Amazing movie, but there was one tiny little (the size of the goodyear blimp tiny) tell at the near beginning that gave a lot of the whole plot away. While I still loved it incredibly, I thought that Christopher Nolan could have been a tad more subtler than that.
I don't want to spoil anything in this movie, so I'm not going to say what it was (can't we have a BBtag?), but that was not it.
hmm... i must have been overlooking it big time because i didn't realize a part of the movie that gave it away
for the most part I enjoyed it in the theater (thanks largely to the concept & great cast), but in the end, the more I think about it, the less I like it. Waaaay too much bombast (I don't think there's a single second unscored), repetitive and poorly-directed action sequences, visually uncreative dreams (more like generic video game-levels), and there seem to be so many holes in the "rules" and conceptualization that I think it collapses on itself. I'm willing to watch it again, but right now I feel disappointed.
Interesting criticisms, vog. I liked the score but was very aware during the film that there were scenes where it seemed to be carrying the action, slightly out of synch with what was actually on screen. A few times I thought "this is a killer soundtrack which would be enjoyable without the movie," but felt that sometimes it seemed to exist separately from the movie. At least it wasn't as annoying in that regard as some of Danny Elfman's turgid indications in Burton films. Oh look! Something in the frame is moving upwards, so we'll employ loud horns moving in a really obvious upward scale-bound manner to tell the audience that SOMETHING IS MOVING UPWARDS! As for the "rules" thing, my impression is that they were simply necessary to keep the fantasy from spinning apart, and to keep the audience from getting too confused. Without some sort of internal logic, it could have veered either into aimless surrealism or clichéd cinematic turns that would have made the audience feel short-changed. The rule-bound nature of the film made its world much closer to an elaborate video game than the actual human unconscious, a hallmark of which is the absence of waking-reality rules, hence an unavoidable self-contradiction. The rules were like Ariadne's thread in the Minotaur's labyrinth. However, their exposition was a bit talky at points. Which leads me to my own nagging little "issue" with the film. This is possibly a spoiler, so look away if you haven't seen it. Given the option to live out a long life with your true love in a world of your imagining, why on earth would that world be one of a coldly unpopulated lifeless urban landscape of "international style" symmetrical skyscrapers on a grid? It made for some nice IMAX-lens eye candy, but ... that's Eden? And to make my rant even less popular with Skullbrainers, I'm totally cool with obvious nods to 2001, Blade Runner, Memento, The Matrix and so on, but of all the movies whose look and feel you might cop, why why why would you choose the desaturated grainy look and feel of Michael Mann's overrated "Heat?" Talk about tired clichés! At least Nolan didn't make overuse of shaky-cam. Despite my nitpicking it was a good film and I think it'll endure very positively in public memory, as it should.
dean, between this and the breaking bad thread it's clear your level of analysis is consistently impressive. nolan just likes heat i guess. it's a pretty raw movie even though it has definitely not aged well. i thought he paid enough tribute with TDK's opening scene, but i guess it could be hard for a fan to make another heist movie with without it coming up in conversation. their world looked bleak because it was in decay. nothing been managed and the storm was coming because it was growing unstable. it probably looked fine with eden based blue skies and green foliage, and i'm sure they could insert an imaginary thriving community and rule over them. i read a nice review that argues that the plot of the movie is meant to represent film-making itself.. it's a good read http://chud.com/articles/articles/24477 ... Page1.html
You do have to remember, Moll and Dom were classically trained architects. "Eden" was an architect's wet dream.
Yup, excellent counterpoint. And architecture was a theme in the movie that went beyond the literal sense.
I saw it today and liked it. I kinda got the feeling of where it was going early on but that kind of thing doesn't ruin it for me. I enjoy the "how" as much as the end result. I'm still discussing it, someone start a "SPOILERS" thread so we can go on about it more detail, screw these late comers (like I was up until today hahaha!) I liked that the dreams WEREN'T some over done fantasy. A lot of dreams I have are of real places/people, not over the top dragon lairs and things, though they happen sometimes. I thought the dream sequences looked cool, even the video gameish ones. They explain it being so armed and violent with the whole "protection" by the projections. I'll buy it, sure Oh yeah, if something happened after the credits, someone PM and tell me what. Someone I work with is hinting at it but won't say like a jerk and I'm not going to go see it again. Also it reminded me a little of Paprika just based on content/subject matter. Fun stuff.
I just saw it today and I loved it. Excellent movie. I have reoccurring dreams where I'm in these infinite cities with amazing architecture everywhere, so it hit home for me, but other than that everything else was amazing. Way better than I thought it would be. I was at my apt. pool yesterday and this one dude was complaining about how he didn't get it, it went on and on forever, and that it was too violent (wtf?!)... What an idiot, some people are just so narrow minded that it is scary...
Spoiler alert... if you haven't seen it close the window! I love collecting charts, and this one just got on the top 10.
Nice chart, I do love a good chart. I dunno, Nolan is treading ground that such great films as 'Dreamscape' covered before. Cool gimmicks however, but too many gunshots & pointless action imo. I'm all for onion peeling but seriously, he did a similar thing in Memento, only more concise. DeCaprio bugs me, I place a bounty of 50,000 Quaaludes on his head.
