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Speaker 2: What kind of a show you guys putting on here today?
Speaker 3: You're not interested in art?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 3: No, Look, we're going to do this thing. We're going
Speaker 3: to have a conversation.
Speaker 1: Hey.
Speaker 2: Film spotters Adam and Josh. Here Christopher Nolan's Inception came
Speaker 2: to theaters fifteen years ago. Josh, or did I just
Speaker 2: dream it? It's hard to say.
Speaker 3: I didn't have a battle. It happened.
Speaker 2: I think I recall reviewing it back in July twenty ten.
Speaker 2: That was with former co host Maddie Ballgame. But you
Speaker 2: and me, we revisited it back in twenty twenty when
Speaker 2: we were mired in COVID and looking for things to discuss,
Speaker 2: and we came up with a pretty good idea. I'm
Speaker 2: pretty sure we knew Tenant was coming out, and we
Speaker 2: were looking into the future, looking for some hope on
Speaker 2: the horizon, and we said, well, let's prepare, Let's revisit
Speaker 2: all of Christopher Nolan's films. Let's do a Christopher Nolan
Speaker 2: over review, as we called it, look at all of
Speaker 2: Christopher Nolan's films in order, which we did. Inception was
Speaker 2: part of that.
Speaker 4: We're going to share that review today. Now, did someone
Speaker 4: just place this in my brain, Adam or are you
Speaker 4: not as big of a fan of Inception as I am?
Speaker 4: Am I remembering that correctly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true. I mean I'll have to I'll have
Speaker 2: to listen to the conversation. I think I might just
Speaker 2: be three stars on it. It's not There's at least
Speaker 2: five other Nolan films I like better. At least that's
Speaker 2: my recollection.
Speaker 4: Okay, well, it sounds like we at least didn't fight
Speaker 4: about it, though. Yes, we'll have to listen to find
Speaker 4: out for sure. The Film Spotting Archive, which we're pulling
Speaker 4: this review from, has other reviews as well as top
Speaker 4: fives and more going back to two thousand and five.
Speaker 4: Access to the archive is just one of the benefits
Speaker 4: you get as a member of the Film Spotting Family.
Speaker 4: You can learn more about joining the family over at
Speaker 4: film spottingfamily dot com from July twenty twenty. Then here
Speaker 4: is that Nolan ooverview review of Inception.
Speaker 3: There's one thing you should know about me.
Speaker 2: I specialize in a very specific type of security, subconscious security.
Speaker 1: You're talking about dreams.
Speaker 4: That's from the trailer for Christopher Nolan's Inception, which came
Speaker 4: out almost exactly ten years ago July sixteenth, twenty ten.
Speaker 4: That means it arrived two years after The Dark Night.
Speaker 4: To give us some context here for our Nolan overview,
Speaker 4: which we've mostly been going through chronologically. Now we did
Speaker 4: make an exception in the case of the Batman trilogy
Speaker 4: jumbled things up a bit, but we're back on track
Speaker 4: here with Inception again, which came out in twenty ten.
Speaker 4: It was Nolan's third highest grossing film still is behind
Speaker 4: The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises made eight
Speaker 4: hundred and thirty million dollars globally, and maybe after The
Speaker 4: Dark Knight, it's Nolan's best loved film. One measurement here
Speaker 4: is to look at letterboxed, where The Dark Knight and
Speaker 4: Inception come in at one and two. Now, one of
Speaker 4: the things that I mentioned was that I wanted to
Speaker 4: trace at the beginning of our Christopher Nolan overview Adam
Speaker 4: the evolution of his characters as human beings rather than
Speaker 4: placeholders for ideas or chess pieces that he could move
Speaker 4: around these elaborately constructed game boards. Following his first film,
Speaker 4: I think we both agreed didn't exactly provide fully rounded characters.
Speaker 4: There were other things we liked about it. While Memento
Speaker 4: was a significant leap forward in that direction, especially considering
Speaker 4: Guy Pierce's Leonard, still, Nolan's reputation with some as a
Speaker 4: cold filmmaker would follow him through his subsequent movies, and
Speaker 4: it had been so long since I had last seen
Speaker 4: twenty ten's Inception that I couldn't remember how it struck me.
Speaker 4: In this regard, I certainly remembered Ellen Page's dream architect
Speaker 4: folding cities in on themselves not long after she joined
Speaker 4: Leonardo DiCaprio's team of dream thieves, these corporate spies who
Speaker 4: enter business people's dreams to steal their secrets. I also
Speaker 4: remembered Joseph Gordon Levitt inside one of those dreams in
Speaker 4: a fistfight in a Hotel Hallway where gravity had disappeared.
Speaker 4: This is one of the handful of instances where Nolan
Speaker 4: relied on a practical set and effects to twist our minds.
Speaker 4: But what of the movie's emotional resonance and the human
Speaker 4: element connected to it? I wasn't sure, And this is
Speaker 4: what made me wonder back when we were running through
Speaker 4: our tentative rankings of his films if Inception might fall
Speaker 4: after this overview from my number two slot. Well, here's
Speaker 4: what I forgot. How good and crucial Marion Cotillard is
Speaker 4: as Ma, the late wife of DiCaprio's Cob, who appears
Speaker 4: throughout the film in those dream sequences as a projection
Speaker 4: of cobs subconscious. I'll make my case for her as
Speaker 4: the emotional lynchpin of the film, but first I want
Speaker 4: to hear what you made of this aspect of Inception, Adam.
Speaker 4: Is this still one of your favorite Nolan's And if so,
Speaker 4: is Courtyard part of the reason for that.
Speaker 2: Well, throughout this series, every movie we have seen has
Speaker 2: either risen in my estimation or stayed at the exact
Speaker 2: same level.
Speaker 3: And we now have a first.
Speaker 2: No, a movie dipped and Inception dipped. I don't know
Speaker 2: how it happened, but throughout this series, as you know, Josh,
Speaker 2: and I think I've referenced it during a couple of
Speaker 2: conversations I've been battling with our producer Sam. I call
Speaker 2: him the Nolan nitpicker, and he would totally accept that.
