"Man... is above all the plaything of his memory. "

Inception is easily the most divisive film of the year thus far (and lets face it, that's because its the only film released thus far that has both artistic intentions and box-office returns). I have a strong aversion to writing reviews, particularly in this sort of maelstrom, but I feel that I have to extract some thoughts (Harry Potter style!) and put them in my own personal pensieve. Before I get into the two specific things about the film I want to talk about, I suppose I should give my general thoughts on the film so you at least know where I'm coming from. Basically, I enjoyed it... which can be interpreted as I think it was cool, but not half as smart as it pretended to be.


The most obviously bad thing about the film is its treatment of dreams as logical. Jim Emerson pretty much nailed this on the head in his article lambasting the film, so I won't go too far beyond his analysis. I do have to reiterate, though, how stupid it was for the film to try to mathematically quantify dream time (60 seconds in the first layer becomes an hour in the second... and so on). We all dream differently, certainly, and maybe more importantly we all remember our dreams to different extents (I'm no psychologist, or even proponent of psychology, but I think there might be something to how we want to remember our dreams when we wake up that effects our remembering them), but none of us dreams rationally. The truly worrying thing is how few people are bothered by seeing this in the film. I see it as a complete lack of introspection. Our society seems to be pushing us out of ourselves and into shallow expositions in tweets and Facebook status updates.

On the other hand, the most obviously good thing about the film is its use of cinema reference as part of the film's narrative. The movies are a part of how we (read: I) dream and making so many obvious references and homages is a genuinely inspired way of presenting a dream. I saw Solaris, 2001: A Space Odyssey, James Bond, and Bladerunner among many others in the film. The simple fact of this intention adds a little depth to the film...

For better films about, or involving dreams, look no further than right here