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Inception's Usability Problem

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Re: Inception's Usability Problem

#21

Post by mbateman »

Tycho wrote: post #7

I'm pushing a lot of film criticisms onto my mind's stack of 'possibly groundless convictions' these days. I keep seeing complaints that a) a good film needs you to 'care' about the characters who must have 'emotional depth' through 'development' b) a good film should not be pre-occupied with 'exposition' or 'explaining' what is happening but... says who? They sound like half-baked ideas that arm-chair movie critics…

To defend the film critic regurgitation a bit, I don't think characters have to have emotional depth or development, but it's typically a good thing when you care about them and their problems.

As for the exposition point, I think something can be said in defense of the story in the link.

(Spoilers follow.)

Re: emotional attachment. One of the things that annoyed me about Inception was that the big reveal of what happened to Marion Cotillard is totally internal to the weird mechanics of the world. She got driven crazy because she had to be manipulated into giving up the dream world. Erm, okay. To me the main plot with Cillian Murphy had a more interesting core: a guy's self-understanding in relation to his inheritance and successful father. Both are shallow and not "deep", both "develop" in the movie, but the second has some meaning to me and the first doesn't, and it seems to me to be a real advantage.

Re: exposition. I agree that one can get overly concerned with this. But I think it's annoying when exposition goes on during the entire movie, so that rules are introduced in order to explain something going on right that second. For example, all of a sudden it matters whether or not you die in the dream world, and it has to be explained why. Or the elaborate and (to me) cool idea of worming one's way through someone's subconscious by constructing labyrinths and stuff is suddenly thrown out in favor of action sequences involving a "militarized" subconscious. It makes the movie feel more ad hoc and random.

If the movie is going to just be about the mechanics of a world with weird rules, then fine. It's not favorite cup of tea, but I can definitely appreciate it. But there are better and worse constructions and presentations of artificial mechanics, and more and less involving plot vehicles for exploring it. Though some of Kirk Hamilton's particular complaints strike me as silly, I overall agree with him that Inception was inferior to the Matrix in this regard. If anything I think the right analogy with Inception is the second Matrix movie.

Re: Inception's Usability Problem

#22

Post by Tycho »

barrkel wrote: post #11
Tycho wrote: post #7

I'm pushing a lot of film criticisms onto my mind's stack of 'possibly groundless convictions' these days. I keep seeing complaints that a) a good film needs you to 'care' about the characters who must have 'emotional depth' through 'development' b) a good film should not be pre-occupied with 'exposition' or 'explaining' what is happening but... says who? They sound like half-baked ideas that arm-chair movie critics…

Different works of art engage the intellect at different levels, certainly. But the best work at multiple levels simultaneously. Sympathetic characters draw watchers deeper into the movie, at an emotional level, in a way that pure ideas cannot. Similarly, as a visual medium, showing things happening rather than explaining them has much more impact. Using dialogue (or worse, monologues) to explain something is weak st…

I don't doubt there's some truth to these ideas but when I read people apply them it seems like they can't see the wood for the trees.

For instance, one might feel that the architecture student's character is under-developed. If the film wasn't already 2.5 hours, I imagine they would have given this likeable character more scenes. But essentially they did show you everything you need to know about this character, because her fingerprints were all over the set design of the rest of the film. Can't get much more visual-medium than that.

And then people say emotion draws you in deeper than ideas, but here we are days after watching the film avidly discussing its ideas (the layers of dreaming and how they worked). Meanwhile a film like The Matrix which does have 'stronger' individual characters to generate emotion, was compromised by a terrible oversight in the ideas department (ie. the whole concept of humans as batteries/generators is ridiculous). A film doesn't need to engage every level equally or in the standard way to be one of the best, IMO.

You mentioned flashback, well 90% of Inception after the first scene was a flashback, except in this case for once it wasn't at all contrived, because it represented the two characters (protagonist and Japanese dude) de-orphaning their current dream-state by reforming connections to previous layers (remembering the other dreams) and then they could snap back out of all the recursions. In other words, I think the storytelling was masterful.

