2010 - Rated R - 2 hr 28 min
Director: Christoper Nolan
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Tom Berenger, Marion Cotillard, Pete Postlethwaite, Michael Caine
This movie seems to be quite polarizing, at least in my opinion. People either love it or hate it. I happen to love it, mostly because I love a good "thinking" movie that sparks hours of debate when it's over. Sure enough, everytime we watch this movie, the debate starts up all over again. And every viewing also brings additional information to the table through new discoveries.
If you haven't seen it, I won't spoil anything for you. Suffice it to say, Leonardo DiCaprio and friends know how to go into peoples' dreams and extract information. The premise of this movie - the concept of inception - is a little harder than that. With inception, the team must plant an idea seamlessly into someone's mind, making it seem as though it were there all along. As DiCaprio's own past starts to catch up with him, Ellen Page tries to help him root out the truth and confront his guilt. What happens to DiCaprio - and the end of the movie, in particular - is the subject of the debate. Is it possible to lose track of reality when you jump through dreams for a living? Makes sense to me.
Anyhow, I really love this one. If you don't, I'd love to hear why not. Plot too convuluted, overall movie too artsy, characters too flat... whatever. I certainly wouldn't object to another debate on this one.
*** SPOILER ALERT***
ReplyDeleteI find the debate over whether Cobb is still in a dream at the end interesting because really whether or not he's back in reality isn't the point. The point is that by leaving the top behind and not looking back Cobb is accepting this as his reality and he no longer cares if that's objectively true or not.
A fair point. But the reporter in me needs to know. LOL. Then again, once we start debating reality, it begs the question: What IS reality? To Cobb, that is his reality no matter what it is to us. And our reality, to be fair, might not actually be real either. Circular logic?
ReplyDeleteYou want a real monkey wrench in the mix? The top isn't reliable in the first place. It wasn't originally Cobb's totem, it was Mal's. By adopting somebody else's totem it kills the idea of him being the only person who can know how it should be.
ReplyDeleteYeah, Mike pointed that out when we saw it. As soon as that top becomes reliable, it changes the whole way you watch the movie. On my second and third watch, I paid more attention. That top only falls once. And even that means crap.
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