Just kidding. Of course you're awake. And a good thing too, for we have finally reached the end of my seemingly interminable review of 2010. I know, I know, I said it was going to be four parts long, and it's been more like a dozen, but I got carried away. Anyway, I promise we're at the end now. Here's my favourite cultural artefact of the year. It's a film.
INCEPTION
Inception is the best film of the year. Proveable, mathematical fact. Unassailable truth, carved into the stone of reality like an eleventh commandment. It is brilliant, and if you don't think so, your brain is wrong and so is your face.
Here's some great things about the film. If you haven't seen it, don't read them. Go wand watch it, now, and then come back.
1. Dream Team
What a great cast. I never used to be much of a fan of Leo DiCaprio, thinking he punched above his weight when confronted with anything beyond cheeky-pretty-boy-face kind of roles. The Departed made me think again, and Inception made me realise that, yes, now he is capable of greatness. A restrained, unshowy performace that lets the torment at Cobb's heart ebb through gently and, on second viewing, reveals the constant struggle he has to control the chaos inside.
The rest of the team are loads of fun, especially Tom Hardy's Eames. They balance and complement one another perfectly, each getting their moment in the sun. If it weren't for the fact that the film absolutely must not have a sequel, I'd love to see them working together again. Maybe in a TV spin off where they infiltrate different people's dreams each week and mess with their minds. Sadly, such a spin off would, by necessity, have to scale down the action, so they'd probably end up with an episode where they manipulate a shopkeeper's dreams so he gives them free cheesy snacks.
2. Dream Theme
I've gone on about HansZimmer's amazing score already, here, so I won't trouble you any further. Suffice to say, the music is tremendous. Although if you live with me, you might be getting just a little sick of hearing it every single day.
3. Dream Scenes
Here's the main reason I think the film is great. It deals with some big ideas and themes, but never forgets that cinema should be... well... cinematic. Huge, brilliant visual ideas power the film's narrative: Escher-like impossible landsapes, trains smashing through rainy city streets, tumbling zero-gravity corridors and ice citadels straight out of the video game of Goldeneye.
Despite this torrent of stunning cinematography, none of the spectacle is superfluous. Like the Matrix before it, Inception's ideas are hardwired into its mise en scene. The logic of dreams is created in a way which eschews the kind of cod-fantasy that derailed Alice in Wonderland earlier this year and remembers that the truly surreal is very, very close to our usual experience of life.
Lovely moments of juxtaposition pepper the film, reminding us that the borders between the film's various realities are slippery and strange. Ones that leap instantly to mind:
Cobb falls backwards into a full bath; in his dream, tides of water smash through the windows.
Cobb's children slip into the mise en scene in the most incongruous of places, scampering away in the same manner each time.
The increasingly jarring crosscuts between the drab washed out monotone of the rainy city, the warm tones and angular lines of the hotel and the harsh bright snowscape of the ice fortress.
The final, beautiful moments before the darkness.
4. Dream Themes
So, Mr Freud, what is it about? Is he still dreaming or what?
Well, I don't think so. I know, there are lots of clues that suggest he might be - not least the moment when he tries to spin the top about half way through the film but never gets to see if it falls. Also, Moll hints heavily that his life resembles a dream narrative, chased by the faceless agents of unknowable corporations. And there's that last, teasing shot of course. Is it going to fall? Why are his children still so young?
I think it will fall, I think he's awake. I don't really think it adds anything to the film if Cobb is still in a dream. The ambiguity is there not to suggest a twist in the narrative, but to reinforce what I consider to be the main theme of the film: the difficulty of closure.
Inception revisits two of Christopher Nolan's recurring themes: how do we heal, and how do we understand our own motivations? Oh, and also "Oh no, my wife/girlfriend is dead!', but that's kind of involved in the other two. Cobb is a typical Nolan character in that he is seeking healing from a past trauma and also living in a world where motivations are open to question. Most films are about the hero trying to reach some kind of closure, of course, but in Nolan's films that closure is often challenged, as are the motivations behind the hero's actions in the first place.
Cobb's healing is not going to be achieved by killing the bad guy, or learning to say sorry, or facing his darkest fear. This is how a lesser film would close his arc, and I think it is why some people leave Inception feeling a little short changed: this is not your typical narrative. Cobb's salvation is to realise the truth at the very heart of the film: we cannot trust our hearts. Ideas can sneak in and manipulate us, lead us to believe we are following some kind of emotional truth, when all we are doing is fooling ourselves. For Cobb, salvation comes when he realises that the Moll is gone, and that he has constructed a lie in her place. He pursues her, seeks forgiveness from her, wants her - but it isn't her. It is a simulacrum of the truth and he has fooled himself into thinking it matters.
This resonates with me because I think this is how we tend to live our lives. We create stories around the events of our days and try to shape them into some kind of story, with heroes and villains and the possibility of catharsis. Old relationships, in particular, continue to hurt us as the ghosts of our ex partners or friends live in dream space, raking up old arguments and reinflicting wounds. Inception is a seed planted in the mind, making us believe that we want something we never really had.
And so off we go, out of 2010. And the year, sealed into the past, will become its own story. Certain events will gain significance and take their place in an artificial web of causality. We will start to believe that certain events made us happier, or more sad, and oh if we could have done things differently... But what we have is now, and the choices in front of us.
I hope they are good ones. See you there.
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