Yesterday I went to see Christopher Nolan's "Inception." I haven't been to the movies much lately, and I blame Netflix, and the internet in general. There's something awesome about having masterpieces of film instantly available and accessible. You're bored on a Sunday night, and boom: Tarkovsky, Bresson, Jodorowsky, with a few clicks on a laptop. It isn't as if I've forgotten the importance of a movie theater experience--it's just that there seems to be so much waiting for me on my laptop.
But I've been hearing about "Inception," and all of the buzz: how supposedly it was the greatest film of the year recently, how it was like what everyone wanted but didn't really get from Avatar. I'd read A. O. Scott's essay in NYT about the interesting conflict among critics, and a few other reviews, such as Matt Goldberg's excellent piece over at Collider, and an interesting story about its technology may be available to us.
Late that afternoon I was at a friend's apartment, and, trying to decide what to do with ourselves, in a roundabout way we started talking about films. "Inception" came up, and so did BAM Rose Cinema, which isn't far away from where we live. When we looked up the schedule and found that it was playing there in an hour, we hopped on our bikes and rode down. We made it into the theater just as it was beginning. And this was, in a way, perfect. It was better being dropped immediately from outside into the film, without previews, and have the sudden exchange of realities.
Nolan doesn't guide you slowly through his strange dream world. You know immediately that you're in a space where time and memory don't have the same dimensions, and the logic is a game of catch-up. Within ten minutes there are several realities presented to you; as each passage reminds you that none of them will truly be real, it transitions so fast into another that you don't exactly have a question of suspending disbelief. You can only follow events and try to make sense of the explanation behind them, spit out rapid-pace. Mechanics paired with theoretic complexity, such as the science of something like a "kick" that spurs a dreamer in and out of a dream state; the sudden appearance of a new dimension that the dreamer accepts immediately, wondering only about lost time.
Part of what suspends your belief is the dazzling visuals. Nolan has gravity collide landscapes on top of one another like an MC Escher drawing. Staircases continue into nowhere, physics works backwards, and the space in mirrors gains living dimension. And while there are Matrix-like fight-scenes continually throughout the latter part of the movie, often all of this is voiced over by dialogue about all of our questions about memory: such as the importance of olfactory psychology and landmarks, or the way our imagination can be more powerful than reality even when we're awake. How we'll project memories onto living things, or how familiar people and places will sometimes seem unfamiliar for no apparent reason.
As a result, while part of your brain is focused just on the trajectory of the film, the other part is mulling over the implications of all of these concepts: no easy task when everything in the film is happening so fast. It's like trying to solve a particularly complex math equation while you're running to catch a bus that you absolutely have to take. Tension builds and builds until suddenly: everyone wakes up. Credits come on, so do the lights, and you wake up too.
I'm sure that part of the experience depends on how you come into the film. How clear your mind is, and how willing you are to be suspend disbelief. It might not work as well if you're on a first date, for example, or if you're a film critic, knowing that you have to be conscious of technicalities. My friend and I had both had a surreal-seeming afternoon to begin with, and as a result I think neither of us were quite sure if we were fully awake when we left the theater. Wandering down the red carpet to the door, wondering if when it opened we'd find Lafayette the same as we left it, or a new Fort Greene instead, one filled with crumbling skyscapers and beachfront.
And instead, of course, it was a little bit of both. The space and dimensions were relatively the same, but at this point the sun had set, and the lighting and shadows on the street were different, as was the traffic crawling down from the BQE. Which might be another important point of the movie: in daytime hours, we rarely notice slow change, but in those three or four seconds between waking and sleeping everything seems to change at once. Memory and time are both concepts that we can intellectually theorize or contemplate when we're awake, but we only have that same jarring sensation of lucidity and uncertainty in time and memory when we're dreaming--or when we're immersed in something that draws us out of our reality, such as with film or art. And I do think that "Inception" is both.
As we were riding our bikes home, my friend said, "I feel as if I've just had some extreme psychedelic experience. I think that will take a few hours to wear off." We both agreed that it felt as if we were in the theater much longer than two hours. Days, even. Neither of us had a very clear sense of direction back from Fort Greene, and we shouted back and forth about how we kept expecting cars in the street to suddenly blow up. Instead of going to grab a drink or dinner the way we might have, we both decided to go home and work on something creative; she to draw or paint, and I went back to my darkroom.
I can't offer a critic's review of "Inception," but I definitely think that it's worth seeing, with an open mind. On a lesser note, I also think that I'll be making a point to watch movies in theaters more often.
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