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Film Review: Inception – 2010

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Director(s)Christopher Nolan
Principal CastLeonardo DiCaprio as Dom Cobb
Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Arthur
Elliot Page [1] Credited as Ellen Page as Ariadne
Marion Cotillard as Mal Cobb
Ken Watanabe as Saito
Cillian Murphy as Robert Fischer
Tom Hardy as Eames
Dileep Rao as Yusuf
Release Date2010
Language(s)English
Running Time 148 minutes
Report CardClick to go to Review TLDR/Summary
  • Dom(Leondardo DiCaprio) wakes up on the shore.
  • The waves crash against the shore.
  • Dom sees two children on the shore who seem out of place.
Nolan starts his experimentation in mimesis here, replacing the loud blare from Zimmer’s score with the rushing sound of the waves. The swell of waves crashing against the shore represent a world of potential. Every moment marks the birth of a new wave – a vortex of creation – that eventually gives way to another. It’s from this swirl that our protagonist, Dom, wakes up confused. He sees two children building sand castles on the shore. The children seem out of place given the disheveled appearance of Dom, but their act of creating sandcastles mimics the waves. After all sandcastles are an act of creation that give way to new castles as the waves wash away the old ones. It’s fitting that the man whose eventual mission will be to implant ideas is sandwiches between these two parallel movements of creation.

As the intro sequence plays, Hans Zimmer’s music envelops the soundscape ensuring that your attention is fully focused on the sound. The title fades to black as the music approaches a crescendo, swelling to a massive size before fading away to the sound of crashing waves. Our attention immediately switches focus as the importance we’ve given the score now shifts to the waves on screen. Water swells before crashing into the shoreline creating momentary impressions upon impact -explosions of being- before fading back into the ocean from where it came. Given the movie’s thematic connections with Tarkovksy’s Solaris, a science fiction film about a group of emotionally fractured astronauts stuck on an ocean planet named Solaris which seems to conjure the crew’s memories from within its oceans, it makes sense then that it is from this abode of infinite creation, the ocean, that the camera picks its next target of focus – a partially submerged man named Dom.

His eyes flutter awake revealing that he’s very much alive. It’s at this point that both Dom and the audience become privy to the fact that there are children present. The camera cuts between Dom’s perplexed face and two children who appear with their backs to him. They’re building a sandcastle. Like the waves, the sandcastle is a temporary explosion of creativity, coming into form for an instance before fading away, leaving only its impressions behind.

  • An older Asian man ( Ken Watanabe) tells Dom that the top he, Dom , carries reminds him of something from the past.
  • Dom’s (Leonardo DiCaprio) expression changes upon being reminded of the top.
  • Saito (Ken Watanabe) talks to Dom.
  • Dom(Leonardo DiCaprio) tries to get Saito to buy some extraction protection lessons.
Nolan uses cuts to demonstrate the malleability of different moments and scenes, showcasing the way ideas give way and lapse into others- whether they be dreams or memories. The normal shot, reverse-shot structure used to cover dialogue scenes is used to transfer us from space and time along with the characters. As the older Asian man talks and ignites a thought in Dom’s head, the reverse shot which would normally be the elder man is instead a much younger man named Saito. He’s oriented to the camera facing a different angle. As the camera cuts again to a much more composed looking Dom, we realize the orientation of the first meeting has also shifted, reflecting a shift in power as well. It’s brilliant filmmaking.

Before Dom can make sense of what’s happening, he’s accosted by armed security who check for weaponry before finding a gun on him. They take him to their boss, an elderly Asian man, for interrogation in a large ornate dining room. This man starts to play with a top he’s apparently taken from Dom before claiming that the object reminded him of something from his past – a distant memory. The camera cuts from the old man back to Dom at which point the movie employs a match cut to another conversation between a much younger Asian man, Saito, and a Dom from another time in the same ornate dining room, this time framed from opposite angles. It is here that Dom and his associate, Arthur, indicate to Saito that they are “extractors”, individuals who specialize in the art of stealing from peoples’ dreams, looking to teach him the tools of the trade to keep his own mental faculties safe.

