The Golden Age of the Action Picture

Anyone who truly loves film wants Guillermo del Toro to make his dream project At the Mountains of Madness. Del Toro is one of the best filmmakers working today, a true visionary whose work will stand for generations as a testament to human imagination. And even if (for some strange reason), you don’t like his films, you should at least be excited about a major director getting the chance to pursue a passion project. This doesn’t happen often, but when it does (Inception, Children of Men, Apocalypse Now), it’s always great to see a filmmaker swinging for the fences and pushing himself to his limits to make something he really loves.

Film nerds worldwide have been eagerly awaiting del Toro’s long-planned adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness. A recent New Yorker profile of del Toro and the support of James Cameron have added to the anticipation. But this week was marked by the Internet-shattering news that the project has fallen apart. Universal Studios reportedly balked at the proposed $150 million budget and possible R-rating for the intense, Sci-fi horror epic. Del Toro is reportedly moving on to a monster movie called Pacific Rim until he gets another opportunity for Madness. While this is not as exciting a prospect as Mountains of Madness, his masterpiece Pan’s Labyrinth or even his Hellboy films, the worst-case scenario is that it will probably lead to another Blade 2 (a good, imaginative film that feels like it was mostly made to pay the bills).

As we wait for del Toro to get behind the camera again and inevitably make At the Mountains of Madness (it’s going to happen at some point), this is as good a time as any to examine the history of the big studio action picture. What got me thinking about this was the reason for Universal putting the kibosh on the project: not the budget issue (which happens all the time), but the rating. An R-rated big budget action-oriented film is too big of a risk in Hollywood these days. This makes sense from a marketing standpoint. An R-rating all but eliminates the all-important teen demographic. Of course, teenagers see R-rated movies, but they usually end up sneaking in, and studios don’t make money off of that (that money usually ends up going to whatever family movie happens to be playing around the same showtime).

But wait a minute. Haven’t there been a lot of successful R-rated action pictures? What about Aliens, Terminator 2, Die Hard, Predator and a host of other ultra-violent action movies? They belong to a period in cinema that has long-since past. And even though this era of Stallone and Schwarzenegger must have seemed interminable while it was occurring, I have come to call it The Golden Age of the Action Picture.

Since this is a specific period in filmmaking, we should fix some dates to it. Let’s say it lasted from 1977 to 1999. Now, we all know what epoch-defining film event occurred in 1977. For those who don’t know, 1977 must have been too long of a time ago in a galaxy way too far, far away. Star Wars is usually blamed (along with Jaws) for ending the New Hollywood, and though this is not entirely fair, it is correct that the enormous success of Star Wars turned studios away from adult fare and showed them that they could make money by catering to young audiences with high concept action-adventure stories. This mentality has guided the studios ever since. The only change since 1977 has been in the films themselves.

Even though these action pictures are guided by the same studio mentality, there is a noticeable shift between the Golden Action Age and modern action movies. One of the big differences has to do with the ratings. While some major successes of this era such as Superman, the Indiana Jones films, the Jurassic Park films and Independence Day were not rated R, many others were. Think about the Alien, Rambo, Die Hard and Terminator franchises. Think of nearly Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone and Mel Gibson film. These were big, violent, bloody action movies. The last really successful R-rated action movie was The Matrix (and now you see where I’m going with this).

The Matrix is the film that marks the divide between the 80s/90s style action pictures and the modern era. The Golden Age films were made with very traditional Hollywood techniques. They used a lot of practical effects. Even a CGI-heavy movie like Independence Day feels almost like a David Lean film in terms of its style (not in terms of its quality; I’m not that crazy). The easiest way to describe this is in comparison with post-Matrix action movies. The Matrix was revolutionary not for its ideas (Dark City is much more interesting in this regard), but for the way it used CGI to free itself from gravity, embracing even more so than earlier films the traditions of Hong Kong martial arts movies. Movies since then have felt somewhat lighter by comparison. An even better visual demonstration of this is to compare modern action heroes with the heroes of the 80s and 90s. Actors like Schwarzenegger and Stallone dominated the Golden Age. The most famous modern action heroes are guys like Neo, Spider-Man and Jason Bourne. The difference between the modern era and the Golden Age is best described as Tobey Maguire vs. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Even though The Matrix was an original screenplay, it was the film that signaled the era of the comic book movie. There had been comic movies before to be sure (Superman and Batman), but The Matrix showed the way that they would be made. Spider-Man could not be made in the same way that Tim Burton made Batman. But when Neo flew up to the camera in the final shot of The Matrix, movie executives must have known that this was the way to bring Spider-Man out of development hell. From this came not only Spider-Man, but also X-Men, the Quidditch scenes in Harry Potter, Iron Man, the desire to reboot Batman, maybe even the Nazgul scenes in Lord of the Rings, and pretty much any action movie you can think of (1999 was also the year of The Blair Witch Project, which wildly popularized that now ubiquitous action movie technique: the shakycam).

