Very good point Anita. Like you, I also think that Nolan added elements of surrealism into the most minute of interactions or selection of dialogue.
You're totally right about Magritte by the way. I can't count the amount of times throughout Inception where I got this uneasy feeling that there is something right in front of my face that "
something was actually strange" yet it's alluding me.
It's the same feeling of anxiety that the Edvard Munch's painting of the Scream gives me (which I have hanging right above my bed
).
I know this may come off as odd but I found this movie to be more horrifying than any conventional horror movie released in the past decade. There's nothing worse (
yet amusingly exhilarating at the same time) than having your perception altered along with a persistent feeling of uneasiness encroaching on you even in the most subtle of moments.
Apparently Nolan envisioned Inception as a horror movie and I honestly don't think he strayed from that. I feel like I'm starting to sound like the people being interviewed for the film Room 237 (
documentary on theories on the messages hidden throughout Kubricks The Shining).
There's just always something disturbing about this movie that I can never really quite put my finger on. It goes beyond the pretty standard "guilt created wife projection" villain the story shows to the viewer too. That was never really what made me feel uneasy but rather the implications of the possibilities that I felt were being conveyed across to me. Inception being performed on Cobb, stuck in a perpetual "limbo/coma" state, nightmarish imagery/editing that is overlooked due to its familiar representation in terms of setting yet having those tiny anomalies that completely make me feel claustrophobic and uneasy. For example the optical illusion of closing walls during the Mombassa chase which is supposed to be "reality". Ariadne once again being one of the characters that has always stuck out the most to me because she seems to be so well suited and emotionally equipped to get Dom to terms with his guilt over his wife's death.
Gah I'm ranting at this point but I think I'm going to watch this movie again. This movie somehow popped back into my head and it got me thinking of all the odd feelings it gets out of me.
I have to agree 1,000%.
There's a weird mixture of Kubrick, Terrence Malick, and maybe even some David Lynch thrown into
Inception. It's hard to explain, but I feel the presence of all three men there. And it's an incredibly unsettling movie, without a doubt. For those who don't see that, they have to really be
in the movie. I always try to explain this and people don't understand - what I mean is, watching a movie isn't the same as really
watching a movie, like really
experiencing it.
If you're not
watching a Horror movie, if you're not leaning forward and really watching that teenage girl walk down the hallway in her bare feet while the wooden floor boards are creaking under her, you're
not going to be scared. You can watch her do that, but you have to be thinking about it, you have to be immersed in it, you have to imagine that you're this poor little 16 year old who is defenseless. Otherwise, you're just watching a movie. You need to have the
attention span for movies like this, or else you're incredibly bored out of your mind by some dumb teenager walking around for five minutes.
This is off topic, but I saw Man of Steel with a buddy of mine. He totally wasn't "into" it, because he was looking at the various people getting up from their seats to go to the bathroom, he was checking his phone for a text, he was rustling around in his seat, he himself got up to go to the bathroom at one point. And then the movie was over, we got up from our seats and I asked, "What did you think?", and he gave me that classic, all-too-familiar, Internet-critic response: "The action was too long and big, and the fight scene at the end was too long and overblown," etc.
Yes, maybe for you it was, but speak for yourself. If you were
watching the movie, if you were "in" it, if you were invested in these characters like I was, then you would've felt Movie Magic. I caught the fever of "Movie Magic" as early as the first 15 minutes with the Krypton opening. It hearkened back to seeing Jurassic Park for the first time for me - hell, even Star Wars. There could've literally been a
thousand clones of Jessica Biel in their underwear dancing on poles in the movie theater, and my eyes would've still been glued to that damn screen.
Back on point. I think something that makes Inception horroresque and disturbing to me is the idea that you can't trust your own judgment - that you can't even trust
yourself. That your own eyes might be playing tricks on you, that everything around you might be a mirage, and you don't know what reality is anymore. Jacob's Ladder does this. And, obviously, Memento does this. Memento is another one of those films that really creeps me out, that really makes me think long and hard about things.
Another element is Hans Zimmer's score for Inception. There's something so unusual about it, so earthly and yet so alien. It's like a combination of techno and electronica one minute, and then another minute it's like being on a beach watching the waves wash up on shore. It's like being an astronaut in space, yet being in a cave with cavemen.
And this is all happening simultaneously in the same tracks. I have no clue how else to explain that or how to elaborate on it.
Another thing that kind of floored me and really made me
disoriented was the scene when they're all in the empty warehouse and Cobb is explaining Mal's story to Ariadne. There was just this instant realization that hit me, like, "Wow, this is a
flashback, told
inside a dream in a warehouse, and they're all sitting on an
airplane right now." There's just something so odd about it, it kind of makes me uncomfortable. The Prestige did that for me too with the journals.
I have a million other things I could babble about, but bottom line, I think this is one of the most profound films ever made, no question. I know there's a "cool" backlash against it on the Internet now, but whatever. I totally put Nolan up there with Kubrick without a doubt.
t:
His artwork is incredibly realistic but then there would be these little details that make you question what you're looking at.
