Morning Discussion
And now for something completely different--Inside a Dead Skyscraper is a curious and quite delightful video game/music video thing you should play/listen to/enjoy.
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Inception thread
Saw in the guardian today this Infographic:
http://th05.deviantart.net/fs70/PRE/f/2010/204/1/a/Inception_Infographic_by_dehahs.jpg
from http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2010/jul/28/inception-diagram-map-graphic-
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That's quite unfair, it's not just the illusion-real thing, its' also the contemporary urban setting, a lot of the costuming, very low-key "naturalistic" direction for how to deliver the dialogue (that seriousness in action cinema is a thing that the matrix popularised actually) the exploitation of the central narrative conceit as to create interesting action sequences (we're in a dream so we can just have a snow base out of nowhere, we're in a dream so we can just have slo mo anti gravity that recalls bullet time more than a bit) - there's a lot of common ground there.
It was a great movie, but considering how often that theme is played on in lets say more "cerebral" Hollywood action pictures, no, it's not stunningly original.-
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Okay, yeah that shit makes me roll my eyes as well. Everyone loves comparing Plato's thing to these movies like it meant some deep shit, the chatter about it was insufferable when the Matrix sequels came out.
It's understandable on one level. The Allegory of the Cave is where the idea of "waking up" - and seeing the world for what it is to attain some higher wisdom - comes from in the first place, so I suppose all these films are somehow connected to that. But the concept is so embedded and widespread culturally that just because someone wrote a story about unplugging themselves form the Matrix and waking up in the real world, that doesn't mean they actually read Plato.
And I see no attainment of wisdom in Inception at all, as far as I can see the dreams are a device to drive the action and the emotional drama about loss, not any kind of philosophy. -
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Plato's Cave, or Allegory of the Cave, is a philosophical story. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato's_cave
However, I don't see the connection between that and Inception/Matrix.-
You don't see the connection? Everyone in the dream / machine acts differently than those who see it for what it is? Those that are in it only see the situation they are in even though they might even know what's going on?
Even prisoners released from the Cave had limited perception just like Mal / Cobb did depending where they were, it's a very old theme.
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Also, imo Keifer planted the seed way more believably than the Inception crew did, at least to the mark. I liked Cobb's plant on Mal way, way better than the plant they did on the mark.
I had very little impression the mark was going to execute the idea the way Saito envisioned, as opposed to what happened to Mal, that would be world shattering.
I really wished Nolan had built a better narrative in the actual construction of the idea of shattering an empire than a few vague words between father and son that may or may not yield the desired result.
What happened to Mal was definitely going to yield the right result.
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Eh, I can see Dark City and Matrix comparisons, but the allegory of the cave is kind of a cop-out answer. That idea of becoming aware of a layer of reality not previously seen is more or less a universal theme in the human experience, let alone movies. One could group The Truman Show alongside Inception by that line of logic.
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spoilers for Primer: http://illsquad.com/files/primer_timeline.jpg
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acidnynex, my words are harsh with intention. this is not a fairly complex film, it's a minimally complex one. it makes you think harder than Speed, but it's not Memento, The Thirteenth Floor, or Primer. if you can't keep up with the movie's few linear plotlines while watching it in the theater, then you should maybe be reading more books.
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That part is bullshit the spinner totem and makes no sense. I didn't catch 100% of how totems work, and if their behavior was completely controlled by their owners regardless of whose dreamspace they were in then I'll by it spinning forever in a dream, but if the point of the totem is to have something familiar that an architect can't easily replicate and you could identify as being fake then I don't understand why any architect would create a top that spins forever, that part makes 0 sense to me
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Seriously, for people who haven't seen the movie, stay away from these threads.
It's not even for spoilers, since there aren't many to be had, it's just that the experience never benefits from huge amounts of hype and explanation before seeing it. Best case scenario is to maybe watch the trailers, then go in with no expectations. It is a good movie, and that is all you need to know, god dammit. -
Spoiler-related questions below
So does most of the plot discussion that happens in these threads center around the last shot and the question of whether or not it's a dream?
Because it seemed pretty clear to me that it was reality. Other than the fact that his kids were playing in a similar position to how he remembered them, I don't see any other things that would indicate it not being reality.
It really seemed to me like Nolan threw that in more to drive home the point that Cobb's wife kept bringing up, about questioning reality, not to actually suggest that he's in a dream. I would be very disappointed if Nolan was suggesting it wasn't real, as it's such a cheap "WHAT A TWIST" move.-
I have two gripes with the idea that it was all a dream
1. Cobb already knows that Limbo is past 3 levels. If the "reality" of the movie was level 1, then they'd have been in limbo at the snow fortress. And as it is said, the only thing that exists in Limbo is what has been created by people who were there, then who made the snow world? And how did they drop even another level from there?