  • The room shakes as though and earthquake is happening.
  • The movie cuts to the face of a watch whose hands go from moving slowly to moving much faster.
  • People riot on the streets as a car in the background explodes.
  • Dom (Leonardo DiCaprio) sits unconscious in an new apartment location.
  • The movie cuts to the face of a watch whose hands go from moving fast to moving much slower.
  • The flames coming from the car’s explosion seem to slow down along with the clock.
  • Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Dom (Leonardo DiCaprio) walk outside and notice the world shaking in non-natural ways.
The parallel watch sequence demonstrates the logic Inception will continue to use (and will explain later). Impacts from seemingly disparate moments bleed into each other – this is not only a mechanic of the universe but the first indication that the important thing to focus on is the intensity of feeling. This is cemented by the way that the impacts of both scenes’ respective rumblings are tied to the respective dilations of the watch face.

Saito indicates he’ll think about the deal from the two before leaving the room at which it starts to shake violently, as though an earthquake is causing the foundations of the house to rumble. The duo comment that Saito is on to their ruse before the movie cuts to the face of a watch whose hands move slowly before quickly ramping. This ramp up is matched with another cut a riot happening in the streets of a wholly distinct location. The camera moves from the rumble on the street to an apartment overlooking the chaos. Inside the unit, a new character is show tending to what appears to be Dom and Arthur’s unconscious bodies. We cut back to the image of the watch whose hands goes from fast to slow, a reversal of the previous temporal dilation. A car explodes on the street, shaking the screen before the movie cuts back to Arthur and Dom who are walking outside in a world that seems to be shaking just as hard as the explosion that came before.

In a sequence that runs a little over 5 minutes, Nolan manages to establish and present the core mechanics by which his world operates and make clear the themes he’ll be tackling – the way memory and reality bleed into one another, granting meaning to existence. The initial match cut makes it apparent that this is a world where memories and dreams interconnect- one moment, the future, gives way to the interruptions of a past, that may or may not itself be nothing more than artifice. The conversation with Saito primes the viewer to begin probing these ideas, questioning the nature of the first scene and what it’s meant to represent. The parallel watch-sequence is not only a beautiful demonstration of the exposition that Nolan will give us later on, but also hammers home the idea of intensity and duration. The rumbling that starts in the dining room, goes to the riots, stays with the exploding cars, and leads to a world literally shaking as time continues to ramp forward and slow down emphasizes that what matters is intensity , not duration.

This is Inception – a time-diluting, dream-invading, thriller that will have you questioning the “reality” of what’s being presented on the screen at every moment. After this initial sequence, Dom is offered a job with a reward that he can’t resist. The reward? A chance to see his children. The job? Implanting an idea into a person’s head, thereby changing their future decisions – in other words a kind of psychological terrorism. [2]In Kon’s Paprika, Chiba’s exclaims that “Implanting dreams in other people’s heads is terrorism!” It’s funny then that one of the bigger reaction to Inception by many … Continue reading. He goes on to make a team to help in his operation and the “heist” movie really begins.

In a traditional heist movie, a group comes together, usually skillful criminals, to carry out a theft of some kind. The unifying force between movies in the genre is the presence of an object that gets stolen – whether it be money or technology. Inception flips the genre’s trappings on its head by changing the object getting stolen from something physical to something metaphysical – that of free will. After all, the idea of implanting an idea into someone’s head assumes that you are replacing some other idea that was originally there. In other words, the object the thieves are trying to steal are the autonomy of a subject.

  • Eames (Tom Hardy) explains the nature of the mark’s relationships to his inner circle. Dom (Leonardio DiCaprio) and co. listen on.
  • From left to right: Saito (Ken Watanabe), Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Yusuf (Dileep Rao), Eames (Tom Hardy), Dom (Leonardo DiCaprio), Ariadne (Elliot Paige)
Traditional heist-planning sequences aren’t missing. They’ve just been modified to deal with the psychological nature of the heist being planned. Instead of talking about firewall security, the group has to probe into the inner psyches of their subjects mind and lives so they can more easily break into said subjects subjectivity and influence it. These sessions take place in both the “real” world of the movie and the “dream” world of the movie.

