant.
As movies are the subconscious of society, this tells us something about our dreams: Lost in complexity. Gone.
The driving force of Cobb/diCabrio is the love to his children. But is that enough for society? I don’t think so, and agree with PH, with whom I recently had an email debate on this. Having his head deeply in political philosophy, he expressed amazement about all those parents who think so long as they do it ‘for the children’ then anything goes, the most barbarous self-interest, the most naked class struggle is suddenly justified. So no, not enough.
See what I mean by intelligent action movie, as this is what the movie tells us: Can someone start planting an idea in our head again, please?
Danke! Mich hat schon lange keine Kritik mehr so neugierig auf einen Film gemacht, wie diese hier.
Oh Mario, now you said something. I just thought, well, we can’t shoot the messenger. We can’t blame Nolan for the fact that we all are running out of dreams. In general, I hope I didn’t raise expectations too much, but … I guess you’ll like it.
Dear Mrs. Bunz,
I appreciated a lot your elaborated critic on this movie, which I am anxious to watch. This idea of inception I find captavating and in contrast to your further thoughts, I like the conclusion, that it all leads to the children. I don’t think, that parents are necessarily the better part of humanity on earth, no! But being a mother myself and having led a life of great diversity before, I can say, that there is nothing more inceptive than having a child. The world changes, new ways show up, old places of your past fall apart in a dimension I never experienced before. I guess by the children, Nolan wanted to state the symbolic meaning of an inception being a conception of two ideas before.
Mercedes, mach Dir keinen Kopf :-) Lies stattdessen mal hier:
http://www.theawl.com/2010/07/the-key-to-inception-its-a-movie-about-making-movies
Nolan is the picture who movie.. year. I need to say you the truth, it was invaluable the waiting.Insomnia
you dream want you want to dream. to my mind the (quite elegant and highly entertaining, but far from revolutionary or visionary) movie is not so much about “inception” or the power of an idea or the quest in itself or conception or movies but about strategy: the idea which is “incepted” is banal (a McGuffin, actually). But even banal things can change the (someones) world if place strategically at the “right” level. the rest ist tactics.
ah, & the script obviously borrows heavily from Poe:
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
Ps.: There is a very funny comment in the “New Yorker”: “http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/goingson/2010/07/christopher-nolan-implementation.html”
Der natürliche Trieb allen Lebens scheint erstens die Erhaltung des eigenen und zweitens die Weitergabe der eigenen DNA. Was den Mensch von Amöben unterscheidet sind Gefühle, wie der Wunsch nach Geselligkeit und Miteinander, Emotionen wie Liebe und eine Sehnsucht nach Harmonie.
Der zivilisatorische Prozess, den die Menschheit durchgemacht hat, ist im Grunde, so würde ich jetzt mal aus der Hüfte mit Rational Choicelern argumentieren, nur eine Aneinanderreihung von Entscheidungen, um den Erhalt des eigenen Lebens sicherer zu machen und die Produktion von Nachfahren und deren Sicherheit ebenfalls einfacher und sicherer zu machen.
Das Argument, dass DiCaprio´s/Cobb´s Handlungen sich demnach alle durch den Drang begründen lassen, dass er seine Kinder wiedersehen wolle, gilt demnach ganz selbstverständlich, da jeder gesunde Mensch für seine Kinder kämpft. Allerdings zeigt sich dabei auch, dass der Mensch zu rationalen Entscheidungen fähig ist, weil Cobb sein Handeln langfristig anlegt: Er will in Frieden mit seinen Kindern zusammenleben, deshalb sucht er nach einer Möglichkeit zu ihnen zurückzukehren, ohne weiterhin ein Verfolgter und Geächteter zu sein. Sein Handeln ist demnach nicht rechtens und dennoch alles andere als unmoralisch. Cobb ist nicht eitel oder exzentrisch, was natürlich auch den Charakter „liebenswert“ macht und das Dilemma für den Zuschauer greifbarer. Und dies zeigt auch, dass nicht jeder bewaffnete Konflikt und jede Gewalt sich mit dem Argument: „Wir haben es für die Kinder getan“ legitimieren lässt. Entscheidungen für das Wohl anderer, auch der eigenen Kinder, obliegen auch moralischen Gesichtspunkten und der aufgeklärte Mensch ist, so glaube ich, zu einer einigermaßen langfristigen Abwägung fähig.
Viel interessanter für mich ist die Frage des Gedankens, der alles verändert, die Du zuvor aufgeworfen hast. Wie viel Verantwortung trägt Cobb am Tod seiner Frau? Wie viel „freien Willen“ hat der Mensch und wie sehr ist er von seiner Umwelt beeinflusst?
Diese Frage treibt mich viel mehr um, seit ich diesen Film gesehen habe.
Ich besitze die Frechheit auf Deutsch zu schreiben, da mein englisches Vokabular eine einigermaßen eindeutige Argumentation noch nicht zulässt.