And what's more, the film was deeply involved in character development and human/emotional themes, because most of it was essentially exploring peoples' subconscious minds and relating that to real life matters. The anchoring struggle was the protagonist 'coming back to reality' in the sense of someone gripped by guilt/regret and being lost in their own imagination at the expense of real relationships/progress (similar to the Solaris remake in this way). Sure, maybe people think this side of the film was poor, but if they'd at least acknowledge/mention it I wouldn't accuse them of missing the wood for the trees or regurgitating standard criticisms without thinking them through.

Re: Inception's Usability Problem

#23

Post by gigafemtonano »

I went and saw Inception in Mountain View this weekend, and the group of older couples in front of us on the way out seemed to have gotten it. Come to think of it, they seemed like they really enjoyed it too. Maybe they were all NASA systems analysts.

Re: Inception's Usability Problem

#24

Post by barrkel »

Tycho wrote: post #22
barrkel wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different works of art engage the intellect at different levels, certainly. But the best work at multiple levels simultaneously. Sympathetic characters draw watchers deeper into the movie, at an emotional level, in a way that pure ideas cannot. Similarly, as a visual medium, showing things happening rather than explaining them has much more impact. Using dialogue (or worse, monologues) to explain something is weak st…

I don't doubt there's some truth to these ideas but when I read people apply them it seems like they can't see the wood for the trees. For instance, one might feel that the architecture student's character is under-developed. If the film wasn't already 2.5 hours, I imagine they would have given this likeable character more scenes. But essentially they did show you everything you need to know about this character, bec…

Note: I have not seen Inception, and I plan to see it, so I am not reading your reply too closely. Nolan, on the basis of past work, is an excellent filmmaker, so I'm sure he isn't guilty of the things I talked about, certainly not blatantly. And I agree that you can't apply criticisms without properly understanding the concepts behind them, and the reason they work the way they do. I grew up in an artistic family. My mother was a theatre actress and director, and my father a songwriter and playwright, so I've been steeped in these mechanics in the practical sense, not just the academic, for a long time.

On the point about flashbacks, probably my favourite film, Once Upon A Time In America, is arguably formed out of flashbacks, or possibly even "flashforwards". The effect, especially after multiple viewings, is something like In Search Of Lost Time in they way it creates a sense of nostalgia, in its case for poorly made life choices, unrequited love, and more. So I certainly wouldn't make the accusation that flashbacks are in principle bad, or necessarily cheap, just often so, in average movies.

Re: Inception's Usability Problem

#25

Post by Tycho »

pchristensen wrote: post #17
Tycho wrote: post #7

I'm pushing a lot of film criticisms onto my mind's stack of 'possibly groundless convictions' these days. I keep seeing complaints that a) a good film needs you to 'care' about the characters who must have 'emotional depth' through 'development' b) a good film should not be pre-occupied with 'exposition' or 'explaining' what is happening but... says who? They sound like half-baked ideas that arm-chair movie critics…

I'd read a review that said the same thing complaining about lack of character development in the film, but it made sense based on how I interpreted the ending. --------------SPOILER ALERT-------------------- I think the whole movie was DiCaprio's dream, something he constructed for himself to plant the idea that he didn't have to feel guilty about his wife. Then it would make sense for all the other characters to be…

---spoiler----- I think you're partly correct. His wife was not a real character but a projection of his subconscious, hence the impression that one of the main characters was 'underdeveloped' - she was supposed to be. I don't think the other characters were underdeveloped, they were just minor characters anyway. If his wife was a normal character, then it would seem like a normal film in terms of character development.

How do I know this? Well, what was the climax of the whole drama? When he confronts his wife's projection in the skyscraper near the end. That's when the most important/meaningful lines of the film are delivered, which are to the effect that dreamed characters/projections can never compare to the real thing, even in a very powerful imagination. That's why the film ends with him back with his kids and why we know he's not dreaming. He no longer wants his wife because she's a projection, but he wants his kids because they're real. He knows the difference.

Nolan cuts just after the top wobbles because he wants us to search for real meaning in the film, rather than have things settled by the director's arbitrary power.