Speaker 3: Moniker.
Speaker 2: We've been going back and forth on Memento and The Prestige,
Speaker 2: which are movies in particular, that he just doesn't get
Speaker 2: what all the fuss is about, even after listening to
Speaker 2: us be so insightful for so many minutes. Yeah, hard
Speaker 2: to imagine editing those shows. Somehow, he still doesn't see
Speaker 2: what's so great about these movies. And he's constantly picking
Speaker 2: at all the open questions and all the holes in
Speaker 2: the plots, and the way that Nolan seems to establish
Speaker 2: all these rules and they don't all fit together, maybe
Speaker 2: as cohesively as they should in his mind. And I'm
Speaker 2: always countering this. Somehow, without me being aware, he connected
Speaker 2: me to some machine in spring Green, Wisconsin, and he
Speaker 2: infiltrated my subconscious as I watched Inception. What is Cobb's
Speaker 2: line early in this film? He says, once an idea
Speaker 2: has taken hold of the brain, it's almost impossible to eradicate.
Speaker 2: And that idea that that got planet in my mind,
Speaker 2: that Sam didn't really put there was. This House of
Speaker 2: Cards is kind of flimsy, and it's shaking under the
Speaker 2: weight of the spectacle, and it almost crumbles because of
Speaker 2: a weak foundation. This is how I'm going to get
Speaker 2: to the answer to your question, in a little bit
Speaker 2: of a roundabout way. If you take everything that makes
Speaker 2: a Nolan film, certainly elements and attributes that we were
Speaker 2: both aware of before we embarked on this series, but
Speaker 2: have maybe even crystallized even clearer now. The genre elements.
Speaker 2: This is a heist movie right at its core, the
Speaker 2: philosophizing the preoccupation with memory and time, which is inextricable
Speaker 2: from the form of his movies right and their metadness.
Speaker 2: We see it in the nonlinear structures, but I think
Speaker 2: the most applicable example here the same way in Memento,
Speaker 2: we as viewers are linked to Leonard by not being
Speaker 2: aware of how we got into each scene. Inception throws
Speaker 2: us into this bizarre, convoluted scene immediately. And I am
Speaker 2: not exaggerating here, Josh, I didn't remember how this movie opened,
Speaker 2: and I checked the display on my Blu ray player
Speaker 2: three times in the first seven minutes to confirm that
Speaker 2: I hadn't accidentally started the movie on a different chapter
Speaker 2: somewhere in the middle of the film. I really had
Speaker 2: thought I had done something wrong. I forgot that it
Speaker 2: opened just dropping him on that beach, and that he's
Speaker 2: in conversations with Cyto and you have no idea kind
Speaker 2: of what's going on.
Speaker 4: So you've already stumbled into One of the brilliant things
Speaker 4: about the movie, of course, is of course that's it, right, Bowls.
Speaker 3: It's a dream. Yeah, No, it's a dream within a
Speaker 3: dream at a dream within a dream, of course.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's no exposition, it's no introductions or set up,
Speaker 2: and a lot of sequences do start that way. It's
Speaker 2: not just the opening of the film. And yes, you
Speaker 2: said it, but it makes sense that in a movie
Speaker 2: where most characters are in a dream state most of
Speaker 2: the time, that it would play like a dream for
Speaker 2: the people watching it. And these films are all all
Speaker 2: of Nolan's work are artistic creations that are commenting on
Speaker 2: the act of creating art, and they're engaging in this
Speaker 2: dialogue with a viewer at the same time making us
Speaker 2: confront how our day to day experience of life is
Speaker 2: like being in or watching a movie or vice versa.
Speaker 2: And honestly, that's spiral image, which is such a key
Speaker 2: image to this movie. That's a perfect metaphor for how
Speaker 2: dizzy I get when I even try to articulate what
Speaker 2: I just expressed, And all of that is what makes
Speaker 2: Nolan's films really fun to consider, really fun to discuss.
Speaker 2: But it is a hollow experience without the humanity, which
Speaker 2: doesn't mean necessarily what you might think of emotion, a
Speaker 2: certain sentimentality, or compassion, even the kind of things that
Speaker 2: maybe get attributed to humanist filmmakers that we lump together
Speaker 2: like Capra or o Zoo or Satugate Ray. It's maybe
Speaker 2: a more cynical type of humanism, But for me, it's
Speaker 2: seeing the humanity in his character in the form of
Speaker 2: recognizing their flaws. It's their guilt and the struggle with
Speaker 2: that guilt that we see in Will Dormer, in Bruce Wayne,
Speaker 2: in Leonard Shelby in The Rival Prestige Magicians. It's their grief,
Speaker 2: it's their obsessions and their choices, usually misguided and tragic,
Speaker 2: but understandable no matter how stylized or heightened. The circumstances
Speaker 2: are we're seeing ourselves and our conflicts and our crises
Speaker 2: reflected back to us in those obsessions and those choices.
Speaker 2: And I've connected to that humanity in every one of
Speaker 2: these Nolan films so far until Inception. At no point,
Speaker 2: at no point was I invested in what was at
Speaker 2: stake for Dom getting back to his kids and reconciling
Speaker 2: as it were, with his wife, forgiving himself and moving
Speaker 2: on with his life. And minus that investment that's spinning
Speaker 2: totem at the end, whether it falls or not, whether
Speaker 2: it's all a dream, real it just it just doesn't matter.
Speaker 2: It really doesn't matter. This is the first Nolan film
Speaker 2: that didn't leave me with more questions, more exciting questions
Speaker 2: to ponder at the end, and for what it's worth.
