Inceptional

Yes, the throbbing trombone theme is sure to signal future parodies. Sure, Writer/Director Christopher Nolan can be accused of making mazes without enough movie emotion, as was Stanley Kubrick. And yep, a definitive interpretation may be so hard to come by that many give up.

That said, Inception is quite a ride, certainly the most ambitious Hollywood movie so far this year, a fine way to spend that clout built up from the worldwide blockbuster success of The Dark Knight and possessing a haunting, disturbing core that naysayers will trivialize to ill effect.

Since Nettertainment doesn't do reviews so much as analysis, since I've only seen this movie once and since to discuss it in any real depth is to drop spoilers galore, a real shame for anyone who has yet to see the movie, lets me offer a briefer post, one where instead of investigation and conclusion I simply drop some hints that might lead the viewer towards my own interpretation(s) of the film.

Respecting that these may function as SPOILERS no matter how oblique, take this as fair WARNING, enjoy the trailer below, and if you haven't seen the movie or want to be sure your experience isn't even tinted by these clues, please avoid reading the text following.



Here's my thoughts:

There's a misapprehension regarding the genre of Inception, that it is simply a "mind-fuck" movie, or an existential heist movie. Remember that, at his core, Christopher Nolan makes doomed man movies, with the potential exception of Batman Begins. And even that has a doomed element regarding Bruce Wayne's decision and the effect on his great romance. From his first no-budget calling card, Following..., through the perpetual forgetting machine man of Memento, the sleepless protagonist of Insomnia, the exponentially doomed man (men?) of The Prestige and, most recently, The Dark Knight who is a fugitive taking the heat for Harvey Dent at the end of that movie, every single one of his protagonists is ultimately revealed to be as doomed as the ultimate film noir loser in the low-budget quickie classic, Detour.

Once you understand this about Nolan's oeuvre, you remove that shred of cinematic hope that may be keeping you tethered to the most optimistic interpretation of the movie, and lead you to some extremely dark places, including questions like: Who's dreaming? Who's right? And, the most pretzeldelic question of all, Who's really being "incepted?"

The second clue is very simple: water. Plenty of movies use water as a resonant visual theme, notably Chinatown and Jaws, but here it is explicitly offered as a hint to explain the levels within levels. The level of a glass of water, a chase through rain-drenched streets, walls bursting in, a fall into a bathtub, the crystallization of water into a snowy/icy world replete with avalanche and, perhaps most tellingly, the waves crashing against a desolate beach echoing From Here to Eternity replete with sin, albeit of death rather than adultery.

It's the loose ends that are disturbing, that resonate like our daily lives in this age of anxiety. Nolan doesn't tie them up. After all, Cobb is interrupted by Saito in the middle of the movie when he tries to spin the top.

And, opening up a question instantly linking Inception to the final chapter of James Joyce's literary touchstone, Ulysses:

Who's top is it anyway?

Shadows

Maybe the best description of what is going on with the psycho right, the ones crying about getting "my country back," comes from a reader of Andrew Sullivan, who goes Jungean talking about The Shadow Self and the psychological phenomenon of projection:

...Our ego wants to believe we are wonderful, and so cannot tolerate evidence to the contrary. Consider America. As good as we are, we have a dark side and our actions often have dark consequences. We are large and cast a large shadow. If we were a more mature people we would simply own our dark side, integrate it into part of our self knowledge, and act accordingly. However American mythology says that we are the good country, and to maintain that the pure version of that belief, we are willfully ignorant of our faults. In the minds of many “patriotic” Americans, we have no dark side. Unwilling to own our dark side, we project our shadow onto others...

...

Since the Iraq war we’ve looked for a new target onto which to project our shadow. Perennial candidates China, North Korea, and Iran don’t quite suit our needs, and “the terrorists” finally wore thin. I have wondered who our next victim would be. Now we know.

It is Obama.

The right is projecting its shadow onto Obama. The same qualities that make him a saint to the left make him the devil to the right - he is easy to project onto...

...

That is why he is the out of control spender when they sat on their hands through all of Bush's malfeasance. That is why his talking to schoolchildren is dangerous when our government wiretapping its citizens wasn’t. That is why saving the financial system from years of Republican regulation is taking away our future. The more evil revealed about the right’s excesses on torture, or wars of choice, or nearly destroying the economy, the more evil Obama will look in their eyes, as they cannot tolerate owning responsibility, because in their own minds they are only good.

That is why he is the Fascist/Communist/Socialist/Muslim… that is the list of our shadow projections over the last 60 years. In their minds he is now the USSR ("my grandchildren will have to stand in line for toilet paper!") or even the Anti-Christ. The Obama they see is a projection of their own psyche, not that actual man in the White House. Missing birth certificates, death panels, indoctrinating children, these are all the projections running in their own heads, not things happening in the real world...

The whole letter is fascinating, even debatable. It reminds me of the reason why organized crime wiseguys call themselves "goodfellas." If everyone essentially has to think of themselves as good, these criminals consider themselves honest as opposed to the hypocrites who pretend to lead honest lives (i.e. the rest of us law-abiding citizens). It's their own projection at work, and their self-justification.

By the way, U.S. physicians overwhelmingly support the Public Option (63%), even more (73%) when you add in those supporting Single Payer.

Another projection (LIE) dies hard...

McPhil

Per Max Bergmann, this should have been the week that ended McCain's Presidential hopes -- so many gaffes, indications of sub-par skills, knowledge and judgment.

But the finest has to be McCain's Jimmy Carter "malaise" moment, when his economic adviser, Ex-Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX) who's part of the sub-prime debacle at UBS and who's wife did quite well on the Enron board, had this to say about our recession:

“You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession,” he said, noting that growth has held up at about 1 percent despite all the publicity over losing jobs to India, China, illegal immigration, housing and credit problems and record oil prices. “We may have a recession; we haven’t had one yet.”

“We have sort of become a nation of whiners,” he said. “You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline” despite a major export boom that is the primary reason that growth continues in the economy, he said.

Easy for a multi-millionaire to say! UPDATE: Video version:



At first the McCain campaign supported the statement, then came the flip-flop as McCain claimed:

"I strongly disagree" with Phil Gramm's remarks, McCain told reporters in Belleville, Mich. "Phil Gramm does not speak for me. I speak for me."

Then why send him out today to the Wall Street Journal to speak for you?

The fact is, multi-millionaire McCain has previously said that our problems are psychological, making me wonder if he's going a little "psychological" himself.

As for Obama, it must have been a relief to take up this gaffe after a bruising FISA week, and he seems genuinely loose, funny and (most importantly) connected again:



For comparison, McCain's response:



Which one looks ready to lead America and the World out of the reactionary Cheney-Bush years, and full-blazing into the 21st Century?