Monday, July 19, 2010

Paring Down Dreams

This morning I learned one of my grandmothers had been killed in a car accident the night before. She lived in Alabama, and I don't think I'd seen her once since I was a kid. I didn't know her very well, though she sent Christmas cards and Birthday cards, sometimes more than one as she'd forget sending them. Her house had burned down not long ago, and it sounds like she was just getting her life back together, now this. My mother left for Alabama this morning.

I was up this morning because, as I realised last night while I was seeing Inception, I have another urinary tract infection. I had to leave before the end of the movie, as I felt I'd missed too much having gotten up to pee twice. Though considering there was something wrong with the theatre's sound system, it was probably just as well--it sounded like a blown out speaker, muffled and loud. Ken Watanabe and Marion Cotillard were impossible to understand with the added filter of their accents, and everyone else was touch and go. I was able to watch most of the movie, and though I hardly feel like I have the right to say whether or not I think it's a good movie, I can say it's not nearly as weird or confusing as a lot of reviews are saying. I was able to follow it while missing a lot of the dialogue--I was reminded of The Howard Stern Show last week when they played a clip of Ellen Page saying how the film was impossible to describe. The Stern Show crew was going to a screening the next day, and Stern promised, "I guarantee I'll be able to describe it." And, indeed, the next day he was able to explain the basic story.

It's a heist movie--complete with a colourful group of thieves--who specialise in stealing information from dreams. Only, in this movie, the plan was to plant an idea in someone's head--specifically in Cillian Murphy's head, suggesting that he walk away from his inheritance. The movie has a more poetic parallel plot about Leonardo DiCaprio's dead wife living on in his subconscious, which actually reminded me a great deal of Shutter Island. It's suggested a few times in Inception that the whole movie is Leonardo DiCaprio's character's dream.

I'd say I saw 90% of the film, and so far as I can tell it's a decent suspense thriller, though as dream movies go, it has nothing on Paprika or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, both of which were much better with dream logic. As one negative review I read pointed out, it's a little odd that we spend so much time in the heads of a few guys and there's never any nudity. To which I'd add, it's weird that there's not anything but regular city streets, hotels, and people. No famous fictional characters or celebrities? No people inexplicably wearing bunny suits?

Anyway, I hope I won't have to wait too long to give the movie a fair trial. I don't know what this infection means for Comic-Con. I may end up just going on Friday, depending on how I'm reacting to the antibiotics when I'm finally able to get my hands on some to-morrow. I have a doctor's appointment at 9:20 in the morning, which would normally be a difficult time for me. It hardly matters now, though, since I don't expect to be able to sleep at all. I've stopped drinking coffee too, of course, so I'm close to totally out of it now.

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