Re: Inception's Usability Problem

#26

Post by arocks »

mbateman wrote: post #21
Tycho wrote: post #7

I'm pushing a lot of film criticisms onto my mind's stack of 'possibly groundless convictions' these days. I keep seeing complaints that a) a good film needs you to 'care' about the characters who must have 'emotional depth' through 'development' b) a good film should not be pre-occupied with 'exposition' or 'explaining' what is happening but... says who? They sound like half-baked ideas that arm-chair movie critics…

To defend the film critic regurgitation a bit, I don't think characters have to have emotional depth or development, but it's typically a good thing when you care about them and their problems. As for the exposition point, I think something can be said in defense of the story in the link. (Spoilers follow.) Re: emotional attachment. One of the things that annoyed me about Inception was that the big reveal of what hap…

> If anything I think the right analogy with Inception is the second Matrix movie.

I too prefer to think Inception as a spiritual successor to Matrix. It explores the idea of layers of constructed reality in a recursive fashion that I hoped Matrix sequels would reveal.

Also, I suspect Matrix world would seem less weird to computer geeks than the world of Inception. The opposite is also true. Inception appeals even to a non sci-fi buff. That is a remarkable achievement for such a complex movie.

There are a lot of questions towards the end, but they make you think much beyond the canvas of the movie. That is truly a rewarding experience.

Re: Inception's Usability Problem

#27

Post by bryanlarsen »

I think this criticism is right on, but he's got his conclusion backwards -- Inception is so awesome because it's exactly like the first few levels of a video game. Yes, tutorials in video games are boring, but the most interesting part of a video game to me is the "figuring it out" part. So I skip the tutorial and figure it out by failing miserably on the first "easy" level. Once I've done a few levels in the game, there's more "game" and less "new", so I move on to the next shiny new toy.

Re: Inception's Usability Problem

#29

Post by Maro »

PaulJoslin wrote: post #9

This was exactly how I felt when I left the cinema. Although it was a good film, I felt the execution of the idea felt sloppy. It had promise to be truly amazing, but often purposely became confusing in the aim of seeming to be clever. I think in Inception they took things too far, multiple dream levels, weird limbo states, etc. They could've just built a far simpler movie and it would've flowed a lot better. It's co…

I agree with PaulJoslin's criticism.

It was a good film, but I didn't think it was great, by the end I had a certain hollow feeling, same as I had after Dark Knight or Memento (not after Prestige).

Like in DK, I felt that the plot was overcomplicated, there were too many dream layers, too much was going on. I also missed somewhat longer, continuous action sequences. In Inception, every action sequence was over in 30 seconds, with everything happening in a dream (death just means you wake up), so it removed what little tension these sequences carried. (But then sometimes the in-game rules were broken, eg. the Jap. guy get shot but he doesn't wake up, so from then on shots are lethal? Well I guess not, because at the end everybody is fine after all.)

Interestingly, the overall plot's tension, whether the act of Inception succeeds remained, but the action sequences just didn't work. The plot's overall tension worked for me exactly until they went into yet another dream/coma state called limbo, at which point I just lost interest.

As PaulJoslin said, a much more effective film could have been built on these core ideas.

Re: Inception's Usability Problem

#30

Post by gigafemtonano »

Tycho wrote: post #25
pchristensen wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd read a review that said the same thing complaining about lack of character development in the film, but it made sense based on how I interpreted the ending. --------------SPOILER ALERT-------------------- I think the whole movie was DiCaprio's dream, something he constructed for himself to plant the idea that he didn't have to feel guilty about his wife. Then it would make sense for all the other characters to be…

---spoiler----- I think you're partly correct. His wife was not a real character but a projection of his subconscious, hence the impression that one of the main characters was 'underdeveloped' - she was supposed to be. I don't think the other characters were underdeveloped, they were just minor characters anyway. If his wife was a normal character, then it would seem like a normal film in terms of character developme…

---Spoiler--- You could equally make the argument that he planted the original inception into his wife's mind in that nether-world level of dream depth (you know what I'm talking about I assume - don't want to spoil too much), meaning that it would be necessary for him to go that deep to plant the idea that he didn't have to feel guilty about his wife.
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