Cinematic illusion: Double interpretation is the "Inception"

- Spoiler alert -

The con, the reality-bending neuro-technology, the parallel revelation of the characters' relationships, the mid-movie twist, multiple levels of consciousness and subconsciousness... "Inception" throws the narrative at the audience on so many levels at once that we are dazzled and rewarded for following the plot at the same time. As one critic in Hong Kong says: "It's like Christopher Nolan is playing Jungle, the Flight game, chess, and bridge with his opponents simultaneously and winning all." This critic also regards Inception's success as potent counterargument for Hollywood's continued investment on formulaic, unimaginative blockbusters due to the supposed lack of taste or intelligence of us the general audience.

Cannot agree more.

But what exactly was thrown at us? What happened, really? Let's take a look at the most traditional building block of a narrative - the motif - and see if this tightly constructed puzzle of a movie can be figured out.

The most resounding motif of the movie, as evident in the recurring "wake-up" song Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien and repeated phrases such as "leap of faith", "become an old man, filled with regret, waiting to die alone", is obviously "regret". Regret for lost moments, regret for paths not taken, regrets for wrongs that can never be corrected. This theme is thoroughly explored through the parallel storytelling of two relationships: Cobb and his deceased wife Mal, and Fischer and his disappointed father. The latter relationship reminds me of "Citizen Kane" reminiscing his past on his dying bed (in fact, all the "totems" in the movie serve as a sort of "rose bud", a psychical object that connects its owner to another reality, or a humanity that he/she once knew), while Cobb's relationship with his wife brings to mind "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", where the guy cannot sustain a love and has to let go, only to find that he is overshadowed and gradually consumed by guilt and regret.

When I was watching the movie, I found these two relationships to be intriguing but not emotionally relatable since the other layers of subconsciousness kept interrupting with their pressing actions. For this reason, I can understand A. O. Scott's not-so-favorable review in the New York Times.

However, while I had the same reactions at first, I've come to disagree with Mr. Scott's final remark: "...though there is a lot to see in 'Inception,' there is nothing that counts as genuine vision. Mr. Nolan’s idea of the mind is too literal, too logical, too rule-bound to allow the full measure of madness — the risk of real confusion, of delirium, of ineffable ambiguity — that this subject requires."

To explain this change of mind, let me step back and talk about the two main ways to interpret the movie: a positive way and a negative way.

- Major spoiler alert! -

The Positive Way is the way the movie is told: Cobb, thief of secrets of subconsciousness, is offered a job to implant an idea into an powerful industrial heir's dreams, and in completing this job, he will be granted the immigration status to go back to his home country and to his kids. Cobb's attempt to finish the con is frequently sabotaged by the guilt he has for his dead wife in his subconscious.

Straightforward enough right? What is really messed up is the negative reading of the story. I only came to see the movie this way after reading a number of explanations for the movie's ending (an inception?).

The Negative Way is the hidden narration of the movie: suppose Mal, Cobb's wife, is the one who wakes up in the "real world" by jumping off the building, she may be the real inception planter in the limbo dreams of the still unconscious Cobb, hoping to convince Cobb to give up his multi-level dream world and "take a leap of faith" to wake up.

The second interpretation is hard to see at first because the story is consistently told from Cobb's perspective. Because of Cobb's guilt of inadvertently pushing his wife to "death", Mal is seen (by Cobb the storyteller) as projections of his memory and an "sabotaging" force ("Mal" is "evil" in Spanish) against his efforts to reunite with his children in what Cobb determines to be "reality".

And this brings us to the second, less obvious but central, motif of the movie: Any simple idea we choose to consciously or unconsciously adopt in our lives will in time come to define our reality; when these simple ideas steer us into alternate paths, we will inevitably deviate from the "shared realities" or "shared dreams" we create with our loved ones, creating the dilemma of having to choose among realities (the former, shared reality or the new, diverging reality). In other words, the "dreams" in the movie are metaphors of "realities" we create with and within our minds. The story itself is constructed like the paradoxes it keeps referring to: it works one way or the other; it can be the face of an uglg old witch or a fair young maiden; either can be the right answer, though you know that at the end of the day, things don't add up.