Speaker 2: As I was preparing for this, I did go back
Speaker 2: and look at my notes from twenty ten, and I
Speaker 2: discovered that I felt this way originally too. I didn't
Speaker 2: buy Mall or their relationship beyond her being one of
Speaker 2: those chess pieces you mentioned, beyond being a convenient antagonist
Speaker 2: and complication. But I was so wowed by the scope
Speaker 2: of the movie and the audacity of those multi layered
Speaker 2: dream sequences and the technical precision and imagination of yes,
Speaker 2: that anti gravity hotel hallway scene in Paris folding in
Speaker 2: on itself, that I was able to dismiss that nagging
Speaker 2: idea ten years ago, this time it spread.
Speaker 4: Wow, Adam, I love you, but you have no idea
Speaker 4: what you're talking about. This is thanks shocking to me.
Speaker 4: I mean, this is kind of like a work that
Speaker 4: a filmmaker has been building towards. You can see all
Speaker 4: of the pieces that he's been toying with and playing
Speaker 4: with in his previous films and perfecting them technically in
Speaker 4: terms of scale, in terms of production, imagination, ideas, and
Speaker 4: I really think that the emotional element works here. What's
Speaker 4: interesting to me when you talk about having, you know,
Speaker 4: an idea placed in your head. I think the reason
Speaker 4: that I didn't remember Inception as being this moving is
Speaker 4: because it does have those critics who call it cold
Speaker 4: and maybe, you know, for good reasons. I do want
Speaker 4: to hear more about, you know, exactly why you think
Speaker 4: it didn't connect with you this way beyond just that
Speaker 4: it didn't. Maybe people have good reasons for that, but
Speaker 4: I have heard that over the years and again didn't
Speaker 4: revisit it, and so I thought, well, you know, maybe
Speaker 4: that's a missing link that I too should have given
Speaker 4: more credence to in twenty ten and maybe would have
Speaker 4: judged the film more fairly. So after watching it again
Speaker 4: and just being wowed on every level by this movie.
Speaker 4: I'm not saying it's perfect, can return to the ski
Speaker 4: chase scene in the final sequence, the final segment, but
Speaker 4: just being so thrilled by the experience of this movie again,
Speaker 4: including the emotional resonance and this marriage at the heart
Speaker 4: of it. I went back and looked at my twenty
Speaker 4: ten review and sure enough, there I say that the
Speaker 4: supporting characters give the best performances beyond DiCaprio, and that
Speaker 4: as I'd agree with that as a matter of fact,
Speaker 4: that really the heart of this film is Marion Cotillard
Speaker 4: as model. It was something that did resonate with me
Speaker 4: at the time and just either faded from my memory
Speaker 4: or kind of got beat out of me by other ideas.
Speaker 4: And I guess we do have to acknowledge and maybe
Speaker 4: this was part of the issue for you. This is
Speaker 4: another dead wife, right, and you're starting to wonder if
Speaker 4: it's like a crutch that Nolan is landing up on.
Speaker 3: But I think when you.
Speaker 4: Compare her to the other figures that we've seen, even
Speaker 4: in Memento, this is a much more complicated figure. This
Speaker 4: isn't just someone you can say, this wife is we
Speaker 4: move on from that, right, like it's just a way
Speaker 4: to move the story forward or to get the story
Speaker 4: jump started. Mal is much more complicated in terms of performance.
Speaker 4: Think about the challenge of this role. She's only really
Speaker 4: ever mostly I should say, a projection of Cobs, right,
Speaker 4: and so you know, unless you trust his flashbacks to
Speaker 4: their time in Limbo and their other time together, Cotyard
Speaker 4: has to play this projection element. That's one thing she
Speaker 4: has to do is be not Mal but a projection
Speaker 4: of Mal, who isn't a real person. But at the
Speaker 4: same time, she's going to have to give us moments
Speaker 4: where we do sympathize with her as Yes, this is
Speaker 4: what's so fascinating. A victim of Cobs, of the decisions,
Speaker 4: all those things you were talking about in his previous films,
Speaker 4: the bad decisions due to the obsessions that his male
Speaker 4: characters have, the victims of that. That's what she is too.
Speaker 4: And I do think Coatyard gives her her own inner life.
Speaker 4: That gives us a sense of that think of all
Speaker 4: the things that my in this film. She's malevolent, as
Speaker 4: you say, and I love that about her, like there's
Speaker 4: allowed to be this side where she is someone to fear,
Speaker 4: but she's also Lovelauren. She's a partner in their dream thievery.
Speaker 4: I also love that she's not just like the wife's
Speaker 4: stuck at home, but we establish it that she was
Speaker 4: a partner in this business with Cobb. She was a
Speaker 4: partner in their marriage, and I think Coachyard gives us
Speaker 4: all of that. And ultimately, you know she's a victim
Speaker 4: of Cobb's attempts to save her. This is the sort
Speaker 4: of thing he has to forgive himself for. But she's
Speaker 4: also a woman with her own agency and ideas. Again,
Speaker 4: if you pull out those flashbacks where she's not a projection,
Speaker 4: but we're ostensibly seeing her, and I think the performance
Speaker 4: gives us this as her own woman. So for me,
Speaker 4: the tragic relationship between Cobb and Malay, it's kind of
Speaker 4: the center of the film. And one more thing I'll
Speaker 4: just say about it again, I think tying back to
Speaker 4: the mechanics that do blow us away that do wow us.