Likewise, the traditional heist-planning sequences have their counterparts here. Instead of discussing how to get past a certain firewall, the characters analyze their subject(s) from the microscopic details of their daily behavior to the larger way they deal with relationships among their associates. In this way, the structure of the heist film maps onto what feels like a psychoanalytic session, the extractors serving as psychoanalysts treating their mark as a analysand. Each maneuver the crew utilizes to plant their idea doubles as technique an analyst would use in a session. Unwinding in parallel to this external psychological session is Dom’s internal journey to overcome his respective psychological trauma. As he rushes forward to plant an idea into another to control them, he has to deal with his own wayward ideas which refuse to submit to his control – a schema which makes us ask how one can implant a thought in stable fashion to someone if one’s own thoughts constantly float around outside of our control.

This conundrum of subjectivity is reflected in the rules of the story early on as it’s revealed that people breaking into a dream bring along their subconscious projections with them. The subconscious is nothing more than a sea of cognitive material formed from the fabrics of our day to day – images and ideas that slip through our self-constructed barriers to the parts of our mind out of our control. These ideas come from others – people, cultures, legal institutions. Would this entail that social behavior by its nature is always involved in some “inception” of a kind if our ideas are “implanted” by some other agent?

At a technical level, Nolan achieves this conundrum through the magic of cutting. That’s right. Just normal cuts from scene to scene. Traditional movies dealing with dreams and memory as subject matter tend to approach field with surrealist imagery, imperceptible messages, and an obvious desire to be recognized as distinctly “dream-like.” The point is to call attention to the nature of the dream versus reality. Inception approaches dreams in the complete opposite way – treating them as they come to us in real life. Completely naturally. By using audio, especially Zimmer’s simultaneously bombastic and inquisitively resonating score (seriously just listen to the difference between the adrenaline pumping “Mombasa” and the somber epic sounding “Time”), as a throughline, Nolan is able to intercut between scenes occurring in different locations without alerting us to a change in scenery. For example, characters can begin talking in one location. The camera will cut to a completely different location as their conversation continues to play out in the background, the characters now missing from the frame. Then the camera cuts back to the characters in a different location, the same conversation continuing. It seems innocuous until it’s revealed that the final conversation in the sequence is actually occurring in a dream as opposed to the first conversation which occurred in reality.

  • Dom (Leonardio DiCaprio) looks in awe as Ariadne bends physics in the dreamworld to clone the world into new planes.
  • Dom (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Ariadne (Elliot Paige) walk up the new plane of reality.
  • Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) explains to Ariadne (Elliot Paige) the way dreams allow people to cheat logic.
  • Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) shows Ariadne (Elliot Paige) the Penrose steps as an example of paradoxes that dreams allow.
Inception’s dream visuals are astounding and larger than life, constantly cheating reality and reveling in doing so. From the early demonstration of the way gravity can shift to the way paradoxes can come to life, it’s made clear that anything is possible.

That isn’t to say the movie approaches dreams just through subtleties – the majority of the obvious dream action makes major use of spectacular set pieces that will leave you in awe if at nothing else, the sheer slick fluidity by which everything operates. Those looking for a visual feast will take great viewing pleasure in watching the way structures form out of nowhere or the manner in which gravity shifts directions. Instead of embracing the surrealist spirit in the vein of Satoshi Kon with scenarios that beg interpretation (whose own movie about dreams, Paprika, served as some influence to Nolan himself) , Nolan “mechanizes” surrealism to fit the mold of a thriller, letting action play out against a tapestry that rests on the tenuous connection reality and the unconscious.

In fact, one of the great feats of the movie is the way it forces the audience to engage with it in its totality by misdirecting them in the most obvious ways. The breathtaking visual effects in the “dream” worlds and the focus on clear and robust exposition all make it seem like the spectacle of the movie is the focus – the focus on what is real and what is not real. However, what this interpretation tends to miss is that the duplicity between what is real and what is not real is something Nolan is actively showing you on the screen. He’s not hiding it or making the tenuous nature of reality ambiguous. Like Solaris, Inception makes it apparent that everything is not what it seems- the barriers between memory, reality, and dreams are revealed to be tenuous at best. If the movie stresses to us the duplicity between the real and dream world, the question becomes what does such a revelation tell us? What does existence look when we’re constantly traversing one realm to another, calling one “real” and one “dream” ?