And what does all this mean to us, to film, to Guillermo del Toro? Does it mean that my Golden Age of Action Pictures was better? Not necessarily. I call it “the Golden Age” because I have a certain fondness for it. I do think that it produced more great action films than the modern era, which has been rather lackluster save for Inception, The Bourne Supremacy, superb superhero films like The Dark Knight, Batman Begins and Spider-Man 2, good superhero films like X2 and the Hellboy series and fantasy films that could be considered action pictures like The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (I don’t really consider the other LOTR and HP films to be action pictures). But was this “Golden Age” superior? Was it more adult?

The whole ratings issue might be the deciding factor in this question. Action movies have always catered to teenagers, but studios in the 80s and 90s seemed more willing to take a risk on projects that could cut off a large part of their target demographic. They don’t seem willing to do that any more. Part of that may have to do with the emphasis on comic book adaptations with younger heroes. It’s certainly an enormous risk to make an R-rated comic book movie (notice the difference in box office receipts between 300 and Watchmen). The idea of a comic book movie for adults might seem absurd to a lot of people. And when the action movie marketplace (if not the entire movie marketplace) is dominated by comic book movies, it’s hard to get in anything that is different.

Filmmaking technology has progressed enough for Guillermo del Toro to be able to fully realize his vision for At the Mountains of Madness, but the mentality in Hollywood has not worked to his advantage. He might have had an easier time getting a studio to approve it back when there were big R-rated action movies opening every week. That’s not the way things work these days. Were things better in the old days of violence and R-ratings? Maybe. Maybe not. Ratings don’t always have an effect on quality. Maybe I’m looking too nostalgically at an era that I didn’t even experience. Maybe people will look back nostalgically on an era dominated by comic books and not, say, video games. But at least in our little Golden Age there was more variety between PG-13 and R, more willingness to gamble on more intense, more challenging, possibly more adult films. Today, action directors have to make their films with 13-year-olds in mind. I remember when I was 13. I was pretty movie-literate (how many 13-year-olds have seen Seven Samurai?). But soon I was 14, then 15, and now I’m 18. Not everyone who watches movies is 13 years old. Can the rest of us have some movies, too?

Brief Encounters: Fate and Chance in The Adjustment Bureau

Possible spoilers ahead.

“I’ve been riding this bus every day for three years hoping that I’d see you again,” says David Norris (Matt Damon) to Elise Sellas (Emily Blunt).

How many people can honestly say that they haven’t done something similar: frequented a place where we’ve had a chance meeting with someone we’d like to see again? Maybe she rides this bus every day or every week or at least very often. Maybe he goes to that CVS a lot. Maybe she regularly eats at the restaurant. Maybe we can accidentally meet there again. Maybe it’s a little stalkerish, but who can say they haven’t at least thought this? The Adjustment Bureau tackles a lot of big issues, proposes some very intriguing scenarios and ultimately, like many other science-fiction stories, sets itself up for disappointment, but it perfectly captures the euphoria of chance meetings and our questions about fate and choice (or as Robert Frost would say: “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood…”).

What if I had left home 5 minutes earlier? Or five minutes later? What if I had gone somewhere else for lunch? If I had done anything different, would things have turned out the same? Is there a reason why we met? Can I even make my own decisions? Is life a road map or a blank page?

The Adjustment Bureau is based on a story (which I haven’t read) by the great science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick, and its ideas about choice bear some resemblance to other movies such as Minority Report (also based on a Dick story) and Dark City, which is visually quoted in the strange hat-wearing men and a scene where the mysterious team of men freezes workers in an office building. But The Adjustment Bureau proposes a fascinating concept of its own: a company (of sorts) that monitors human activities to make sure that they go according to a Plan written by “the Chairman.”

