(no subject)
Austin and I finally got to see Inception. It was an interesting and intense film. We had already seen Memento years ago. Both films feature a man driven to desperate acts by the memory of his departed wife. I enjoyed the visuals in Inception, and the dream logic was engaging. It seems that any movie, or video game, for that matter, which features dream logic has to impose some silly rules in order to orient the audience and create a plot with any meaning. Other films I have seen which involve dream logic include What Dreams May Come, Waking Life, and The Cell; the video game Psychonauts also has dream elements. I would have to say that Waking Life is the most faithful to true-life dream logic.
But I did find it disappointing that Inception did not consider the nature of dreams, that people in dream worlds would be able to shape and create, and push the limits of their reality to their favor. Why wasn't there more flying, or running through doors, or creating things out of nothingness? Dreams don't make as much sense as the worlds that they were dealing with - scenes shift, people have nonsensical conversations, phobias pop up and suddenly you're being chased by something terrifying. People don't have dreams where they're walking down a city block and they hail a cab and everything is normal and nothing memorable happens. When you're dreaming, the crowds you dream up don't all turn and stare simultaneously whenever something strange is happening; they don't attack aggressors as though they were your mental antibodies. Like I said, our dramatized fiction on dreams always seem to include silly rules and guidelines so that our logical minds can follow the storyline.
The ending to the film left me feeling a little lonely and unsettled. It's beautiful and spooky to think that maybe our ...hero(?) didn't actually come out of that triumphant, that maybe he's just buried deep in some inescapable well of his subconscious, living in a dream that is a shade of his long-held wish. It's too much like What Dreams May Come - a happy ending is still a good thing, right? Except that, you know, they're still dead or comatose.
But I did find it disappointing that Inception did not consider the nature of dreams, that people in dream worlds would be able to shape and create, and push the limits of their reality to their favor. Why wasn't there more flying, or running through doors, or creating things out of nothingness? Dreams don't make as much sense as the worlds that they were dealing with - scenes shift, people have nonsensical conversations, phobias pop up and suddenly you're being chased by something terrifying. People don't have dreams where they're walking down a city block and they hail a cab and everything is normal and nothing memorable happens. When you're dreaming, the crowds you dream up don't all turn and stare simultaneously whenever something strange is happening; they don't attack aggressors as though they were your mental antibodies. Like I said, our dramatized fiction on dreams always seem to include silly rules and guidelines so that our logical minds can follow the storyline.
The ending to the film left me feeling a little lonely and unsettled. It's beautiful and spooky to think that maybe our ...hero(?) didn't actually come out of that triumphant, that maybe he's just buried deep in some inescapable well of his subconscious, living in a dream that is a shade of his long-held wish. It's too much like What Dreams May Come - a happy ending is still a good thing, right? Except that, you know, they're still dead or comatose.