And with that the movie reveals one of the grandest pitfall of our consciousness: the human mind, with its imagination and prejudice, is capable of creating the most complicated mazes that guide us to somewhere new or nowhere at all. (Fun trivial: character names Fischer and Ariadne, are likely borrowed from M. C. Escher and Adrian Fisher; the latter is one of the world's leading maze designers).

In this regard, "dreaming" is a powerful metaphor and the true "inception" of the movie. (Naturally, that the movie itself is an inception is not lost among critics). Our mind can free us or imprison us. It can inspire free will or be trapped by an idea (as fortunately or tragically exemplified by Cobb's stubbornness to believe in his own reality).

And this paradox, in my opinion/reality, is the true art of the movie and true genius of the director. -- Why didn't I see this all along? The clues were all in plain sight: the ridiculous B-movie plot, the impossible shifting of geographic location, the all-too-powerful Japanese industrialist, the suspiciously-neat happy ending, the unchanged children imageries... Cobb himself even points out in one scene: "Dreams feel real while we're in them. It's only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange."

Despite all these, I was all too willing to suspend my belief -- the movie ran so fast that it tricked me into accepting its technicalities as well as its realities. Since it asked me: "don't think about the elephant", surely all I could think about was the elephant.

The movie even plays on its own format. The foundational techniques upon which cinema experiences built upon for the past 100 years or so -- non-linear narrative, scene-cutting signifying time and set change, stream of consciousness -- are all revealed in the movie as tricks (quote: "...you never really remember the beginning of a dream do you? You always wind up right in the middle of what's going on."). And after unmasking these tricks, Nolan is somehow able to offer another dimension to the movie experience. In this experience, the storytelling continues after leaving the theater; the story lives on as we try hard to understand the movie itself.

In short, "Inception" is a flawlessly executed cinematic illusion that reveals the secrets of our reality-bending psyche: perception is reality. Neatly fitting to the premise of the movie? I believe so.

Extended reading:

• Critics of Inception
• This Time the Dream's On Me
• Inception Ending and Theories: What Just Happened?
• Dream a Little Dream
• Review: Inception
• HuffPost Review: Inception (2010)
• Wikipedia: Inception (film)
• Memorable quotes for Inception
• Author who inspired Inception: Jorge Luis Borges

Did Walt Disney off Tim Burton's head?

... in Harry Potter execution style, Chronicles of Narnia execution style, Lord of the Ring execution style?

I can't come up with another explanation for Tim Burton to turn the curious Wonderland to this dull "Underland". And I can't help but think of...

Six impossible things in Wonderland:

1. "The" Alice. We are all Alices. And Alice could be Ada, Mabel, or her sister. Alice could also be dreaming this, or being dreamed of.
2. "The" path pre-told on a scroll. To wonder in Wonderland is to endlessly meander in the land of undecipherable, unknowable mysteries. If you can predict what's going to happen next (like you could in the movie), it isn't Wonderland.
3. Slaying or flesh eating of any kind. All the animals and even plants could talk. It's much too confusing to even begin to think about turning these creatures into food. The queen only yells "Off with their heads!" as an expression of her uncontrollable passion. No head ever flies off. The Jabberwocky is a long riddle, not an actual dragon. You can try to solve it; there's no point in slaying it.
4. Not being confused about proper manners, or laughing at them. How else can you learn who you are while navigating in a world of unanswerable puzzles and unreasonable demands? How else can you fight boredom on a hot summer day?
5. Action before reasoning. After all, that's how one keeps one's head amidst all the madness.
6. Mad Hatter dancing like a poor Michael Jackson impersonator.

And these six impossibilities (maybe minus the last), together with Tim Burton's imagination and seeing Johnny Depp in 3D, are precisely the reasons why we were all excited about the movie before it came out, and got invariably disappointed after seeing it.