The biggest problem for the bureau is that the Plan can’t account for human nature and emotion. The smallest events can have an enormous influence on a person’s emotions, which can completely change the way that they act. The characters in the film call these “ripples.” I loved the scene where the Adjusters see a kiss in the immediate future for David and Elise and desperately try to prevent it because of the enormous ripples that it will spread. Like Dark City, The Adjustment Bureau features non-human figures that are completely baffled by the ways that feelings dictate people’s actions. Humans are irrational creatures. Even if we know that one path will lead to a better outcome than another, we might choose the worse path, letting our emotions decide rather than our reason. This is the dilemma facing David Norris: he can either achieve political success or be with the woman he loves.

Unfortunately, the ending of the film is rather problematic (Seriously, major spoilers ahead). The build-up to the climax is brilliant: David learns how to take on the powers of the Adjusters so that he can move quickly through New York City and find Elise. So far, the movie has done a great job of dealing with its dramatic structure: if you introduce a concept (particularly in science-fiction) you cannot let it go unexplored. Let’s call it Chekov’s Hat and Doorknob. This leads to a rather wonderful chase sequence.

But the movie steps out onto dangerous ground when David decides that he wants to meet the Chairman and talk about the Plan. It had to head in this direction, but it’s a dangerous one. The movie could either show the characters essentially meeting God (which could go horribly wrong), or it could figure out some reason why the characters cannot reach that point. Instead of going the more ambitious route, the movie plays it safe. If I understood correctly, they cannot meet the Chairman because “he takes on many forms.” This does not ruin the entire movie, but it simply is not compatible with the film’s original premise that portrays God as something like the head of a corporation. The chairman of a corporation should not be that mysterious (maybe the movie should have been called Chairman & Me). The brilliance of this concept is that it is a tangible visualization of fate, in the same way that Inception uses architecture to visualize the subconscious. The problem with The Adjustment Bureau is that it might have stuck its neck out a little too far. A meeting with God would probably be far too literal, but once the possibility of that had been raised, it was impossible for me to forget it. Few science-fiction films have gone all the way with their ideas and most of them have not seen great critical and commercial success (see Knowing), so the film tries to pull back and ends up just being rather disappointing.

However, the movie closes with a very interesting idea: that if we are going to have free will, we need to own it, come what may. We need to understand what it is to have free will and what it is to not have it. We need to make our choices and own the consequences. We can look back on a choice, an important decision or a chance meeting and wonder what would have happened if we had done something different, but we made that choice, “and that has made all the difference.”

The King's Acceptance Speech

The Oscars are pointless, arbitrary, probably a waste of money, and do not reflect in any way the quality of the films released this year. Yet, why do we obsess over making predictions about it? Because it’s fun, damn it. And making predictions makes me feel like a pundit.

Best Picture: This is going to come down to The King’s Speech vs. The Social Network. Anything else is out of the question. Inception may have been the best film of the year, but its chances dwindled significantly when Christopher Nolan was snubbed for a Best Director nomination. Despite overwhelming critical support for The Social Network, The King’s Speech will edge it out. It’s the kind of movie the Academy likes, the kind of movie it wants to represent the industry: an uplifting, period piece with lots of big Acting. The Social Network is a much better film and will survive for many years as a document of our times, but it’s also more cynical, probably a bit too cynical for the Academy. The King’s Speech is a very good film that fits into the Academy’s comfort zone.

Best Director: Like 2005, 2002, 2000 and 1998, this will be one of the rare years when Best Director and Best Picture diverge. It will also be one of the rare years when the Director’s Guild and the Academy will differ. Not only did David Fincher do a better directorial job for The Social Network than Tom Hooper did for The King’s Speech, he also did a more noticeable job. In fact, the most noticeable aspects of Hooper’s directing (especially shot composition) are a little stranger and more unconventional than the Academy’s normal taste. The Academy rarely gives Oscars to directors without a lot of experience; notice the nominations, but no award for directors like Quentin Tarantino for Pulp Fiction and Paul Greengrass for United 93 (and those directors actually have distinct directorial styles). Like Danny Boyle’s award for Slumdog Millionaire, this will be a relatively early career achievement award for a film-circle favorite who hasn’t yet received Academy recognition. But unlike Danny Boyle, David Fincher deserves this award.

