Inception

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

So why does 'Inception' have a guy using an elevator shaft to rig a building for remote-controlled demolition?

Peer pressure?

After all, in 'The Dark Knight' the Joker blows up a building using...remote-controlled demolition.

It's just a fad I suppose.

[barracuda]

Well of course it easily could be just that. Film makers and scriptwriters and storytellers generally use pieces of myths to anchor their stories to the memories and knowledge of the audience all the time. It just stands to reason that films will access the greatest American myth of the last ten years to add emotional resonance to their vision.

[operator kos]

Sorry.

[vanlose kid]

Well of course it easily could be just that. Film makers and scriptwriters and storytellers generally use pieces of myths to anchor their stories to the memories and knowledge of the audience all the time. It just stands to reason that films will access the greatest American myth of the last ten years to add emotional resonance to their vision.

Or for mere prosaic and mundane reasons when seeking the answer to how one praticably "demolitions" a building.

As in, this is how one goes about doing such a thing. Kind of like cooking over an open fire.

Is it a psyops meme?

Was it spread by way of KWH?

*

[barracuda]

But as I recall, the explosive wiring of the elevator in the film wasn't used to demolish the building at all, but rather to kick out of the particular hotel-based dream-layer they were in.

[vanlose kid]

But as I recall, the explosive wiring of the elevator in the film wasn't used to demolish the building at all, but rather to kick out of the particular hotel-based dream-layer they were in.

Sorry, my bad.

But though I quoted you, I was suggesting a further mundane, non-WOO (as in non-KWH), reason for why people do things the way they do as opposed to being driven to do so by way of the purported "scientific psyops og KWH".

*

[FourthBase]

I was locked in a ward with a young woman who was under the delusion that Dicaprio and her were engaged to be married. She suffered from several other delusions typical of schizophrenics, the usual bullshit about the Illuminati and so on that could be very interesting (especially here)...if it weren't totally uninformed and existing as a mere shell for severe anxiety and confusion. But the signature delusion revolved around Dicaprio, and how he was in league with government agencies to keep her confined, but how she still loved him and still planned on marrying him, etc. It was sad. Anyway, when Shutter Island came out, and now especially this movie, I can't help but think about that poor girl, and the wild fantasies these movies must have awakened, or even sadder, maybe re-awakened if she had managed to overcome the delusions.

[JackRiddler]

Some really good contributions on this thread, esp. 82_28's meditation on the processor and how it's just as aware of you when you're gone as when you're using it. Also, I look forward to trying these McKenna videos, thanks elfismiles.

Now, strictly on Inception: Was disappointed. Basically very very good -- for a video game. In the Nolan style it was very faithful to its own complex rules of engagement, but I felt little incentive to buy into them. What kind of dreams actually work that way, where an architecture maintains such stability, and corresponds so well to its waking world analogues, and where each dreamer remains the same person as when awake all through the dream? In this whole movie no one ever turned spontaneously into someone else, and no one suddenly found themselves having sex with a stranger. These are two things you will all have to admit happen in pretty much every dream!

Why the hell should being shot in a dream "kill" the dream construct, or cause one of the co-dreamers to fall out? Can anyone think of a reason for this? The structure of dream levels was fun to figure out, but ultimately ridiculous. Why should the fictional technology of drugging and co-dreaming work by the same rules on a dream level, as though real physics and biochemistry were still involved? Why should the next level created operate at an analogously accelerated speed relative to the level above it? All this device really accomplished was to set up a four-level battle with time running at different speeds on each level. A screenplay certain to please watchmakers who are also first-person shooter fans. I'm also willing to allow it as a meditation on film-making as collaborative willed dreaming (so Leo's the director, Saito's the fucking executive producer moneybags, Ellen Page the production designer or what, the writer?, that British guy was an actor, etc.). But while that might make a good essay, the story didn't come together emotionally, despite the dream casting all around and great performances. The effort expended to meditate on loss, grief and the hope of family left me flat.