With all its moving parts working in tandem, Inception can be seen as a a serious reckoning with the story of Chuang Tzu who dreamt he was a butterfly so vividly that he experienced shock upon waking back up. The dream was so lifelike that it led him to ask, “was I Chuang Tzu dreaming I was a butterfly or am I now really a butterfly dreaming that I am Chuang Tzu?” [3] The Philosophy Foundation – The Butterfly Dream. (n.d.). https://www.philosophy-foundation.org/enquiries/view/the-butterfly-dream.. In other words, given the depth of experience in both domains how can (un)consciousness determine what is reality. Nolan’s answer seems to be reality itself doesn’t matter as much as the experience itself. It doesn’t matter whether or not Chuang Tzu was a butterfly or a person as much as if both experiences left an meaningful impact on that unified consciousness (ex: soul) which perceived them. It’s the emotional journey that matters more than the literal journey – the latter only serves as a jumping off point to begin the former’s discovery.

The end result of these two journeys is a heist movie about perception whose very reality is constantly under question, tying form into content and narrative into theme. It’s a movie that treats its audience intelligently, showing first and explaining just enough later, forcing engagement with the subject matter. The cerebral elements of the movie never overpower the visceral elements or vice versa giving fans of both visual splendor and philosophical inquiry things to chew on. At it’s heart, Inception is nothing more than the story of finding ourselves in our own absences.

REPORT CARD

TLDRInception deftly combines the genre mainstays of a heist film with the cerebral intensity involved with the best of science fiction. It is a movie that trusts the audience fully, constantly demonstrating the rules of the world it presents to wow and dazzle. At no point does either element, cerebral or visceral, overwhelm the other as Nolan manages to keep the thriller sequences and metaphysical discoveries tied to each other. Cinema, in both form and content, is used to reveal the duplicitous nature of ideas – their source, their interpretation, and their impact on (un)unconsciousness. The result is a truly human story that asks what it means to have freedom and what it means to use that freedom to live a life worth living.
Rating10/10
GradeS

Go to Page 2 for the for the spoiler discussion and more in-depth analysis.
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2010s, 2017, Comedy, Grade, Horror, mystery, Review, review-movie, S, Thriller, Year

Film Review: Get Out – 2010

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Director(s)Jordan Peele
Principal CastDaniel Kaluuya as Chris
Allison Williams as Rose Armitage
Bradley Whitford as Dean Armitage
Catherine Keener as Missy Armitage
Caleb Landry Jones as Jeremy Armitage
Lil Rel Howery as Rod
Release Date2017
Language(s)English
Running Time 104 minutes
Report Card Click to go Review TLDR/Summary
Danny (Danny Lloyd) and Wendy (Shelley Duvall) walk in the hedge-made labyrinth.
Andre (Lakeith Stanfield) walks in the suburban labyrinth .
The movie opens on a suburban landscape in one-point perspective with greenery adorning both sides of a walkway in the center, hearkening back to the iconic hedge maze from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Given both Wendy and Danny’s eventual fates, we immediately know that Andre is in danger of some external danger. This will soon be confirmed as he’s kidnapped.

We open in a suburban neighborhood sidewalk. The camera tracks forward slowly as a young black man, Andre, (Lakeith Stanfield) walks onto it talking on his cellphone about how the location is disorienting or as he puts it: “a creepy confusing ass suburb.” The mise-en-scène hearkens back to similar shots from Kubrick’s The Shining, namely that of the characters walking through a hedge maze. Like those characters, this labyrinth is not a safe location for inhabitants unfamiliar with it.

Andre realizes that a car is following him and tries to escape it but is caught unaware by an assailant donning a knight’s head of armor. As the latter chokes out the former, we can hear the lyrics to Gay and Butler’s song “Run Rabbit Run”; the happy sounding song warning rabbits to run is jarring in feeling but lyrically contextual, warning us of things to come. His body is unceremoniously dumped into the back of his pursuer’s car as the opening credits play in blue font color. This reference to The Shining, which also uses the same light blue color in its opening sequence text, is made even more explicit in the next cut to a tracking shot of a forest.