Speaker 4: It's directly woven into those things. I think about the Totem,
Speaker 4: this whole idea about Totem, that it comes from mil
Speaker 4: and that the spinning top is Hers, so right there,
Speaker 4: that's not just like, of course it works at the
Speaker 4: end because it's hers. It carries so much emotional weight,
Speaker 4: because we've learned how it's tied to her directly. It's
Speaker 4: just not a chotchkey that Cob has pulled out just
Speaker 4: so he can know if he's in a dream. And
Speaker 4: then think about that opening sequence. I think this is
Speaker 4: all set up from the beginning by Nolan when Cob
Speaker 4: uses Mal's chair as an anchor in that dream while
Speaker 4: repelling from the window, that captures everything about them, how
Speaker 4: they're literally tied together in ways that are romantic, in
Speaker 4: ways that are dangerous, and then the action implies, you know,
Speaker 4: just the layers of their relationship that make us curious
Speaker 4: about it. And really the rest of the movie, with
Speaker 4: everything else going on, is peeling back that relationship, giving
Speaker 4: us the implications what it means for Cob within this
Speaker 4: mission that he's undergoing, and comes absolutely to fruition in
Speaker 4: that final scene, which is not so much about whether
Speaker 4: he pulled off the job for Cyto, but what it
Speaker 4: means for his relationship with his late wife. So I
Speaker 4: just I thought it was it was important to me
Speaker 4: in twenty ten, and revisiting it, I found it to
Speaker 4: be even more important now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what it means for that relationship to me at
Speaker 2: the end was nothing. And I kind of alluded to this,
Speaker 2: what is the movie really leave you contemplating when it's
Speaker 2: over the other movies that we've seen the Twist, the
Speaker 2: other movies that I've appreciated more so far, they make
Speaker 2: us rethink something about the movie. Sure, about the characters
Speaker 2: and about the world, but you think about Memento and
Speaker 2: you think about prestige and inception.
Speaker 3: Here.
Speaker 2: These are films that offer some of the same kind
Speaker 2: of philosophical dilemmas that we talked about back in our
Speaker 2: bonus content on Patreon when we talked about the movie
Speaker 2: Dev's the many worlds kind of theorizing different states of
Speaker 2: consciousness and inceptions. Twist seems to me nothing more than
Speaker 2: exactly what it is. It's it's a suggestion and it's playful,
Speaker 2: but it doesn't invite any further reflection beyond is Nolan
Speaker 2: messing with us. It doesn't hit me in another way
Speaker 2: because it's.
Speaker 4: Not existential or philosophical. It's emotional. It's exactly the thing
Speaker 4: that you say.
Speaker 3: That I wanted it to be, but I didn't feel it.
Speaker 3: I never felt it.
Speaker 4: And it's because it's not about these larger questions. It's
Speaker 4: about one question. Because no, it's about one question. Can
Speaker 4: Cob forgive himself for what he did with his wife?
Speaker 4: And so it's not about cares about that.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, you spent half the film but I
Speaker 3: don't know it. But why so much.
Speaker 5: Screen time to their relationship, Because what he's really invested
Speaker 5: in and what overwhelms those sequences and what makes them
Speaker 5: feel like plot machinations, is that what he really cares
Speaker 5: about is the fancy effects, even if it's practical, even
Speaker 5: if I love even if I love Josh, how he
Speaker 5: pulls them off. It's all the time and attention he
Speaker 5: spends on that, rather than making me believe in any
Speaker 5: way their relationship never at any point felt it.
Speaker 4: But then, Adam, why is mal in one of the
Speaker 4: very first scenes of the film, for for multiple reasons
Speaker 4: as I described, And why is she figuratively with the
Speaker 4: spinning top the very last image we see. I mean,
Speaker 4: this is he's putting all the weight. I think part
Speaker 4: of the problem is that, I agree, you're not left
Speaker 4: thinking about, well, how many worlds are there? What if
Speaker 4: we watch this movie backwards?
Speaker 3: What a time I wanted?
Speaker 4: But because what's what inception why it's a progression for
Speaker 4: Nolan is because he's he's taken all those things to
Speaker 4: get us through this and entertaining and thought provoking and
Speaker 4: mind blowing ride. But at the end he's wrestling us
Speaker 4: with a human emotional question and am I going to
Speaker 4: be able to forgive myself? Is what Cob is asking for?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 4: For what I've done? And am I going to choose
Speaker 4: to move forward? And then there are philosophical questions we
Speaker 4: could get into. I mean, I don't think they're missed, Josh.
Speaker 2: I get all of this intellectually. I understand that you're
Speaker 2: explaining to me the structure of the film and what
Speaker 2: Nolan wants us to feel. But there's a difference in
Speaker 2: actually feeling it and I didn't.
Speaker 3: I mean, you can't say it's not there. He spends
Speaker 3: a lot of say time, it wasn't there for me.
Speaker 2: I understand that he devotes a lot of time to it,
Speaker 2: but it's it's minuscule in relation to the time he
Speaker 2: devotes to the tedium of the action scenes and the
Speaker 2: attention that he devotes to those. I feel ultimately like it.
Speaker 2: It's an emotional crutch that feels more like he's trying
Speaker 2: to give the movie a weight and a heft and
Speaker 2: a certain romanticism. Even that just does not seem in
Speaker 2: keeping with Nolan's strengths, at least not based on the
Speaker 2: other films that we've seen so far. In the films
Speaker 2: that I've appreciated more, which, like I said, it's not
Speaker 2: because they're giving me a mind blowing twist about Wow,
Speaker 2: how did he pull that off? They're giving me a
Speaker 2: twist that makes me think about my world and how
Speaker 2: I relate to people. And that's what's fascinating when I
Speaker 2: have that personal connection to it. I'm just saying I
Speaker 2: never believed it here. I never did. And part of
Speaker 2: it is DiCaprio's performance too. And I love DiCaprio, and
Speaker 2: I'm with you completely that every other supporting performer.
Speaker 3: Does a better job.
Speaker 2: And I think part of that is the explication in
Speaker 2: the exposition I'm now going to be the one saying
Speaker 2: the criticism that everyone else says about Interstellar, that I
Speaker 2: didn't feel at all the time that I haven't felt
Speaker 2: in the previous films, and I did hear for some reason.
Speaker 2: I mean, Matt Singer wrote about it recently. I saw
Speaker 2: his comments on Letterbox. He said, literally two full hours
Speaker 2: into the movie, DiCaprio is still explaining the rules of
Speaker 2: the dream world to Ellen Page, I do feel like
Speaker 2: it's gratuitous, and even more than that, it feels arbitrary.
Speaker 2: Once you start noticing those things, when you start asking
Speaker 2: a lot of those questions, then then you're derailed from
Speaker 2: that central story that I agree with you, is supposed
Speaker 2: to be the central story that's supposed to be pun
Speaker 2: intended here I guess or metaphor intended the train tracks
Speaker 2: that holds this whole thing together. But once you start
Speaker 2: diverting from that path, you start noticing the holes in it.