Best Actor: There is no surer bet in the Oscars this year than Colin Firth winning for his performance in The King’s Speech. He played a royal figure with a disability who has to face the Nazis in the favorite for Best Picture. Plus, it was a terrific performance. Jeff Bridges and Javier Bardem won awards recently (and Bardem is in a film that not enough Academy members have seen). James Franco and Jesse Eisenberg are relatively early in their careers. The Academy will want to reward Firth for his performance and for several years of work that has not received a lot of Oscar recognition.

Best Actress: This one comes down to a tough race between Natalie Portman for Black Swan and Annette Bening for The Kids Are All Right. Both have been highly acclaimed. Both gave great performances. But this category might end up working in the opposite manner of Best Actor: recognizing a young actress who gave an exciting, out-there performance rather than an old pro who gave an deeply emotional but not showy performance. When in doubt in the Oscars, it’s best to go with the Guild Awards. And Natalie Portman won the Screen Actors Guild Award. I would love to see Jennifer Lawrence win for Winter's Bone, but that's quite a long shot.

Best Original Screenplay: History tells us that this Oscar should go to a low-key Indie comedy that has no chance of winning Best Picture (Lost in Translation, Little Miss Sunshine, Juno), and this year that would be The Kids Are All Right. But this rule is negated when the Best Picture winner is an original screenplay (Crash, The Hurt Locker). And The King’s Speech is an original screenplay. There is a chance that this category could give a consolation award to Christopher Nolan for not receiving a Best Director nomination. Nolan did win the Writer’s Guild Award, but The King’s Speech was disqualified from that competition for some strange reason. It’s most likely that this category will get swept up with the tide for The King’s Speech.

Best Adapted Screenplay: Aaron Sorkin for The Social Network. Period. No question. It’s non-linear, tackles a possibly silly storyline, deals with complex themes and has great rapid-fire dialogue. This might even be a surer bet than Colin Firth.

Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale for The Fighter. It’s an exciting, out-there, physically demanding performance that’s almost certain to win. Geoffrey Rush is a close runner-up for The King’s Speech, but Bale has already gotten the tell-tale SAG Award.

Best Supporting Actress: Most likely Hailee Steinfeld for True Grit. The Academy usually likes to reward good performances by young actors, and Melissa Leo and Amy Adams are likely to split the vote for The Fighter.

Best Cinematography: This comes down to two cinematographers whose Oscars are long overdue: Roger Deakins (True Grit) and Wally Pfister (Inception). I would really like to see Pfister get his Oscar, but Deakins’ award is longer overdue (I mean, really, Fargo, The Shawshank Redemption, No Country for Old Men, and the list goes on and on). I am a little disturbed by Deakins’ defection to digital, but his work for True Grit is no less deserving. It’s wonderfully well done and features some of the kind of beautiful landscape cinematography that the Academy loves.

Best Editing: I’ve already written about this extensively, so I won’t really go into why 127 Hours should not have been nominated, why Inception should have been, and why The Social Network should win. All I will add is that The Social Network will win.

Best Animated Film: Toy Story 3. Do you really have to ask when there’s a Pixar movie in the category?

Best Foreign Film: I really have no idea. Biutiful is the most widely seen, but got a lukewarm critical response. I’ve heard that Incendies is likely to win, so I’ll go with that.

Best Art Direction: It’s usually best to go with either the period piece or the outlandish fantasy in this category. Since there are two period pieces (The King’s Speech and True Grit) that don’t have really noticeable art direction, let’s go with the outlandish fantasy (Alice in Wonderland). The deserving winner is Inception (architecture did figure heavily in the plot), but it’s probably not noticeable enough.

Best Costume Design: Alice in Wonderland. See previous category for reasoning.

Best Makeup: The Wolfman. Guy turns into a wolf. ‘Nuf said, pretty much. And it’s Rick Baker.

Best Visual Effects: Alice in Wonderland clearly has the most visual effects, but Inception had the best. Academy voters will want to give Inception something, and they will certainly remember the image of Paris folding over itself.

Best Original Score: Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross will win for The Social Network, having already won the Golden Globe. Hans Zimmer’s score for Inception was my favorite, but I won’t mind when The Social Network wins.