Peele doubles down on The Shining references by directly referencing the opening of movie through the use of a similar light blue opening credit font along with a shot of an ominous forest. It’s the aural differences (and similarities) that set the scenes apart as Kubrick’s

While Kubrick’s masterpiece starts on aerial shot of a mountain range and surrounding forest as foreboding droning noises with indigenous chants punctuate the soundscape, setting up the subtext regarding the genocide of the native populations. Peele keeps the view of the encroaching forest but trades the cries of the indigenous, whispery African voices puncture the soundscape and give a warning to be careful of impending danger. [1] Weaver, C., & Peele. (2017, February 3). Jordan Peele on a Real Horror Story: Being Black in America. GQ. https://www.gq.com/story/jordan-peele-get-out-interview. It’s no coincidence that the jovial track warning rabbits is swapped out for an moody and foreboding Swahili song, “Sikiliza Kwa Wahenga ” which similarly warns its recipient of impending danger.

Finally, the movie cuts to a striking black and white photograph, neatly framed against the wall; no longer in the forests, we’ve transported to the inside of a photographer’s apartment. The song changes again to Childish Gambino’s funky ethereal track “Redbone” which warns its audience to stay alert for creepers looking out to get them, the audience, while unaware. We get to see the interior of the apartment before finally getting to see our protagonist, a black photographer Chris (Daniel Kaluuya), getting ready for an outing with Rose (Allison Williams) , his white girlfriend.

We learn that he’s getting ready to meet Rose’s parents, Dean (Bradley Whitford) and Missy (Catherine Keener), for a weekend visit at the latter’s residence. He asks her if they know that he’s black. She says “no,” but assuages his concerns by ensuring him that her parents are super liberal going so far as to mention how her father would vote for “Obama a third time if he could.” It’s the perfect comedy set-up; well-to-do white liberals in their efforts to seem inclusive end up reinforcing racist tropes in comedic fashion. However, everything up till now has primed us to be more suspicious and be on alert. We know being in an unfamiliar neighborhood is dangerous news for black men and we’ve been warned now 3 times to stay vigilant.

The immediate effect of this opening sequence is a persistent vertigo effect that makes every interaction impossible to pin down as our interpretations of what’s happening is constantly being ripped out from under; innocuous moments turn uncomfortable turn horrifying as we along with Chris are forced into questioning every interaction. His reception starts innocent enough, but as his stay continues little moments build up into bizarre microaggressions which transform into horrific realizations culminating in what I can only describe as the horrific ideology of “post-racial”[2]By post-racial I am referring to the idea of a post-racial America where the United States is free from racism and discrimination related to the same. The idea came heavily back into fashion with the … Continue reading equality come to life.

Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) shows both fear and unease perfectly as he cocks his head and intensifies his gaze in regards to Georgina’s odd behaviours.
Georgina (Betty Gabriel) goes “batshit” as she cries and smiles in a disconcerting fashion.
Peele relishes in the ambiguities of his characters by shooting the actors portraying them in beautiful close-ups. By using their faces as canvases during intense moments, Peele gets to drive home ambiguities, heighten tensions, and get you fully invested in where everything is going. It helps that the movie is filled with masterclass performances from the lead in Kaluuya all the way to supporting cast like Gabriel.

This is obviously helped by the fantastic performances of the cast which Peele shows off by filming in close up, letting their faces envelop the entire frame. Moments that are already unnerving become blood chilling as we’re forced to confront faces that seem to give away everything and nothing simultaneously (in particular scenes with Betty Gabriel who plays Georgina) ; every muscular twitch, every pinching at the lip, every shift in the gaze becomes heightened forcing the audience to figure out what is trying to be revealed. While I can’t get into nuances of every actor for fear of spoilers, I can say that the multiple roles that a host of the characters play make it impossible to gauge certain moments for what they are until the end of the movie only for them then to then gain another layer of meaning on subsequent watches.

Chris (Daniel Kaluuya)talks about his evening with Missy with Rod .
Rod (Lil Rel Howery) responds to Chris’s concerns and offers his comedic diagnosis.
Peele intentionally structures the movie’s key revelations around conversations between Chris and his best friend Rod. These scenes give the movie and audience some breathing room while making the larger themes of the movie easier to digest. It helps the movie be coy in moving forward with more nuanced thematic ideas later on.