I did like Anne Heatherway's rendition of the "white queen". She was more Alice than Alice herself.

Dame

電影《Hudsucker Proxy》演了一折，女主角在午餐小店後方推門而入，介入男主人公這一段的際遇裏。這時一旁兩個不相干的人開了口，輕哨一聲宣告：”Enter the dame”。

Enter the dame. 下一句是 “There’s one in every story.” 入戲的觀眾這時候醒了醒，意識到說故事的人在直接跟我們說話——很明顯這兩句不是對白，而是故事轉折的提示，是劇本裡用括弧括住的評語，被直接讀了出來。那兩個不相干的人是戲劇工具，本應一聲不響坐在背㬌裏的，這時被導演點上了，一下子神起來，化身成為說書人，在電影的中段為片首的旁白續句。

Enter the dame，好比馬格利特的「這不是一個煙斗」，把觀眾敍述中拉出來，觀眾被打了岔，吊癮的亟想返回故事裡：「接著怎樣了？」往下的一段因劇情需要非常公式化，但是我們全神灌注的聽兩個局外人指指點點，抵死的把這一場的腸逐線逐條畫出來。

Enter the dame也是預告，作用如同每集《包青天》裡都要喊一遍的「包大人到！」觀眾一聽便精神一振，留心劇情怎樣往峰迴路轉裡發展。這Enter the dame裡的dame字也講究，包大人再神通廣大，也敵不過這個子小小意態嫵媚的dame。這稱呼帶點輕浮貶意，你卻不能小看她，因她是未知數，亦正亦邪，可大可小，幾乎是femme fatale。The dame出場了，到底她會毀了男主角呢，還是愛上他，還是愛他又毀了他呢，我們都打起十二分精神看下去。

編導《Hudsucker Proxy》的高安兄弟對自已電影裡的語言極其執著，拿捏也十分精準。他們的對白不似日常對話，卻像是每個獨特角色的完美展現。高安兄弟也偏好加入旁白，相對現在流行的現場收音、現實主義，他們的電影更加像舊式荷里活片，編排奇巧，並標明：「這是一個故事」。他們另一部經典《The Big Lebowski》的開場白便是好例子：

“
A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, like- wise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

They call Los Angeles the City of Angels. I didn't find it to be that exactly, but I'll allow as there are some nice folks there. 'Course, I can't say I seen London, and I never been to France, and I ain't never seen no queen in her damn undies as the fella says. But I'll tell you what, after seeing Los Angeles and thisahere story I'm about to unfold-- wal, I guess I seen somethin' ever' bit as stupefyin' as ya'd see in any a those other places, and in English too, so I can die with a smile on my face without feelin' like the good Lord gypped me.

Now this story I'm about to unfold took place back in the early nineties-- just about the time of our conflict with Sad'm and the Eye-rackies. I only mention it 'cause some- times there's a man--I won't say a hee-ro, 'cause what's a hee-ro?--but sometimes there's a man.

And I'm talkin' about the Dude here-- sometimes there's a man who, wal, he's the man for his time'n place, he fits right in there--and that's the Dude, in Los Angeles.
...and even if he's a lazy man, and the Dude was certainly that--quite possibly the laziest in Los Angeles County. ...which would place him high in the runnin' for laziest worldwide--but sometimes there's a man... sometimes there's a man.

一開頭就講一大段，而且語氣像個老式牛仔，一點都不像電影的開場，簡直是美國西部開荒時期，大家圍著營火講的某人輾轉相傳的窩囊事，而《The Big Lebowski》裡這個人，正好也在西部，是在「最後邊疆」加尼福尼亞的人，不過身處20世紀90年代。


連線：

• 想聽聽Enter the dame，按連線中劇院第二行中間的圓點便是。

Star Wars according to a 3 year old.

Full transcript: (I tried my best; feel free to send in corrections.)