Best Original Song: Let’s go with Toy Story 3. There were no popular musicals this year or movie with a popular theme song (there haven’t been many of that last one in a while).

Best Sound Editing: Inception. Popular action movie seems to be a good bet.

Best Sound Mixing: I really have no idea what makes these two different, but there must be some reason why The Social Network was nominated for this one and not the other, so I’ll go with that.

Do I really have to pick the Best Short Films? I haven’t seen any of them or heard anything about them, so it really wouldn’t be fair to anyone involved for me to pick one.

Best Documentary: Restrepo was one of the best films of the year, but the Academy is likely to give the award to Exit Through the Gift Shop (if only to see if Banksy will actually show up).

So, let’s recap the predictions (not preferences):

Best Picture: The King’s Speech

Best Director: David Fincher, The Social Network

Best Actor: Colin Firth, The King’s Speech

Best Actress: Natalie Portman, Black Swan

Best Original Screenplay: David Seidler, The King’s Speech

Best Adapted Screenplay: Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network

Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale, The Fighter

Best Supporting Actress: Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit

Best Cinematography: Roger Deakins, True Grit

Best Editing: Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall, The Social Network

Best Animated Film: Toy Story 3

Best Foreign Film: Incendies

Best Art Direction: Robert Stromberg and Karen O’Hara, Alice in Wonderland

Best Costume Design: Colleen Atwood, Alice in Wonderland

Best Makeup: Rick Baker and Dave Elsey, The Wolfman

Best Visual Effects: Chris Corbould, Andrew Lockley, Pete Bebb, Paul J. Franklin, Inception

Best Original Score: Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, The Social Network

Best Original Song: “We Belong Together,” Randy Newman, Toy Story 3

Best Sound Editing: Richard King, Inception

Best Sound Mixing: Ren Klyce, David Parker, Michael Semanick, Mark Weingarten, The Social Network

Best Documentary: Exit Through the Gift Shop

But the real question is: will I actually sit through the entire ceremony or will I just wait for the updates on IMDB?

The Need for Catharsis

Note: I probably should have mentioned this before the other posts, but this deals very explicitly with the ending of Inception. So, if you haven’t seen the movie, DON’T READ THIS!

No scene in any movie from 2010 has affected me as much the scene where Cobb walks through the airport at the end of Inception. After the team has completed the inception on Fischer and Saito has made his phone call, Cobb reaches the front of the immigration line at the airport. As he hands his passport to the customs officer, there is a brief moment of anxiety that Saito has not honored the arrangement and that Cobb will be arrested. This is irrational, of course (what kind of ending would that be?), but it is still there for that brief moment.

But it disappears as the officer hands the passport back, and an Ennio Morricone-style guitar begins on the soundtrack. This guitar will continue as a counterpoint through the rest of the scene, like the falling van during the climax of the film. Cobb picks up his bag from the baggage claim and starts walking to the exit as Hans Zimmer begins layering strings and horns onto the soundtrack like a pounding heartbeat, keeping the underlying guitar score. As Cobb walks through the airport (it’s a long walk), his eyes meet with the eyes of everyone in his team. They smile and nod as he passes by. Even Fischer has a slight look of recognition on his face when they briefly glance at each other. Cobb walks out of the baggage claim, past a man with sign reading “FISCHER”, and meets up with his father-in-law Miles who’ll take him to his children and a spinning top that Cobb will no longer care to look at.

I’m not entirely sure why, but my breath catches and my heart stops whenever I see this scene (6 or 7 times). It even gives me chills when I think about it. When I think about this rationally, it seems rather silly. Nothing really happens in this scene. It’s just a scene of a guy walking through an airport. And of course, none of these people or places are real. No, I’m not saying it was all a dream. Well, yes, actually, in the sense that it’s just a movie, just lights on a wall.

Why do we feel such strong emotional reactions to things that might not make sense, that might seem silly, and sometimes aren’t even real?

The plot of Inception is about ideas, about how they are created and how they are transferred, but the film itself is not about ideas. It’s about the emotions that define those ideas. Cobb tells the team that “the subconscious is motivated by emotion, not reason.” He goes on to say that the key to inception is emotional catharsis. The hardest part about the inception is creating an emotional catharsis about something that isn’t real. It has relation to reality so that the subject can connect to it, but ultimately, it’s a complete fantasy (in Fischer’s case, it might even be a lie).