Obviously the topic of racism (and it’s relevant nuances) is hard to tackle in a way that keeps its target audience [3]One only has to look at the currently “critical race theory” debate breaking out right now – … Continue reading, people who have drank the “post-racial” Kool-Aid, in their seats while also seriously reckoning with the issue. Peele solves this at a structural level with the introduction of Chris’s best friend, Rod (Lil Rel Howery), who calls in at various points of the movie and offers comedic takes on the situation. It’s not that what he’s saying is incorrect or off base; Rod is actually correct in his own ways about most of what he says if you want to connect the dots. It’s that Howery’s delivery of certain “assessments” helps ease discussion of more serious topics in a more accessible and less severe manner. On top of giving the audience time to catch their breath and compose their thoughts, the technique allows certain thematic ideas to be cemented in a more innocuous way allowing their more developed forms to more easily take root; simple anti-black racism turns into a discussion on the harms of post-racial ideology which turns into a meditation on the importance of black art as a survival strategy.

This is why the horror movie of an interracial couple meeting white parents features the black boyfriend of the couple being a renowned photographer known for his unique “eye”. Peele has explicitly come out and said “Black creators have not been given a platform, and the African-American experience can only be dealt with by an African-American.” Therefore, it is imperative that Chris’s is a black artist He can “see” the best shots. However, this sight is not limited to just art but also to the way the levers of power operate around him. From his first comment to his girlfriend, we know he’s aware of racial dynamics; springing a black boyfriend to a white family that’s only known white boyfriends might go poorly. This is an example of what W.E.B. Dubois called “double consciousness”, where a minority party identifies themselves according to a trait which they know is being surveilled – black flesh- and have thus internalized judgements associated with the same. [4]Scott, J., Franklin, A. T., & Higgins, K. (2006). Chapter 3: Double Consciousness and Second Sight . In Critical affinities: Nietzsche and African American thought. essay, State University of New … Continue reading Chris knows what could happen because he can predict what a white set of parents might think of him because he’s been conditioned by similar treatment from an early age. This vantage point is traumatic but can be transformed into a spiritual “second sight” through an understanding that the debilitating judgements one is casting on oneself are a result of a problematic world; in the case of Chris, this sight has literally manifested in artistic vision. [5]Ibid.

Because the horror is related to the ideological nature of racism and Chris has the ability to detect the “lines” of that ideology, he naturally makes intelligent decisions that we can get behind. We get behind him because it feels like he knows what he’s doing. That’s why when things get flipped on their heads, we realize that we’ve been caught as well – unaware of the true depths of the horror we’ve been led into. The manifestation of this horror in relation to Chris (and his photography) then brings the themes of the movie to full circle, forcing us to reckon with the value of black art, not just as a vision but as a way of survival in society that seeks to erase black subjectivity.

For a genre whose most famous connection to black characters is in its notoriety in killing them first, it’s a breath of fresh air to have a movie in which the black character is intelligent, artistic, and the protagonist. Far from running away from the genre (I’d argue the deference to The Shining shows an immense respect for the genre), Peele runs towards it with open arms in an attempt to use horror to examine racial dynamics in a way previously unexplored. Never once is tension or suspense traded for the sake of a theme and never once is a theme left unexplored in favor of pushing out a new scare. Instead, every element works in tandem to deliver a though provoking thrill ride that will force you to question the nature of status quo ace relations.

REPORT CARD

TLDRGet Out is a horror classic in the making, demonstrating that the genre has more than enough in its wheelhouse to tell captivating stories about issues as nuanced as the terrors of post-racial ideology. It’s a movie that stays committed to both scaring and teaching, never foregoing entertainment for nuance or vice versa. With a healthy number of The Shining references, the evocative soundtrack spanning musical genres, dark comedy built into the structure of the narrative, and a protagonist who you can’t help supporting, it’s hard to find a reason not to recommend the movie to someone.
Rating10/10
Grade S

Go to Page 2 for the spoiler discussion and more in-depth analysis.
Go to Page 3 to view this review’s progress report .

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