“Well. Well. OK. The sand people have the robots and try (drive?) and sell them in raw sail boat, kindda like raw sail boat except they're selling robots. And no one is going to buy R2 and the signy (shiny?) guy. The signy guy oh he's worried - Luke's gonna buy those. Obi-Kenobi is kindda of a teacher. He's... he's saying "Luke!" how to learn... how to do his little light-up sword to try to block the little pokie ball. He tried to do it without seeing. Obi-Kenobi sometimes move things around. Sometimes he disappears. Princess Leia got out of jail and out in the spaceship? And they got the big thing that blow up stuff... We blow it up together. It blowed up Princess Leia' planet! But don't talk back to Darth Vader. He'll getcha! ...It's an exciting movie.

• It's amazing how much a 3-year old can comprehend. This is a complex story involving a world not directly concerning hers. She was able to follow the plot line, internalize it and retell the story in her own way. Incredible!
• I like how she used metaphors to help herself and her listeners understand unfamiliar concepts.... Reminds us that this is how we deal with this world of enormous complexity and overwhelming information -- we re-interpret something new by connecting it to something we already know: it's just like that thing, except a little different.
  
• When she had to explain things she can't compare to, she invented new terms to refer to them: the signy guy, the pokie ball, the light-up sword, and "trying to do it without seeing".. What a creative mind! Naming things is one of the human being's special skills. She's demonstrating this skill beautifully.
  
• And of course, while making connections and creating new ways to say things are fun, she well understood that there were rules to follow. Perhaps that's why we adults all seem to fall for the punchline: "But don't talk back to Darth Vader. He'll getcha!"

二月二十、二十一，月蝕

從Facebook看到Total Eclipse of of the Moon聯想到Total Eclipse of the Heart聯想到Old School裏在婚禮的浪漫歌聲中爆粗的樂隊，原來叫The Dan Band，可在親愛的YouTube找到：

Once upon a time I was falling in love, now I'm fucking falling apart...

我們依然是這麼無聊。

Happy Valentine's y'all! ^o^

Thank you "Thank You for Smoking"!

Saw Thank You for Smoking last Friday. OMG. The movie must have like 40 punchlines – and they were all funny! Clever jabs were delivered so fast that after awhile we in the audience learnt to limit our laughs so not to miss the next punch! Thank You is one of those rare movies in which the bad guy is the protagonist, but he’s so likable that you can’t help but root for him. (The lead, played by Aaron Eckhard, was the embodiment of the devil in human form.) The dialog is intelligent, witty, powerful and to-the-point. They don’t beat a punchline to death like your usual funny movie; they hit and then they are gone: to the next “argument”! For awhile now I haven’t seen a movie that is so poignant (while not shoving its poignancy at you) and so entertaining at the same time. It jabs at every side: the tobacco company, its spokesmen, the press, the senator, social activists, poster victims, parents, America, the Great State of Vermont, even the movie industry. I mean, how brilliant is that? Everyone go and see the movie. I mean EVERYONE! I am so getting the DVD.

藝妓回憶錄

剛看完《藝妓回憶錄》，有以下感想：

1. 前半段覺得OK呀，叙事流暢呀。多少有點情味。到後來就完全不行：誰想看一堆四五十的 男人競投貞操？我們之中有幾人會代入藝妓那相妒相賤、感情不完全的心態？獨個兒在家看書，感染一下那浪漫化了的人工經營的唯美世界，還可。 "Gulity pleasure"嘛。放大到銀幕由真人表演，只覺別扭。把西方人對東方的幻想還原到一個當女人是觀賞物、身體是貨品的歷史空間，連愛情也是扭曲變態的， 只覺不忍看。
   
2. 演員的問題不是口音。兩個日本演員，Pumpkin和Mother就很入戲。Nobu-san也不錯。（Chairman 本身就是不討好的角色，做得再好也沒用）。章子怡鞏俐等的問題是唸白的節奏。太著重音準，變得過份在意的唸每隻字。其實我們平常說話，無論用甚麼語言，都有側重有省略。太小心眼，反讓人著急，很想替說話的人說完那句話。
3. 有時日本演員會漏出一隻半字日語，是屬於那背景空間的，就覺得順耳。伏聽。那英文劇本其實也寫得不賴。但用來講這異國故事，只覺突兀。
   