Speaker 2: You start noticing the holes in how believable their relationship is.
Speaker 2: And I think that exposition is a key is a
Speaker 2: key distraction here. Let me say this, if there's any
Speaker 2: actress that's up to the challenge and she almost pulls
Speaker 2: it off, it's certainly Mary and Kotar and I love
Speaker 2: how Nolan does use point of view and those sequences
Speaker 2: so that we're aligned with Cobb when he's walking into
Speaker 2: those rooms with her, and when we arrive in a
Speaker 2: space where maybe he slash we shouldn't be and she's
Speaker 2: waiting there for us, that turn of hers to the
Speaker 2: camera we get a couple times that's a really frightening jolt,
Speaker 2: like a legitimately catches you off guard and makes you
Speaker 2: gasp a little bit, like we've been caught like Jimmy
Speaker 2: Stewart in Rear Window. So I do really appreciate some
Speaker 2: of those aspects of it without a doubt. But I
Speaker 2: think the evolution for me Josh ultimately isn't in Nolan's
Speaker 2: ability here to maybe tell a more emotional story. It's
Speaker 2: in the meta layer. It's that this feels like the
Speaker 2: culmination of his preoccupations in terms of using the language
Speaker 2: of cinema and wrapping that around the actual the content
Speaker 2: and the substance of these films. The way that people
Speaker 2: even communicate with each other and the way we as
Speaker 2: viewers experience their world is it's equivalent. It's like we're
Speaker 2: in that spiral, right of this dream, this dream experience,
Speaker 2: we're unified with them in a way that I do
Speaker 2: think is an evolution for him. And we can talk
Speaker 2: about that a little bit more. That meta aspect of
Speaker 2: this film is what fascinates me. It's not the relationship.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and to speak to the expository thing you're talking about,
Speaker 4: because that was my main complain about Interstellar, and I'm
Speaker 4: looking forward to seeing what I make of it the
Speaker 4: second time. I think there's a distinction here in that
Speaker 4: a lot of the information from what I remember of Interstellar,
Speaker 4: it was a lot of like I don't know, was
Speaker 4: it a black hole or a supernova or something whatever.
Speaker 4: It was like stuff we didn't really need to know
Speaker 4: for that story to progress. But the information we're given
Speaker 4: here is there's two things about it. For one thing,
Speaker 4: it is necessary. Some of it it's TALKI I agree,
Speaker 4: but some of it we do need to know just
Speaker 4: to get the ground rules. The other thing is, and
Speaker 4: this may be is an argument against it, but whenever
Speaker 4: we're getting those ground rules, we're getting visual cues as well.
Speaker 4: So the Ellen page training sequence, however you want to describe, that,
Speaker 4: is the perfect example. Right while we're getting talked to
Speaker 4: we're seeing this imagery of this city folding in on
Speaker 4: itself and all these other insane things happening, And so
Speaker 4: you could make the case maybe you didn't need both.
Speaker 4: But I think here where it's not based in necessarily
Speaker 4: reality to kind of and it's this concept that we've
Speaker 4: never even understood before. It's not like we have a
Speaker 4: vague notion of outer space and just tell me we're
Speaker 4: going out fire and outer space. I'm good. This is
Speaker 4: a sci fi movie. That's all I need. Right, this
Speaker 4: is different. We need a little bit of the architecture
Speaker 4: to use a word that applies to this film. So
Speaker 4: I do forgive it a little bit more for that.
Speaker 4: And the other thing is there are a lot of
Speaker 4: instances in this film where Nolan does not bother to
Speaker 4: do that at all. And again I'm going back to
Speaker 4: the opening sequence where to make us understand and how
Speaker 4: these worlds are connected. When Cob has to wake up,
Speaker 4: he's they push him his chair right into the tub,
Speaker 4: and then we cut to a shot of the dream
Speaker 4: that Cob is in and the water just comes again.
Speaker 4: Practical effect, right, the set just gets flooded with this
Speaker 4: water and like that, without needing anyone to explain anything
Speaker 4: to us. We realize how the real world and the
Speaker 4: dream world are connected. So I guess for me, there
Speaker 4: is a lot of exposition in inception, but it is
Speaker 4: almost always backed up by visual information as well, which
Speaker 4: makes it a little bit less tedious.
Speaker 2: I get that, and when we get to Interstellar, maybe
Speaker 2: we can compare notes and see if that truly is
Speaker 2: the distinction. It may be, but I do have to
Speaker 2: point out that it's information we do need to know.
Speaker 2: Is precisely what people like me said defending Interstellar at
Speaker 2: the time and would still say now about it. And
Speaker 2: I think that is reflective of whether or not you
Speaker 2: are locked in to the relationships and to the way
Speaker 2: the movie is is working on you on an emotional
Speaker 2: level and also an intellectual level. If you're on that
Speaker 2: journey as I was with Interstellar, then that exposition all
Speaker 2: feels really necessary to me, just like it all feels
Speaker 2: necessary to you here because you were bought in to
Speaker 2: that mal dom relationship and wanting to see how that
Speaker 2: played out. So I think you are in those circumstances
Speaker 2: willing to willing to forgive things a little bit more.
Speaker 2: And I certainly wouldn't point to those early sequences where
Speaker 2: that stuff is getting explained as a problem. It's more
Speaker 2: as we get the second, third, fourth time that someone says, yes,
Speaker 2: but things work like this in the dream world, and
Speaker 2: then someone says, but no, not this one. No, it's different,
Speaker 2: It actually works like this. Like that just happens repeatedly
Speaker 2: in this film, and it did feel a bit gratuitous
Speaker 2: to me.
Speaker 3: Let me ask a quick question.
Speaker 4: Did you feel you were ahead of those things that
Speaker 4: you didn't need that information?
Speaker 3: No, it's arbitrary.