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out how dramatizing a whole story to create an emotional reaction from an audience parallels film. It’s even interesting to assign the characters roles in a film production (Cobb=Director; Saito=Producer; Arthur=Screenwriter; Eames=Actor; Ariadne=Set Designer; Yusuf=Composer maybe?). But the parallels don’t stop at film. The use of the word “levels” is an obvious reference to video games. The characters rely heavily on a musical countdown to get them out of dreams.

But the most interesting parallel is to religion and the belief in the afterlife. Just consider this repeated speech: “You’re waiting for a train, a train that will take you far away. You know where you hope this train will take you, but you can’t know for sure. Yet it doesn’t matter because you’ll be together.” Many of us hope for something to happen after death, but we can’t know what that will be. Believing in an afterlife is how a lot of people deal with the idea of mortality.

Why do we need all of these things? Why do we need religion, myth, art, music, video games, books and movies to create an emotional catharsis?

Inception makes the case that we need them to deal with our own subconscious. Christopher Nolan does a brilliant job of visualizing the subconscious: not just as a maze or a city of towering skyscrapers, but also as people capable of physical attack and even passionate dialogue. The characters spend a great deal of time engaged in literal warfare with Fischer’s subconscious. And Cobb spends a great deal of time debating his own subconscious. All of his conversations with Mal in his dreams are actually conversations with himself, with his own guilt and longing. When he tells Mal at the end that she’s “not good enough,” he’s not actually saying that to her. He’s saying that to his image of her, to his idea of her. He is able to do something that few men in the movies have ever been able to do: he realizes that his idea of a woman is not as good as the real thing (and people say this movie is misogynistic?). This is followed by the most violent image in the movie: Cobb’s subconscious literally attacking him. Even though Fischer’s subconscious has exchanged gunfire with the characters, this is the first time a subconscious tries to kill its owner. Cobb tries to throw away his guilt, but incurs a violent response. He is only able to let go of his guilt peacefully, by thinking back over his memories and forgiving himself.

Cobb’s catharsis (his inception?) happens almost at the same time as Fischer’s. This is a little more ethically troublesome. His reconciliation with his father never actually happens. But does that make the catharsis he experiences any less necessary? The movie doesn’t think so. The team is not convincing him that his father actually wants him to split up the company or that he has a secret will. Saito wants Fischer to dissolve the company, but he wants Fischer to think that idea was self-germinated. It’s common for people to have dreams where they have to accomplish some strange task that relates to something in their lives, but makes no sense when they wake up. Fischer is not going to think that the events in his dream actually happened.

But that does not make his catharsis any less real. He is able to have a subconscious reconciliation with his father that he could never have in real life. Of course, he has not actually reconciled with his father, but he has reconciled himself toward his father. Whether he actually dissolves his empire is not important to the film (it’s actually rather brilliant how Nolan takes this pretty mundane corporate idea with “various political motivations and antimonopolistic sentiments” as Eames says and makes it very emotional). What is important is that Fischer is at peace with his father’s memory just as Cobb is at peace with Mal’s memory.

All of these things are only in our heads, and yet they are so important to us. Our subconscious encapsulates all of our fear, doubt, happiness and love. It can be very hard to function in life with an unstable subconscious. Emotions define our ideas, and ideas “are the most resilient parasites.” A “fully formed,” deeply engrained idea can “grow to define” anyone. Sometimes, we need catharsis to help us with our subconscious. We need to experience strong emotions so that we can deal with them in reality. We need religion and myth. We need art. We need movies.

An emotional catharsis is like a long journey. Notice all of the transportation in the movie: the train used for Saito’s extraction, the plane used for Fischer’s, the train “that will take you far away.” Isn’t the aftermath of something profoundly emotional (a religious experience, a great piece of music, a terrific movie) a little like walking through an airport after you’ve landed when you’re heading home? You’re tired, exhausted, drained. But now you’re on solid ground.

The Shores of the Subconscious

Inception opens with a black screen and a horns section that’s been growing louder and louder (and louder) throughout the studio logos. The music keeps growing louder until it reaches a pounding climax, then it cuts to the opening shot. The loud chord accompanying a sudden cut mirrors the opening of Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but in Inception, the climactic note comes a moment before the cut, giving a sense that the sound is being sucked out of the film. But that’s actually the sound of water moving then suddenly crashing down, echoing the loud musical note heard a few seconds earlier.

