Tuesday, July 27, 2010
A note on Inception
Dreams. Inception tells us that dreams are about violence and shootouts and destruction. We all know that dreams are not that, movies are. So once again, Hollywood delivers a movie about movies, with endless references to other movies (we should make a point in calling it self-referential, as it is an industry referencing itself, its past achievements, the kind of which the same industry would not dare produce anymore). Inception creates an intricate web of pseudo scientific information to justify the world in which the action takes place. The movie, all its two and a half hours, alternates between the characters explaining retarded ideas, and pointless violence. But it is a movie designed to fool people into thinking it is intelligent. Just as in the Dark Knight, the other absurdly overrated movie by the same director, Inception is filled with plot intricacies that make the viewer believe that if they get distracted for a second they will miss on something important. The truth is they won't. All that verbal diarrhea, delivered very seriously by industry acting professionals, says nothing. Nothing. What it is doing is setting up the visual effects people are about to see in the next scene. I want lots of visual effects! the world seems to be screaming. So the filmmakers set up a world in which they can deliver that demand. And audiences used to watching fantasy movies that are even worse than this (although perhaps not worse since they do no pretend to be more than mere vapid entertainment) choose to believe this is an intelligent movie, even a masterpiece. Really? Dreams within dreams within dreams... what is reality? Oh, what an interesting question... but excuse me, someone is about to kill me... Oh! and time is running out. Yes, let's get the hell out of the theater now, time is running out indeed.
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thanks for killing it, dude
ReplyDeleteIt's a complex action flick. Complex...not intelligent. It can be as simple as Nolan lays it out or you can go back and question everything about the plot. And there's certainly no harm in that.
ReplyDeleteBest movie ever? Not by a long shot. But to say this is a bad movie is being just as pretentious as the sheep that think Christopher Nolan shits gold.
Personally I think Inception lies somewhere in between.
In his classic "?Post-Modernism: The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism" Fredric Jameson claims that self-referencing is the only possible mode of cultural production as sources of true creativity are either exhausted or suppressed by the powers that be. If you want something truly rich, new and fresh look elsewhere. Favorite sources to escape from a reality that has become too painful to confront has been traditionally alcohol, drugs and the like; after that came all kind of addictions as personality dysfunctions (or 'disorders'): self-starvation, bulimia, sex-addiction, etc. It is dramatic, paradoxical and painful seeing how the only possible way for people to rebel against the established 'order' is often by creating a 'disorder' inwards, in their own spirits, thereby converting what should be an outward old-fashion rebellion into powerless self-destruction. The socially-sanctioned means of escape nowadays is a pervasive addiction to media and all related gadgetry that place it constantly in front of our eyes. It at least allows us an illusory form of control that 'real' reality frighteningly denies to us.
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