INTERACTION

Trailer here:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Sd0ff1sbJU

Directed by Christopher Nolan, and starrring Leonardo Di Caprio. Blurbed with 'If you liked The Matrix...' Out on 16 July.

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Saw it this evening, and absolutely loved it. At the moment I can't find a flaw with it. It really was outstanding, and the ending was brilliant.


Blew the Matrix right out of the water. Even the first one.

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Agreed! Went to see it on Friday, and I was still thinking about it on Saturday evening- usually a sign of a good film. Got to love a film that confuses the hell out of you while at the same time dazzling you with mad set pieces.

I read a review that slated it as 'too complex' which might just mean it has a story and an idea. Soon see for myself...

And here's Matthew's review...
http://www.zone-sf.com/screenscene/inception.html

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Simply awesome. If they had been selling copies on the way out the cinema I'd have bought two!

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I thought this was excellent too - and intelligently and thoughtfully worked out. Best film so far this year.

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Just think - a summer blockbuster that is not a sequel, not a remake, not an adaptation from another medium, and which does credit its audience with being smart.

I saw it in IMAX yesterday. I'm sure I didn't grasp all of it first time round, but I did enough to go with the flow. Effective casting too.

A couple of thoughts. Nolan does like his non-linear structures - especially in Following, Memento, The Prestige and now this. Even Batman Begins had extensive flashbacks. If he hadn't already filmed a Christopher Priest novel, I would have said he would have been a perfect match - especially in that sense (without giving too much away) that reality and non-reality can become inextricably fused, and if you can make non-reality from fantasy you can also make reality from fantasy. (See especially A Dream of Wessex, The Affirmation and The Extremes.)

Very impressed by this but why/how were they so well equipped with weapons if they weren't expecting the defense/trouble or did they just dream them up in response to the trouble?

Roy---If you are referring to the fortress near the end, I think that everybody concerned just dreamed them up, as you say. We don't ordinarily have much control over our dreams, but at least in my case many dreams seem 'natural,' or better yet, 'coherent.' If the fortress was the object of attack and its defender's had guns, then so would the attackers. It is wrong to say literally that they just dreamed the weapons up. They did nothing except attack in the way that would be natural. Ariadne was in charge of sculpting the dreamscapes, so perhaps she took care of this. We thus have at least two possibilities; perhaps this is one of the ambiguities that Nolan seems to have set up. I don't want to attribute this one to him though.

I saw the film last night and was tremendously impressed. Roy's remark ties in with some thoughts I've been having all day. I hope to say something about them soon.

Does anyone else feel it could have lost twenty minutes or so though? And the van falling in slo-mo became comical eventually, an unnecessary reminder. Otherwsie, yes, thought it a cracking film and nice to see something different and thought-worthy on the big screen. Having tolerated Red Riding Hood recently (my God!) I miss films like this.

@Ray. I too found the slowly-falling van problematic. Not comical, just slightly irritating. You just added this matter to those I am thinking about. If Nolan thought the plot through fully rigorously, there should be a reason for the slow motion fall. I'm a retired philosophy teacher who is interested in some of the issues raised by this fine film, and cannot get them or 'Inception' out of my mind. Thanks for raising this problem.

Wasn't the falling van simply a representation of the the difference in relative time of the different layers of the dreamscape? Events at the fortress were taking place over mere seconds of the level the van was at.

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@RossWarren. That's what I think too. That's the simplest solution. If true, it would mean that such slowness is not 'in' any level of the dreamscape (whatever that means). It would perhaps be Nolan's way of (as you say), showing differences in the relative times of the level. The problem with this interpretation is then this: the van really does fall in level 1 or 2 (I don't remember). So, since events in the other two levels succeed each other in the time appropriate to what is happening (no matter how weird), the van should, for full coherence, fall at a natural rate.

Since the van appears to the viewer To fall unnaturally slowly, two possibilities arise. 1) Since dreams do not always follow our accepted notions, the van might 'really' (whatever that means) be falling slowly in its level. 2) Your solution might be correct. Then the slowness would be a way of representing relative times. But then full coherence is lost. Like you, I am inclined to accept view 2.

On second viewing (DVD after cinema), I found the falling van a kind of comic-relief interlude, and actually very funny - to think that fire-fight action of level 3 is all 'happening' in heads of the dreamers flopping about in the van as it drops.


It's mightily symbolic as cinema experience of vicarious thrills, too!

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