July 26, 2010
Mind-Heist
Inception was a fantastic film.
When seeing previews of it, I was kind of bleh on it. I mean, it had nice visuals, but it really wasn’t giving me any indication of what it was about. There was a lot of hype around it as well, due to the director apparently being awesome. It was only when Essner went and said that it lived up to the hype that I took notice and knew I had to watch the movie. And when I did? Well, I was highly entertained.
The movie basically has one concept, the idea that you can hook people up to share one dream using this little machine in a briefcase. Doing this, you can trick an unwilling dreamer into sharing all kinds of secrets. However, if you’re bold, or daring, or just a bit insane, you can attempt to plant an idea into someone’s subconscious by going layers deep into someone’s mind.
Basically, the movie takes this idea, sticks with it, and creates a fantastic heist movie around it that’s elevated due to the premise and mind-games built into the premise. It is a ton of fun, and has some great acting within it. It is highly recommended.
But hey, here’s the spoilar line.
SPOILARZ START HERE.
Yeah, I guess what people are talking about is the ending. It almost seems… gimmicky. I mean, it’s not out of place to me. It is a perfectly valid way to end the movie that makes you think. In the same way, it just feels a bit tacked on because you have to have some sort of “twist” or something at the end, right? It really didn’t seem to have the impact that I thought the people making the movie thought it would have.
Then I listened to Overthinking It, and a bit of their discussion made me realize why it works better than maybe it seems initially. The point of the ending is less that “MAYBE IT WAS ALL A DREAM” and more “he no longer cares anymore if it’s a dream or not.” This is an interesting change, since so much of his own personal holdups were based around determining reality and fixing his reality. At the same time, at that point in the movie, he’s dealt with the issues that were keeping him from enjoying the dream world. He’s not going to be haunted any more. He can see his kids’ faces now, at the very least. It isn’t so bad anymore. I don’t know. It’s just an interesting flip-flop. I don’t think it’s completely out of character, but it is interesting.
Hm.
Anyway, go see Inception. Go on.