Some good questions came up in the comments section of my lengthy Inception critique (“Seventeen Ways of Criticizing Inception“), and I thought it made the most sense to respond to them with a new post. So let’s wade back into Limbo, shall we…
Posts Tagged ‘Zabriskie Point’
Seventeen Ways of Criticizing Inception
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Andrew O'Hehir, Ariadne, Bob le flambeur, Bryan Singer, Christopher Higgs, Christopher Nolan, Chuang Tzu, Cornelia Parker, Days of Heaven, Edith Piaf, George P. Cosmatos, Harold Pinter, Inception, Jean Baudrillard, Jim Emerson, Kiss Me Deadly, Lily Hoang, Paul T. Anderson, Philip K. Dick, Quentin Tarrantino, Rififi, Roman Polanski, Ron Silliman, Seinfeld, Simulacra and Simulation, The Asphalt Jungle, The Betrayal, The Dark Knight, The Gateless Gate, The Ghost, The Matrix, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Zabriskie Point on August 8, 2010 | 182 Comments »
Truth in advertising.
Update: Related posts that may interest you:
- “Art as Device, and Device (When it Works) as Miracle“
- “Scott Pilgrim vs. Inception for the Future of the Cinematic Imagination“
- “More on Inception: Shot Economy and 1 + 1 = 1“
- “My Favorite New Movies of 2010“
- “A D Jameson talks about movies #1: The opening scenes of Inception” (YouTube)
- “The Ever Risable Dark Knight” (HTMLGIANT)
- “We Need to Talk About Batman” (HTMLGIANT)
- “Reading Frank Miller’s influences on Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy” (HTMLGIANT)
- “Reading Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns” parts 1, 2, 3, 4 5, 6, 7, 8
1.
Christopher Nolan, while presumably a rather likable fellow (he does give work to Michael Caine), is a depressingly artless filmmaker. To be sure, some of the concepts in this new one are clever enough (even if they play like weak snatches from Philip K. Dick): the military developed shared dreaming, which then became a tool for corporate espionage—sure thing. The great Dom Cobb and his team now must infiltrate a businessperson’s mind in order to plant the seed of an idea, rather than steal one—a nice enough twist, and a fine enough premise for a caper.
But Nolan then fails to dramatize his concepts. His primary—indeed, practically his only—tool for delivering information to the audience is character dialogue. Rarely does anyone shut his or her mouth during the 148 minutes that are Inception. Its actors are talking threadbare ciphers, eager mouthpieces for their director.
Examples abound. After failing in their mission to deceive Saito, Cobb remarks to his teammate Arthur: “We were supposed to deliver Saito’s expansion plans to Cobol Engineering two hours ago. By now they know we failed.” (A potential response: “Hey, dude, I’m, like, your partner. I know the score!”) An even better one: the line where Cobb points out to Michael Caine’s character—a university professor teaching in Paris—”You know extradition between France and the US is a legal nightmare.” Yes, Mssr. Professor Caine probably does, in fact, know that! But I’m sure that somebody way in the back row was happy to hear.