4. 老實說，章子怡今次做得並不好。戰前戰後，滄海桑田了吧？還是同一副純真無助的眼神，從英雄到十面埋伏到這齣。看過伏虎藏龍的人，應該會同意章子怡絕對不止 這層次。是本人自我定型，還是導演為掀出結局而安排？不知道。我反而喜歡做Pumpkin的女演員，戰前戰後判若兩人，但是你理解她的改變，你感受到她的 人、她的感覺。Sayuri卻好像一直只在推展橋段，我就是感覺不到她的人。
5. 戲不好看，我特別留意那幕千夫所指的「中國女演員章子怡被日本男人壓著」的戲……無喎。風頭太大剪了？反而有「中國女演員章子怡被不知名美國演員壓著」的戲。日本男人不行，美國佬就OK？乜為之「做戲」呀？甚麼邏輯。
6. 喂，那幕在天涯海角撒毛帕的戲，佢點上去架？想像她落手落腳爬上峭壁的樣子，乜詩意都無喇。還有還有，京都好像在內陸，她是特地搭車搭船去扔毛帕？做作啲喎。






7. 鞏俐演惡毒善忌的Hatsumomo也可說入木三分。但是為乜她由頭到尾都是披頭散髮的？配合她的每場怨婦般的神情，不似當紅藝妓，反像個癲婆，怎搞？我看藝妓的相片，沒有一個是散髮的。估計鞏俐的造型，多少是受了英雄裡張曼玉飛雪的影響，而飛雪（多別扭的名字），想是受了林青霞當年白髮魔女的影響。一個放在 林青霞張曼玉鞏俐身上也恐怖的造型，女仕們，請避之則吉。

8. 原來京都祗園跟上海舊時的長三書寓等在形式和格局上也很相似。只是我們的沒有藝妓學校，也只彈琴，好像不跳舞（中國傳統上都不興作跳舞）。日本就是這樣，特重形式化制度化，形成藝妓這一獨特的藝術行業，值得保傳尊重。不過，論書論戲，我還是覺得《海上花》好看得多。
9. P.S.: 跟兩位媽媽說起我對這齣戲的感想，她們異口用聲說那個年代的感情確是如此，只是我以現代的角度看，不了解罷了。
   

唔係係話？

無意中搵到周星星歷套電影嘅劇本同經典對白。嘩原來佢啲戲咁鬼多台詞嘅，睇嘅時候又唔覺噃。同大家分享下：

剧本 | 老康之家
ungoo抵死粤语网站 (經典對白)

凌凌漆：啱，系侏罗纪。暴龙究竟系鬼鬼崇崇走嚟走去嗰条定还是“哈—哈”嗰条呢？
司令：系“哈—哈”嗰条。
凌凌漆：咦，嗰条好冇人性，专追啲细蚊仔嚟咬个噃？
司令：唔会，肯定中国呢条唔会。

勁鐘意廣東話，正爆。

Laughing till your tummy aches

We were talking in the kitchen about a Japanese cartoon called "Excel Sega". I recalled how in one episode they had thousands of Pickachu-look-alike characters invading Earth. They look like little furry dolls with really big, adorable eyes, and they repeat the same baby-like phrase over and over. When the heroes try to slaughter them, they can't. "I can't stand it. They are too cute!!", the heroes exclaim, turning their faces away. Finally the heroes have to blindfold themselves in order to eliminate these adorably menacing creatures. But as soon as these little creatures get killed, their cute little faces explode at once and turn into a face of a dirty old (Japanese) man. And they die gasping one last "AH---" in a deep old-man voice.