2. I'd have to see the movie again to get a better sense of the timeline of "reality", but even considering the 10x time dilation, it get the sense that if it was all a dream then everybody involved would have to have been a sleep for a considerable amount of time, since as I recall the "reality" level of the movie spans several days, probably weeks. Sedatives and blah blah yah yah - I just don't buy it.-
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yeah the snow fortress was constructed by adrienne and eames was the dreamer (host) in that case and fischer was the subconscious populating it (though I believe his subconscious was populating all three layers). the trip to limbo was like the only thing they didn't really adequately explain in the film though. for example Mal took Fischer to what was apparently Cobb's limbo when Fischer died rather than Fischer going to his own limbo whereas Saito ended up in his own limbo when he died. they seemed to want limbo to be some kind of shared dreamspace that everyone goes to when they die and can't wake up which doesn't quite fit in. I guess you can explain it by saying that since Mal is Cobb's projection she was able to take Fischer into Cobb's dream (limbo can be considered to just be a dream, though a chaotic one) and Saito died independent of Mal or Cobb so he just went to his own limbo.
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Yeah, pretty sure this is it. When they're at the shed in the first level and the possibility of limbo first comes up, someone says something like "And you're left with nothing, or whatever is brought by someone who has been there before."
So I took that as meaning it would be the total chaos they first described unless someone in the shared dream had been there first, which Cobb had, so his "filled in" what would otherwise be blank. To be honest, it's a shaky explanation. -
yeah limbo makes more sense if it's just a dream that has no architect or subconscious projections (since it appears completely unpopulated I assume that is correct) and Cobb was able to get to Saito's limbo because he was connected to him on multiple levels... it's still not entirely standard though because it has its own slowed down time properties regardless of what level you enter it from since Cobb and Mal had to enter it from the first level (since a host of a dream cannot go beyond that dream; Arthur stayed in the hotel, Yusuf stayed in the raining city)... so Cobb & Mal would be in one or the other's dream initially and then would have to go directly to limbo (assuming a host can enter limbo, which seems correct).... so even though they are only at the second layer in that case time still moved at limbo-speed
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also the entire team started the freak out when Cobb mentioned that they were going three layers deep, but Cobb also seemed to be more willing to push the limits of the whole thing than anyone else (plus it was alluded to in his conversation with his father and his talk with Saito early on that he was very good at extraction and architecting), so it seems weird that some pretty well accepted rules could just be broken that easily... breaking the rules happened a lot in the movie though I guess
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yeah, if the host is killed then the dream collapses, though it's not entirely clear why Cobb can remain in Arthur's dream in the beginning even though Arthur has woken up as opposed to the world just disappearing instantly and everyone being pushed to the next level. it was obviously done for dramatic effect in the film but you can maybe explain it by saying that the other people in the dream at least on some level prop it up with Saito's consciousness populating it and Cobb being there as well
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The only thing that I've noticed while watching the movie is that Limbo isn't exactly "after" level 3. It's possible to slip into limbo at the first dream stage. Limbo occurs when you loose sense of what is reality and what isn't. For all the characters and audience know, there could be an infinite number of dream levels, The fact is it continues to be harder to maintain your sense of what is reality the deeper you go there for making it easier to fall into Limbo.
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I saw the movie when I was very tired; I'm a little confused about the relation between the opening scene(s) and the closing scene(s).
The first scene with him on the beach is similar to the last one because it's the same dreamscape but different dreams/at different times,* right? And Saito is older in the latter one because he's been stuck in that limbo much longer. In both cases Saito is sharing the dream with Cobb, hence similar architecture, etc... And that doesn't cause any conflict with levels right?
What seemed, say, level 2 in one dream was level 3 or 4 or whatever -- limbo -- in another?
*Otherwise it's some sort of weird paradoxical loop.-
The very first scene and the scene close to the very end where Saito is old are from the same time and the same limbo. Cobb is there because he chose to stay and save him after leaving Mal, and Saito is still there because he died in the snow fortress. The few minutes difference in the snow fortress level has been decades for him.
It doesn't present any conflict because there are no sub-levels past limbo. Saito was there for what seemed like forever, then Cobb and Ariadne came. Ariadne left, but Cobb stayed to "wake up" Saito. Then they both left.
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Was just reading these sleep facts huffington post posted in relation to Inception. Pretty interesting!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-edlund-md/dream-sharing-inception_b_652088.html
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