Free fall
Isn’t it that I’ve seen the new movie Inception this evening?
The trouble with ‘olliwood these days is that they lack subtly. If this were demonstrated only by the way the plot plods along it would be bad enough but it is as if, once completed, the entire movie is then rechoreographed and explosions, car chases and machine guns inserted liberally to compensate for the lack of subtly in the script. I have come to theorise that most mature artistic media become reliant on technique and neglect inspiration and imagination.
OK, that is my pompous criticism out of the way. The story itself is about a bunch of people who can wrap little wrist straps on and become players in other people’s dreams. Hollywood has had this “what is real and what is not?” thread running for a while now inspired by the brilliant Phillip K. Dick. So this is really more recycling of the same ideas as Total Recall and other movies of that ilk.
Having said that the concepts were interesting. The idea of a “motif” as a small object carried and known only to the carrier which could be observed during a dream to determine whether one was dreaming or not was good. The sequence where one level of dream entered free fall and the only member of the team “awake” had to tie the sleepers together and drag them into a lift to be jolted back into life bordered on farce but was entertaining. In the film dream time is longer than reality so that a dream within a dream within a dream meant that an hour became many years, I liked that idea. The team’s planning seemed to leave a lot to be desired and partly consisted of a deliberate and considered plan to race around in a van with 5 sleeping team members in the back while being attacked by numerous protagonists sporting machine guns in cars and on motorbikes. All planned with split second timing of course.
Worth seeing but I’d prefer to see the same story tackled in a more thoughtful way. But then, what do I know.
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