Speaker 2: It felt like the movie was making it up in
Speaker 2: the moment, as opposed to it feeling like these established
Speaker 2: rules of the world that I could really buy into.
Speaker 2: It felt like it was convenient for the mechanics of
Speaker 2: the plot that in that moment he could just make
Speaker 2: up and do whatever he wanted in that particular instance.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I guess, I guess for me, Like, one of
Speaker 4: the thrills of this movie is how again, going back
Speaker 4: to the brazen opening where Inception, a normal filmmaker would
Speaker 4: start Inception by putting us in a dream, like, oh,
Speaker 4: we're in a dream, and these characters infiltrate dreams, and
Speaker 4: now I'm gonna let you get your mind around that
Speaker 4: then I will move This is what I love about
Speaker 4: Nolan is he trusts pop audiences. Right, He's like, then
Speaker 4: I'll move you into the dream within a dream. No,
Speaker 4: this movie starts, That's what I was saying, with a
Speaker 4: dream within a dream, So already things are complicated. So
Speaker 4: I feel like it's not arbitrary because the escalation in
Speaker 4: this film is so thrilling. It is just like we're
Speaker 4: what now, We're where now? And I Am not going
Speaker 4: to begrudge because I'll just say it like I was
Speaker 4: grateful for a little reorientation along the way because then
Speaker 4: I could appreciate where I was a little bit more.
Speaker 4: I didn't need the map exactly laid out for me,
Speaker 4: but I need a little bit of that sense of
Speaker 4: why things different at this level where these characters had
Speaker 4: never been before, or most of them to keep up
Speaker 4: with them.
Speaker 3: So I guess that's why it worked for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm going to go back to the meta aspect
Speaker 2: of the film because it is, as I said, what
Speaker 2: intrigues me the most the correlations and I've talked about
Speaker 2: this before on the show, but the correlations between Cobb
Speaker 2: as a filmmaker slash artist in the role that he
Speaker 2: is serving as this kind of producer slash director of
Speaker 2: these dream sequences, right, and his crew, and their correlation
Speaker 2: to various movie crew roles that are pretty obvious, and
Speaker 2: the talk of true inspiration that's happening as they are
Speaker 2: creating some of these worlds together. And there's that great
Speaker 2: moment during that first run through the dream world with
Speaker 2: Ariadne where she says, why are they looking at me?
Speaker 2: The projections start to turn on her, right, and he
Speaker 2: explains it it's because you're changing things. My subconscious feels
Speaker 2: that someone else is creating the world. The more you
Speaker 2: change things, the quicker the projections convert John you And
Speaker 2: he says that they feel the foreign nature of the
Speaker 2: Dreamer and they attack it like an infection. And I
Speaker 2: think that is such a perfect explanation of the idea
Speaker 2: and ultimately my experience with this film, Josh, But I'm
Speaker 2: trying to kind of articulate, and it's any viewer's experience
Speaker 2: when they are no longer able to suspend disbelief in
Speaker 2: the way that they want to and should with with
Speaker 2: any film, And that's once you become aware that you're
Speaker 2: watching someone else's creation, that you start to see the creator,
Speaker 2: which can be thrilling in its own ways too, don't
Speaker 2: get me wrong, but you are inherently pulled out of
Speaker 2: that world and sometimes that can make you really angry.
Speaker 2: And I love that description, and I love Cobb and
Speaker 2: seeing him as.
Speaker 3: A stand in for Nolan.
Speaker 2: I know that that's been documented elsewhere in terms of
Speaker 2: even DiCaprio's appearance is similar to Nolan in some ways.
Speaker 2: But he's this director who is a mastered this crew,
Speaker 2: and they have all put their faith in him.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: We have the sequence where he reveals some thing that
Speaker 2: he hadn't told all of them before, and they realize
Speaker 2: what's really at stake and that this is really dire,
Speaker 2: and it's like it would be almost like my second
Speaker 2: Herzog reference here on the show. It would be almost
Speaker 2: like you go into the jungle with Herzog and you're
Speaker 2: trusting him completely and then all of a sudden you're
Speaker 2: under attack and everyone has malaria and you're going, how
Speaker 2: did I get here?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: So, in this case, though, you have a director in
Speaker 2: Cobb where the very project he's embarking on is one
Speaker 2: that requires him as an artist to mine his subconscious
Speaker 2: which is what any director what any real artist ultimately
Speaker 2: does have to do. But what can happen then is
Speaker 2: those bad things can emerge, those malls, right, And that's
Speaker 2: no surprise that they call her, that they can emerge,
Speaker 2: and maybe you can make them disappear, maybe you can't,
Speaker 2: and maybe they cause so much torment and havoc that
Speaker 2: they destroy the whole process and the whole project. And
Speaker 2: I thought that was so fascinating that that corollary here
Speaker 2: where maybe you know, this crew and the cast and
Speaker 2: the audience, even we've all made a d with the director.
Speaker 2: We've all struck this bargain, and we hope that he's
Speaker 2: going to hold up the filmmaker is going to hold
Speaker 2: up his end of the bargain. But maybe you're so compromised,
Speaker 2: and maybe you're so corrupted that you can't.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: And when we get that line too where he explains
Speaker 2: to her that you can never recreate places from your memory,
Speaker 2: always imagine new places. I can hear Nolan on one hand,
Speaker 2: reproaching personal filmmakers who don't create worlds on the scale
Speaker 2: that he does, who don't use the same imagination that
Speaker 2: he does, who basically just try to regurgitate their own
Speaker 2: lives and experiences onto the screen. Or maybe it's more
Speaker 2: simple than that, and it's just a warning. It's this
Speaker 2: kind of personal warning where he's saying this, this is
Speaker 2: what happens. This is what can happen. The perils of
Speaker 2: telling personal stories, of mining your subconscious too deeply. If
Speaker 2: you go too deep, it can all unravel on you.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: See, this is the sort of met of stuff. This
Speaker 4: is why I thought you were going to come around
Speaker 4: on Life Aquatic with Steve's asu.
