Its been awhile since I posted something decent, its not that am very busy or anything as such. I've just been lazy. I keep finding so many things that I make a mental note of, thinking I should write a post on it, but it fades away before it can be summed up or I don't feel strongly about it by the time its time to write but then I saw Inception (twice) last week and it blew me out of the water.
The last time I saw a film that made me want to watch it again immediately, was The Matrix, mainly because of the thought provoking nature of the film and of course, the film-making process. Inception proves that a film doesn't have to be a sequel, it doesn't have to an adaptation and it doesn't have to a re-make to do well with the audience. I somehow get the feeling that production studios think that the general public are dumb and will not understand something that is complex, hence they pick the easy way out by making sequels to an already established franchise. Christopher Nolan proved that wrong by filling up movie halls for two weeks in a row (still counting) and keeping Inception at the pole in the box office. It demands you to watch it more than once to digest the film and pick up clues that you would have missed on the first time around. This film proves that the audience isn't dumb, you just have to make a good film with the right balance and it will be consumed well.
The film itself is fantastic, though the idea and basis of the film isn't entirely new, it does draw its influences from various sources, but its the presentation and the way the film is handled is what makes it impressive. Inception, like most of Nolan's film isn't linear, it takes you through the story from different perspectives and different routes but still grounds the viewer well with in the plot without losing focus, which is quite tough when you handle something as complex a storyline as this film, but Nolan seems to be a master at it, which he proved early on with his films 'Following' and 'Memento'.
Some folks did find the film constant without any breathing space, to let you assimilate the information being thrown at you, but I felt the pace of the film was good and if there were any plateaus in the story graph it would have lost focus and left you wandering about and thinking of the possibilities of the outcome. Which I liked, because the film doesn't let you analyze, it makes you do the analysis after the credits roll, which in turn demands you to watch it again. That is a tough one for a director and an editor to pull off.
Another interesting comment I heard was that some of them felt the motivation or the cause of the film could have been stronger. As in, instead of dissolving a business empire, it could have been preventing nuclear warfare etc etc. I find this very interesting (mini spoilers ahead). I have noticed a lot of people never see the core of a film they seem to miss out the essence of story entirely. When you speak to a colleague after a film and ask them what they thought about it, its generally about how the Visual Effects looked good\bad or its about how the gadgets in the film looked cool or how car chase in ultra slow motion looked. Its never about the emotion of the film. Never. In the case of Inception it not about the heist, its not about the anti-gravity lobby fight (which looked awesome), its not about the music score (which was phenomenal) its about - Cobb's (DiCaprio) fight with reality, his guilt and longing for his once happy family. That is the essence of the film. The rest is the packaging and layers to support the story. To elaborate - think about most of Steven Spielberg's films, under all the gimmicks there is a core to the film - Jaws is about a family staying together and kid looking up to his dad as a role model, the shark is a driving force and an important catalyst and if you look at JJ Abrams's Star Trek - Kirk's path to self discovery and leadership. Its all in the story.
One cant really blame the audience for not looking at a story intricately, our senses have been bombarded and spoilt by the likes of a slew of bad "summer block busters" which were all pretty pictures but no soul.
Considering I work in the visual effects industry, I obviously would need to make side notes regarding that. Over all the effects worked well for me it never took me out of the experience nor did I feel that it was over done. Christopher Nolan is notorious for keeping things practical and using CGI to the minimum and it always works. The avalanche, most of the exploding material during Ariadne's (Ellen Page) training was all shot as practical plates and enhanced only when necessary.
Two sequences really stood out for me - During her training ,Ariadne echos two mirror reflections, thus creating a bridge in the dream world. This is a really clever sequence, it is so subtle that you're not really sure if anything is really happening until you realize that everything you've been watching has been an optical illusion. The crew built a 8-foot x 16-foot mirror that could be swung shut on a hinge, forming a huge reflecting door, in post they got about removing the support rig and crew reflections, adding in the infinite secondary reflections as well as the surrounding environment.
Another sequence that got me thinking was the anti gravity fight sequence in the lobby. To create the environment, the scene was shot using massive rotating sets that twisted and turned, which took a full three weeks to shoot. The crew built a series of different hallway settings: a horizontal one that rotated 360 degrees, a vertical one that allowed actors to wear wires and another on which the actors were strapped to steel trolleys, which were eventually erased in post.
We can now definitely trust Christopher Nolan to give us quality cinema and thought provoking material.