Then he pointed out that this wasn't the funniest bit in the episode. The funniest bit was a character called "Space Butler". We burst into uncontrollable laughter at the mention of the name every single time, but we never had any idea why. This time he said, "Let's break it down:" He said the stereotype of a butler has always been kind of funny. And I said that a butler was usually associated with a really private place, like deep inside an aristocrat's country house. Putting together the empty nothingness of the "Space" and a private and form-bearing "butler" is too absurd. And then there's the fact the "Space" is just this concept of a place that envelops everything. It's preposterous that there should be a position for a butler in Space. Obviously no one has asked "Space Butler" to become THE "Space Butler". He just wakes up one day and decides that Space needs some butlering. Then, he picks up the duster, or something, and becomes it.

Make no mistake: while we were analyzing the ridiculousness of this term, we were laughing like crazy people. I was squatting on the floor and his face got so cramped up that he had to ask me to stop. If someone else were in the room, they would probably think that we were retarded.

That reminded me of that time when I was in Hong Kong, I tried really, really hard to convince my brother that "Napoleon Dynamic" was one of the funniest movies on earth. I tried to describe to him the chicken farm scene, where Napoleon, who just started working there, asked the chicken farmer if the chickens had "large talons". While describing the scene, I made the worst mistake a joke-maker can make: I told my bro that it was really, really funny and laughed at the joke before delivering the punch-line. But I couldn't help it— in the movie the farmer looks at Napoleon like he's from another planet. With probably the most hilarious expression in the history of motion picture (which is an expressionless blank stare of a simple countryman), he replies in a country drawl, "I don't understand a word you just said."

Of course after telling the joke, my brother he looked at me, much like the farmer did to Napoleon, like he was looking at an idiot. My nice little brother was too polite to say anything though, which exactly and sadly showed how embarrassed he felt for me.

I still think that “large talon” was one of the funniest things I have heard in my life (considering Napoleon’s obsession for magical creatures). Man, it feels sooooo good to laugh until your tummy hurts; until you have to kneel down and beg, "Please stop! I am going to pee my pants..."

Now I really want to go see the Aristocrat. I was told that it was a joke that never disappointed. I am up for that. Has anyone seen it?

Roles I

The grandmother in Fanny and Alexander:

“We all play our parts. Some play them negligently, others play with great care. I'm one of the latter.

The bishop to his pregnant wife:

“You once said you were always changing masks... until finally you didn't know who you were. I have only one mask. But it's branded into my flesh. If I tried to tear it off--
I always thought people liked me. I saw myself as wise, broad-minded, and fair. I had no idea... that anyone could hate me. (I don't hate you.) No, but your son does.

The grandmother with the ghost of her son:

“Yes, Oscar, that's how it is. One is old and a child at the same time. What became of those long years in between… that seemed so important at the time? May I take your hand? I remember your hand as a child. It was small and firm and dry. And your wrist was so awfully slender. I enjoyed being a mother. I enjoyed being an actress too but I preferred being a mother. I liked having a big belly, and I didn't give two shakes about the theatre then. It's all acting anyway. Some roles are nice, others not so nice. I played a mother. I played Juliet and Margareta. Then suddenly I played a widow or a grandmother. One role follows another. The thing is not to shrink from them. But what became of it all? Can you tell me that, my boy? You're a good boy to listen to your old mother's soliloquies, as Isak calls them. Yes, you're a good boy, Oscar,... and I grieved terribly when you past away. That was a strange role to play. My feelings came from deep in my body. Even though I could control them... they shattered reality, if you know what I mean. Reality has remain broken ever since, and oddly enough, it feels more real that way. So I don't bother to mend it. I just don't care anymore if nothing makes sense. Oscar, my dear boy? (Yes, Mama.) Are you sad?
(I'm worried.) About the children? Yes.

Dreamlife of Angels

One girl lives, one girl dies, one girl goes on with her Dream-life:

“
Marie,

Sandrine will live. I hope you find the kind of life that you are looking for, the one that you are dreaming of, every moment, every second of your life.

Your friend, Isa