hat tip: Listful Thinking
The Essence of Nicholas Cage
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Category Archives: Movies
“I’m in Lesbians with You.”
On the first day of Comicon we went to see the Scott Pilgrim panel. Before it began bags of buttons were passed around, some red with the poster photo nad some white with a little Scott Pilgrim 1-UP icon. Me and my friends got the 1-UP ones. The giant screens told us not to trade them with anyone, so I figured they’d hand out some stuff at the end to those with the right buttons.
Instead, Edgar Wright concluded the panel1 by announcing that those with the 1-UP buttons should all follow him to the Balboa theater to see the movie that very moment. A map showing the way was displayed on the giant screens, and Wright jumped off the stage and started walking. But then, as everyone got up and starting fighting their way to the doors, the screens went dark. We had no idea where to go.
My friends and I managed to make our way outside, and just followed the people with the 1-UP buttons. After wandering back and forth for a while, we discovered that people with the 1-UP buttons were walking in pretty much every direction. No one seemed to know where the Balboa theater was. So, we just picked a direction we thought looked right and marched off into the Gaslamp District, along with a few other hopefuls just as lost as we were.
This wasn’t an effective strategy. We were still wandering, just on a larger scale. I tried asking for directions, but none of the locals I asked had heard of the Balboa Theater. One of my friends looked up maps on his smartphone, which turned out to be somewhat unclear.2 Finally, a girl in a cupcake costume gave me directions I could use, along with a coupon by which I could attain — after the purchase of a cupcake at the regular price — another cupcake of equal or lesser value.3
A few minutes later we found the Balboa, where we were forced to turn in our cameras for the sake of the lawyers. Up to that point, I had been too busy wandering to think of documenting our adventure, so the only photos I have are a couple blurry shots of the outside of the theater.
So, we got to watch the movie with the director, the cast, and Bryan Lee O’Mally. After the movie was over the screen lifted to reveal Metric, who played a set, though we had to leave early to catch the tram back to our hotel.
Stuff like this is what living is for.
- During the entire panel Micheal Cera was wearing a Captain America costume with tremendous muscles, which I stupidly did not get a picture of. [↩]
- Not that it mattered. Our group was constantly threatening to disperse every step of the way, so it was a challenge just keeping everyone moving in the same direction. [↩]
- No I didn’t get a picture of the cupcake girl. Yes, I would make a terrible photojournalist. [↩]
Somewhat Less Carelessly Structured Thoughts on Inception
Inception reminded me a lot of a couple other movies: 2001: A Space Odyssey and Kill Bill. Like 2001, Inception is an intensely cerebral movie that, while centered on profoundly human concerns, considers those concerns from an objective distance. The audience sees Cobb’s struggles, but never fully identifies with him. Like Kill Bill, Inception is the sin qua non of its director’s aesthetic. Kill Bill is the most Tarantinesque movie Quentin Tarantino has made. He stuffed it with every movie reference he could, and offered an homage in some form to every genre he loves — exploitation, wushu, chambara, western, anime — and then told exactly the kind of story he likes to see. Inception is certainly the most Nolanesque movie Nolan has made. All the themes that have defined his ouvre — dead wives, obsession with those dead wives, grand but morally dubious projects, self-delusion, sharp action, architecture, head games — are fully exploited. With Inception Nolan has indulged himself in the same way Tarantino did with Kill Bill.
Carelessly Structured Thoughts on Inception
So I finally saw Inception. I meant to see it earlier, since I’m such a fan of Nolan, but even if I wasn’t the frustratingly mixed reviews would have driven me to a theater anyway. And now that I’ve seen it, I definitively say that I have no idea what to think. It doesn’t suck, just to get that out of the way. Many have argued that this or that element of the film is badly done. Aside from Cobb, the characters have no backstory. The dream worlds don’t feel surreal. The device used to share dreams (and the culture surrounding its use) is never introduced or explained, just taken for granted as part of the movie’s world. The characters talk and explain too much. The movie is emotionally cold though formally masterful. The action is complicated and demands that you pay attention. I’ve heard all of these and more offered as flaws, and I’m content to dismiss them as mistaken or beside the point.
The criticism that really interests me involves a major spoiler, so be warned. The film predictably ends with a brief shot of the top that serves as Cobb’s totem. If he spins that top and it keeps spinning interminably, then he’s dreaming. If it stops, as per the requirements of physics, then he’s not dreaming. So the top spins in the movie’s final shot, it wobbles suggestively, then cut to black the movie’s over.
This ending is the most contentious element in the movie. It contends with the viewer, demanding you to sit up and decide what you think it means. So you contend back, wondering where the hell Nolan gets off robbing you of a satisfying ending and provoking you like this. Then you contend with yourself, trying to decide what you really think. Finally, you end up on the internet contending with other contentious people who have also been provoked by that damn top, and your night at the movies has turned into a circular pattern of thought that plagues you for days because everyone’s been talking about this and won’t let you forget it. Presto, inception!
I’m not going to argue that Nolan meant to break the forth wall in that final shot (i have no idea what Nolan was thinking when he made Inception,) but that was how I interpreted it off the cuff. If the movie consists of dreams nested within dreams, it’s natural for me to see the movie itself as a dream nested within our own reality. I think this way because I’m a McCloudian formalist, and for me formal experiments are their own reward. Nolan is also a formalist, which is why I like his movies so much.
Taking the last shot as a direct address to the audience makes sense to me, but I know that for many it would be a problem. If you take character and story as paramount, and experience awareness of the medium — as opposed to immersion — as a bad thing, then that last shot would be maddening. It breaks any immersion, reminding you that the movie is a movie and demanding that you take part in its completion. You have to explicitly interpret its significance, and it offers little guidance. This is why I can’t tell whether it’s good or not. The quality of the movie depends on the final touches, which are up to the viewer. This makes it unjudgable from anything approaching an objective stance, because the movie refuses to allow you one. All I can say is that I like the movie, as I interpreted it.
Oh, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt is the man.