Speaker 2: This is a I know, and it's all the stuff,
Speaker 2: and it's why I still like Inception, Josh. That's why
Speaker 2: I still like Inception as well as because of the
Speaker 2: that you've touched on in so many ways.
Speaker 3: But it's it's not enough.
Speaker 2: It's not enough to compensate for what I felt was
Speaker 2: a as I said, weak foundation here for that relationship.
Speaker 4: So the other thing that I really liked about it,
Speaker 4: I've been talking about this culmination. But the other film
Speaker 4: that you know, again, I'm gonna give Interstellar a fair shot.
Speaker 4: Some people say it's their favorite, so it could jump
Speaker 4: up really high. But the other film in contention for
Speaker 4: that top slot for me from Nolan is done Kirk,
Speaker 4: and I love how the time games here in inception
Speaker 4: point ahead to doun Kirk. Now you can also say
Speaker 4: that they point back to Memento, right, which is probably
Speaker 4: is that you're still your favorite?
Speaker 3: Would you say at this point it's still my number one?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Number one?
Speaker 2: They point ahead just ahead to Interstellar too, in the
Speaker 2: key sequence here where ten seconds for one person is
Speaker 2: three minutes to another is sixty minutes another. That's that's
Speaker 2: the key emotional sequence of Interstellar.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's that's exactly where I was going. I mean
Speaker 4: that that is another instance where and just trying to
Speaker 4: think back to it, like I don't know how much
Speaker 4: X we do get exposition, we get that exact line, right,
Speaker 4: They lay out the timing for it so that we know.
Speaker 4: But again I would argue it was necessary. And then
Speaker 4: once we've got that information, how much more important is
Speaker 4: it when we see that the van is falling in
Speaker 4: slow motion for from that bridge for what like ten
Speaker 4: minutes or whatever of screen time. I mean, it's it's
Speaker 4: just brilliant how that is laid out, how it's envisioned,
Speaker 4: how it's executed, and how so much of it I
Speaker 4: know there, you know, is computer generated imagery in this
Speaker 4: movie I don't want to overblow that, but how much
Speaker 4: of it is done as practically as possible and made
Speaker 4: us to feel like this is all happening in the
Speaker 4: real world. So yeah, just another through line of the
Speaker 4: plane of time, which again we mentioned in following it
Speaker 4: was right there from the start, right It wasn't purely chronological,
Speaker 4: it is somehow here becomes to this culmination of the
Speaker 4: crucial element of the climactic sequence here.
Speaker 3: So I absolutely yeah, love that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I loved it before too, back in twenty ten. I
Speaker 2: remember that I was so mesmerized by the cutting between
Speaker 2: the van and the hotel and that bond villain snow
Speaker 2: layer and the skiing. There's really actually not that much
Speaker 2: skiing that happens in that scene even.
Speaker 4: But here's the problem with that is, and I agree
Speaker 4: with you, it's not that it's terrible. I mean, I
Speaker 4: don't think I still don't think here action is Nolan's
Speaker 4: strong suit. Like a lot of those fight scenes in
Speaker 4: the snow sequence are not great. The problem is what's
Speaker 4: happening in the van is so fascinating, and then what's
Speaker 4: happening in the hotel sequence is even more mind blowing.
Speaker 4: And then you get to a ski slope, right. It's
Speaker 4: just like we're expecting him to ratchet up to a
Speaker 4: new level of really a physics is what we're expecting,
Speaker 4: and instead we get back to James Bond. So there's
Speaker 4: a sense of deflation there that I completely agree with,
Speaker 4: and I think it also falls into an element of
Speaker 4: this movie that you know, there's too much gunplay. This
Speaker 4: movie does not way too much that's gun play, and
Speaker 4: there's way too much of it.
Speaker 3: There, really is it. I'll go back to the word tedious.
Speaker 3: That's how it felt to me.
Speaker 2: And that sequence you're talking about, we do spend, of course,
Speaker 2: the most time in that particular portion of the levels,
Speaker 2: in that snow layer. So if you aren't caught up
Speaker 2: in that, then you really wish you were getting back
Speaker 2: even more often to one of those other sequences, and
Speaker 2: even worse, if your brain has been infiltrated by Sam
Speaker 2: the Nolan nitpicker. Again, we had no conversation about this
Speaker 2: ahead of time, but I apparently morphed into him watching
Speaker 2: this film this time. Josh, I'm thinking about the mechanics
Speaker 2: of it. I'm thinking about the timing that they set
Speaker 2: up and how the way it plays out doesn't match
Speaker 2: the time they establish at all. And I'm thinking about
Speaker 2: how they are all such badasses all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: and did they get military training? Are they doing in
Speaker 2: dreams what they can't do in real life? And like
Speaker 2: I'm asking all of those questions. And again, when you're
Speaker 2: asking all of those questions, then then you're distracted, turn
Speaker 2: in and you're projecting on the filmmaker and you're getting angry,
Speaker 2: I don't know, getting angry watching this film because of that.
Speaker 4: I think if you're asking those questions, I don't know
Speaker 4: if you should be allowed to watch the movie.
Speaker 3: Actually, those just other questions. That was my experience.
Speaker 4: Let me say also with the one thing. The reason
Speaker 4: why it's not a total loss, the snow sequence is because,
Speaker 4: and this goes back to the emotional resonance, something key
Speaker 4: happens there which I think is important. And this is
Speaker 4: where Killy and Murphy, as the CEO's son, the air right,
Speaker 4: the billionaire's air that this whole job is about, finds
Speaker 4: he's being deluded, he's being duped, don't get me wrong.