It occurred to me at the end that one of the allegories at work was that the DiCaprio character wanted to regain his pre-9/11 innocence about his country -- make it through the iris surveillance and police state barriers and discover that it has turned back into a home, not "The Homeland."

The best part was Paris, by the way. Whereas the boulevard battle scene on "Level 1" in the long dream (the one where the locomotive appeared) felt like outtakes from the Dark Knight (the sequence with the Joker in a truck vs. the Batmobile).

In my dreams I have smashed so many alarm clocks, rammed them under ruined buildings, and it never worked to shut them up! I unplug them and turn off the city power plant, still they beep beep beep. Also, how come no one ever finds themselves flying, and thinking how they've always been able to do that, etc.

[charlie meadows]

Finally caught Inception the other day. Had to watch it more than once to really do it justice... to slow the action down, because there is so much going on, and let it really sink in.

I see it as the Nolans' response to Kubrick's version of The Shining.

Ariadne is key.

[justdrew]

hmmm. I'm not sure how it could compare to The Shining, I didn't really "get" any sense of character or personhood out of any of the puppets. In fairness I haven't re-watched it, maybe I'll give it another go.

but really, it's about a mega-super rich business conglomerate hiring this guy to brainwash (though dreams, so what how it's done) the heir to a rival corporate empire to sell all his assets when he inherits it all from his apparently not quite dead yet dad (who we never see?).

It's all a rip from Uncle Scrooge McDuck comic book plotline from the mid-90s anyway.

[charlie meadows]

justdrew,

I was speaking not in terms of plotline, but subtext, the underlying or implicit theme, which is not stated directly but can be inferred through a process of rigorous intuition.

With Kubrick, the brothers Coen and Nolan, David Lynch et al it's all about subtext.

[Mx32]

Got it as a christmas pressie - load of rubbish. For all their faults I must have seen the Matrix about 7 or 8 times and Matrix reloaded 4 or 5 times but I can't bring myself to watch Inception again.

The film just didn't work on any level for me - where was the satisfying story? the amazing effects? the mind blowing concepts? the big reveal? the emotional content? the twists? outrageous violence? disturbing shit? exciting bits? funny bits? romantic bits? sad bits? Logic? any kid of reality? What was in this film for me to enjoy? I can't remember.

This was like the dullest bits of Bond films for me (the big shoot out scenes in underground lairs) dragged out for what felt like 8 hours.

[justdrew]

justdrew,

I was speaking not in terms of plotline, but subtext, the underlying or implicit theme, which is not stated directly but can be inferred through a process of rigorous intuition.

With Kubrick, the brothers Coen and Nolan, David Lynch et al it's all about subtext.

Hmm... wild ass guess - Is Ariadne actually his daughter then?

[Canadian_watcher]

I haven't watched it since it was in the theatres, however I believe I came away from it thinking that the super-rich business man was an invention of Cobb's (DiCaprio's) team in order to finally get him to let go of his wife. I think that I thought that his father set the whole thing up from start to finish.

but I kinda forget it since I was really disappointed with it in the first place.

[charlie meadows]

justdrew,

I was speaking not in terms of plotline, but subtext, the underlying or implicit theme, which is not stated directly but can be inferred through a process of rigorous intuition.

With Kubrick, the brothers Coen and Nolan, David Lynch et al it's all about subtext.

Hmm... wild ass guess - Is Ariadne actually his daughter then?

His biological daughter?

I guess I'm referring to what might be called mythic subtext.

Christopher Nolan's favorite movies are any made by Kubrick, especially 2001. Stanley Kubrick's first production company was called Minotaur Productions, a fact which I'm sure has not eluded Nolan. Some 30 years later, Kubrick swapped out the topiaries in The Shining for not one but three different mazes.

In the Greek myth and in The Shining the man was inside the maze, but the mythic subtext is that the maze was inside the man. Psychologically, physiologically and so psycho-physiologically. Inception took that subtext, turned it inside out and brought it to the surface, so to speak.

In my interpretation anyway.

But beneath that there is yet another subtext....