The opening shot pans across a wave as it crashes down on a beach. Then, we see a second shot of waves before it cuts to a close-up of Cobb lying face down in the sand. This second shot is a curious choice, especially for the opening of the film. It seems a little choppy and redundant, and you might wonder why this shot is here. This is, in fact, one of the most important edits in the film, establishing an essential visual motif.

First, it creates a sense of disorientation. The first shot alone provides a little too much geography. We don’t know where we are yet, but we can still orient ourselves in the location. Then suddenly, we’re lost in the waves with the second shot. This is not what Cobb sees when he wakes up on the beach, but the rhythm of these two shots puts the audience in his state of mind. The first few shots in the film show him trying to grab information from what is around him, struggling to find focus. The early disorientation emphasizes the importance of him first noticing his deepest desire on the beach in front of him. Nolan draws this scene out so that we understand Cobb’s longing: his kids are so close to him and feel so real until they run away.

The second thing that these two shots do is to establish one of the film’s most important visual motifs. The first shot shows the water moving down and to the left. The second shot shows the water moving up and to the right. Nolan could have opened the film with the tide moving in and out on the beach. But that image is a little too standard, and it would have sacrificed the film’s disoriented state of mind. And since the second shot shows the water splashing up, the water motion becomes almost circular.

Circular motion is the most important kind of motion in Inception (the second most important is vertical, the subject of my previous post). There are small visual references to this in the movie, such as the pinwheel from Fischer’s childhood that forms the climax of his inception. The most famous use of circular motion in the film is Cobb’s spinning top, his totem to tell whether or not he is in a dream. All of this leads down to limbo and the land of infinite subconscious bordered by the sea.

After we first see the spinning top (without explanation), the first overt references to the circular visual motif come during Ariadne’s training. Cobb challenges her to create a maze in two minutes that takes more than one minute to solve. She fails when using straight lines, but succeeds when she creates a circular maze. When Cobb begins to describe the mechanics of the dream world to Ariadne later in the scene, he tells her that in a dream, “we create and perceive our world simultaneously.” He draws two arrows for creation and perception that together make up a circle. The mind creates and perceives continuously, in the same way (and the same shape, according to Cobb) that the top spins continuously in a dream.

These all form the borders of the subconscious. The most powerful image of this in the film is of the ocean at the edge of limbo, reminiscent of the end of Alex Proyas’ Dark City. I love the idea that, if we go deep enough into our minds, we will wash up on “the shores of our own subconscious.”

Arthur describes limbo as “raw, infinite subconscious.” It may be infinitely dense and have the possibility for anything to be created there, but if left unattended, the borders will begin to eat away at it, just like the ocean eats away at the buildings Cobb and Mal created. The borders are, of course, infinite. They are primarily there as a device, as a way to keep the characters inside the subconscious, the way the edges of Ariadne’s maze do and the way the totem tells Cobb whether or not he is still in a dream.

These devices trap the characters in the subconscious. This is certainly a possible outcome whenever we explore our minds (literally or figuratively). It’s always possible to lose sight of what is real. But this doesn’t have to happen. The borders of the subconscious don’t have to be an impassable ocean or the edges of a maze. These are powerful images of the subconscious, but they never say that there can be no escape. The idea of a maze does not mean complete entrapment. There’s always a way out; you just have to find it.

Inception is all about dealing with the subconscious as a separate entity, usually as an enemy (this will be the primary subject of my next post). Cobb is trying to deal with his subconscious, to escape from the maze, to pass over the ocean, for the entire film. His victory comes in the last shot of the film. Most of the discussion about this shot has completely missed the point. It’s not about whether the top falls or keeps spinning. If the movie had an answer to that question, then it was a mistake for Nolan to cut away before we see it fall (or not fall). But Nolan had a purpose when he left that unseen. The point is that Cobb doesn’t see it. He has walked away to greet his children (whether they are real or not). He is no longer trapped.

The Gravity of Dreams

With 40 minutes left in Inception, as Arthur evades the projections in the hotel hallway, as the rest of the team begins the attack on the snow fortress, Yusuf drives the van containing the sleeping characters off a bridge. The heist has already reached the third level and we’ve already seen some spectacular images (notably the runaway freight train and the rotating hallway fight scene). But Yusuf’s drive off the bridge begins the film’s most astonishing sequence.