Speaker 4: But when he goes into that room, that like two
Speaker 4: thousand and one style of room with his the projection
Speaker 4: of his dead father, his dying father, and opens the
Speaker 4: safe and sees in that safe the pinwheel, which is
Speaker 4: the same pinwheel that's in the photograph of him as
Speaker 4: a child with his son that he keeps trying to
Speaker 4: put by his dying father's bedside, and the father doesn't notice. Like,
Speaker 4: these are all emotional elements that have been laid throughout
Speaker 4: the film. I don't care if this guy still gets
Speaker 4: to be a billionaire. I don't care if he breaks
Speaker 4: up his companies. But in that moment, I cared if
Speaker 4: he felt some sort of resolution with his father. And
Speaker 4: that impressed me that I actually cared, because it really
Speaker 4: had no bearing on the rest of the movie, but
Speaker 4: it showed me that the emotional work had been done
Speaker 4: in the performances by Killian Murphy in the previous scenes
Speaker 4: that Nolan had embedded to establish the relationship. And it's
Speaker 4: almost like, I mean to go bring it back to
Speaker 4: the meta thing you're talking about, Adam. How often does
Speaker 4: Tom Hardy's emes talk about what we got to get
Speaker 4: to is the relationship. It doesn't matter like to make
Speaker 4: this heist work, this is the meta thing for me. Okay,
Speaker 4: to make the heist work, we've got to connect on
Speaker 4: a human emotional level with this billionaire son who cares
Speaker 4: about secrets, mechanics, all this other stuff. That's the same
Speaker 4: thing with Inception. If this movie is going to work,
Speaker 4: and obviously it didn't for you, it's going to have
Speaker 4: to also function on emotional human level. And I think
Speaker 4: there is so much attention given to that. It's something
Speaker 4: Nolan knew. It's something he cast the right actors for,
Speaker 4: it's something he wrote the right scenes for. And it
Speaker 4: follows through for me all the way to the end.
Speaker 4: And I think it comes back really to the spinning top.
Speaker 4: It does matter if the top falls or not, because
Speaker 4: the goal of the movie, the goal of this team,
Speaker 4: the goal of Cob, It's only achieved if he genuinely, authentically,
Speaker 4: consciously forgives himself. And so for me, the top's got
Speaker 4: to fall. It's got a fall to have that emotional resolution. Now,
Speaker 4: Nolan may be playing games by not showing us that's
Speaker 4: the trickster in him, right, But I don't know. I
Speaker 4: think it's it just has that sort of oomph for
Speaker 4: me at the end of this movie, and I'm curious,
Speaker 4: I don't know where, like where you are on the
Speaker 4: hole did the top fall or not? Things that you
Speaker 4: probably say, as you probably say it doesn't matter, you
Speaker 4: don't care.
Speaker 2: Now I just I just legitimately don't care. Wow, that's
Speaker 2: the problem, Like, I really don't don't like it, will
Speaker 2: not occupy another moment in my brain after we stop
Speaker 2: this review. So there's no doubt as we're closing this
Speaker 2: up and had a very different experience with this film,
Speaker 2: clearly that he knows it. That meta commentary is there.
Speaker 2: That's Nolan again engaging with his audience the same way
Speaker 2: the Magicians and the Prestige are openly talking about filmmaking
Speaker 2: and the process of creating art while they're talking about
Speaker 2: their lives and talking about the choices they make at
Speaker 2: the end of that film. And so when he says
Speaker 2: that you're right, he has Eames expressed that I think
Speaker 2: he's being very knowing and winking in what the endeavor
Speaker 2: of this film is. But as with every artistic endeavor,
Speaker 2: the intellectual process that goes into it and what you
Speaker 2: want to achieve and what you do or what you
Speaker 2: execute and how the audience reacts to it, those are
Speaker 2: often very different things. Now, one last meta touch that
Speaker 2: I like speaking to all of this and openly using
Speaker 2: the language of cinema, putting those words in the voices
Speaker 2: of these characters. At one point in the explanation to
Speaker 2: I think Ariadne again, he explains that when you dream,
Speaker 2: your mind functions more quickly, so time seems to pass
Speaker 2: more slowly. And all I could think about is Nolan
Speaker 2: winking at us a little bit, because how do you
Speaker 2: shoot something in slow motion on film? You don't slow
Speaker 2: the camera down right, you speed it up. It's achieved
Speaker 2: because it's a faster frame rate. You project that faster
Speaker 2: frame rate normally, and when you do that, it seems slower.
Speaker 2: So that's him again, I would say, potentially subconsciously putting
Speaker 2: those types of words and ideas into these characters mouths,
Speaker 2: but maybe very consciously trying to have them speak in
Speaker 2: the language of movies.
Speaker 4: All right, So, and tied on a positive note for
Speaker 4: both of us, Do you have a favorite sequence from it? Because,
Speaker 4: as I mentioned, it's like it's a series of escalations.
Speaker 4: I kept feeling like, Oh, can't get better than this,
Speaker 4: It can't get better than this.
Speaker 3: But I don't know if I can decide. I mean,
Speaker 3: I kind of part of.
Speaker 4: Me almost likes that opening sequence, even though on some
Speaker 4: level it's the simplest, but again, have you not revisited
Speaker 4: it since twenty ten, Just the thrill of understanding what
Speaker 4: we're in for at that opening might make it my
Speaker 4: favorite the whole you know, until basically they're woken up
Speaker 4: in that apartment building.
Speaker 3: I just love.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I would probably go with that too,
Speaker 2: because I do think that's ultimately the most effective part
Speaker 2: of the film. Though I do still very much appreciate
Speaker 2: that sequence we touched on with Ellen Page when he's
Speaker 2: he's surprising her and the more than anything, the power
Speaker 2: that she feels when she has the control.
Speaker 3: Over her surroundings.
Speaker 2: That's really thrilling to watch, genuinely, but also confounding and
Speaker 2: troubling in a lot of ways. And you see, you
Speaker 2: see what that power comes, all the damage that you
Speaker 2: can potentially do. So that's another sequence that really stands.
Speaker 3: Out for me. You Mustn't be Afraid to dreamin with
Speaker 3: Viga Donna.
Speaker 2: That was our July twenty twenty conversation about Inception, part
Speaker 2: of our Christopher Nolan Oover review. You can get complete
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Speaker 3: Good fine.
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