Blatant Disregard said:
Decay said:
Y'all are underrating Inception. I love the parallels between movies and dreams. It blew me away the first time I saw it and Leo is saying "how did you get right here, right now?" and it clicked that I accepted it the same way she accepted it. After that you unlock a whole second layer of the movie... just like the concept of Inception itself.
Damn this guy makes good movies.
I love this, Can you please expand? I assume you're talking about his conversation with Ariadne being a stand-in for his conversation with the audience?
The parallel is Ariadne is in a dream and the audience is at the movie theater. How they (the audience) accept their place (the theater) is the same as how Ariadne accepted her place (the dream).
For sure, you're on the right track. Like, when the scene starts you as a moviegoer don't immediately ask "what is this street, this cafe? How did they get there?" Since you're watching a movie, you tend to go along with it and discover along the way what's going on, just like dreams. So that's what Cobb is saying to Ariadne, that you just perceive it as normal.
But if you start looking for that relationship between the movie and dreams they play with you a lot. Lots of nightmares show up, sometimes when the characters are under and sometimes awake. Drowning. Getting claustrophobic and feeling crushed (Mozambique chase scene). Get shot, get stabbed. Fall down an elevator or out of a balcony or a window, or hanging onto a rope that just lets go. Hell even getting blown up or run over by a train.
Meanwhile you're focusing on the dreams and movies connection, and you start to see there's a whole other side as a meta-commentary about movies themselves. Because Cobb is also describing movies you look for ways Inception describes movies. Buckle up.
Everyone in the movie is playing the parts of making a movie. They have to find an actor, Eames, who can assume someone else's role. A director, Cobb, who can coordinate everything (and is handsome and leans on Michael Caine all the time). Arthur is the producer... I don't really know what they do in movies but I assume it's a bunch of dirty work since he's metaphorically trying to wrangle the entire process by literally fighting dudes on the ground and ceiling while the whole world tumbles. You got your the bigwig moneybags paying for everything and you have to convince them that this thing is gonna work. Ariadne is kinda the audience stand-in but she's also like the set designer actually building the place. And Yusef is the guy that gives everyone drugs to get the thing done? Camera guy I guess?
Anyway it opens up a whole pile of references, like each dream is a different movie, the camera guy drinking makes a shoot go haywire, how a train rolling through might ruin a take, or alternatively Mal and the train wrecking everything represent the baggage a director carries trying to create a new story, on and on. And now I want to rewatch it again. And Tenet. Also I'll stop derailing now.