Most, if not all of the characters in the movie spend a lot of time falling. Mal kills herself by dropping from a ledge. The kick gets the characters out of dreams with a feeling of falling. And the last hour or so of the movie is dominated by falling. The central idea in the film of breaking into the mind involves going down deep into the subconscious, scaling down levels of unreality. This is a constant visual motif throughout the film, beginning with Cobb climbing out of a window and repelling down to a lower window during the opening extraction of Saito’s dreams. There have been constant references to this in the movie.

But the falling van immediately brings this motif to the forefront: everyone in the movie is falling. This would seem simple enough (and perhaps rather meaningless) from the fact that the characters are literally falling because they are present in the falling van. But Christopher Nolan and editor Lee Smith don’t just leave it at that. The simple fact that the characters are physically falling in one level of unreality is just the starting point.

This entire sequence is a masterstroke, a virtuoso balancing act of four separate sequences: the falling van, Arthur in the hotel, the attack on the snow fortress, and Cobb and Ariadne in the Limbo City. Making the combination of these scenes seamless was key to unifying all of the characters into the visual motif of falling. This could have been oddly disjointed or just random, the falling van being the biggest problem. Quite simply, nothing happens in that part of the sequence. It’s just a van slowly falling into a river (very slowly). But it’s an essential visual counterpoint to the sequence, like an underlying theme in a piece of music. It’s important that we always know that it’s there: not just as a visual motif, but also as an instrument for suspense.

The falling van is almost the perfect illustration of Hitchcock’s Bomb Under the Table. “A bomb is under a table and it explodes; that is surprise. A bomb is under a table and it doesn’t explode; that is suspense.” A falling van hitting the water is even more of an inescapable certainty than a bomb exploding under a table. We feel sure that both eventualities will occur, but there is a chance that the bomb won’t explode. The van has to hit the water. It’s only a question of when. Nolan is able to keep this bomb under the table for more than 25 minutes.

The key to making this scene work is to keep reminding us that the van is falling, and to make these reminders feel natural. Nolan and Smith use characters, visuals and dialogue as the occasions for transitions between the van and the other sequences. A close-up of Arthur asleep in the van leads to a scene of Arthur in the hotel. When Cobb and Ariadne arrive at the Limbo City, a large piece of a building crumbles off. Nolan cuts from the falling debris (glimpsed in the corner of an aerial short) to another shot of the van falling, surrounded by small pieces of debris. My favorite transition comes when Mal tells Cobb he can stay in limbo, “in the world we built together.” From this moment of Cobb contemplating a choice that a part of him wants to make, we cut back to the falling van, removing us from Cobb’s introspection and reminding us of the other people in the story.

The falling motif is fairly simple in levels three and four. Both of those literally involve falling to awake the characters. In level three, the hospital explodes and the building collapses. In level four, Ariadne throws Fischer and herself off of a tall building (similar to Mal jumping from a building to “wake up”).

Level two is not as simple. After the hotel loses gravity, Arthur moves his sleeping team members through the corridor and into an elevator shaft. Of course, in zero gravity, an elevator shaft and a corridor are the same thing. The trick for Arthur (and Nolan) is to make the characters fall through a corridor. In doing this, Nolan is also demonstrating something about cinema (at least, 2D cinema). Since the movie is on a two-dimensional screen, moving through a corridor and falling down an elevator shaft become the same action. A quick, Scorsese-style dolly move in on an object is the same as that chilling POV falling shot in Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges. And it becomes apparent at the climax of this sequence that the van falling into the water and the elevator propelling into the wall/floor are the same thing. And it’s the same as the train rushing toward Cobb and Mal as they lie on the tracks.

All of this leads to the question: what is falling?

Falling is the ultimate lack of control, a dive into the unknown, a leap of faith. This is what Mal does when she drops from the ledge, what Yusuf does when he drives off the bridge, what Saito and Cobb have to do to escape from limbo at the end (if they do it?). And isn’t that what we do when we go to the cinema? We enter something unknown, something over which we have no control. We have no control over what the characters will do, what will be in the frame or where the camera will go. And we have no control over how the experience will affect us.