Paris as Inverted Wave

Okay. Inasmuch as this is a dream blog, I think I should have some comment here on "Inception" because (thank goodness - it's been a long time) I've thought about this movie for much of the day. I could certainly make the case that it's flawed, not strange ENOUGH, over-explained, "awesome, but not great" as one Rotten Tomato critic wrote. Yeah. On the other hand, as with "Memento", I think this film does something new in terms of the relation of individual psychology to time - and here of collective (oh geez) psychology to imagination.

Personally, "The Fall" remains to me the more impactful, subtle and incredible of the two.

Still, there is something going on here that is not cool simply because it is Barouquely complex but because - I guess my favorite thing about the film - it manages to subtly (and credibly in terms of dream logic and its 'physical' manifestations) relate various psychological realities one to the other (as when, in real life, a car backfiring outside your bedroom window, becomes a door slamming in your dream). Here though the dream to dream ramifications are more dynamic than that, coupled with commentary on the variance of time, between real time and dream time and deeper and deeper spaces of dreaming. Interesting that these scenes were shot with variable speeds, the effects rendered at variable speeds. So, while there were a few too many assassins and explosions, it was nice to see computer effects be necessary. But I do appreciate what he could say with non CG imagery too'; I'm thinking of the very first shot; the pushing wave, joined mid-swell-, the pressure and natural volume and velocity of the non-physical that that conveys.

The insistence on realism as an effective way to describe dreamspace (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/07/16/movies/20100716-inception-aoas-feature.html) largely works and the invention of the weirdness of dreams is well-done. I felt the 'rolling wave' of the inverting Parisian boulevard was as close a representation of my endless tidal wave dream series as I've ever seen in scale and specificity and dream-insistence, whatever that is (it feels like the right phrase now).

So, anyway, to see a fully realized film from someone who clearly gets the architecture of the architecture of dreams was well worthwhile. I felt it could be more subtle perhaps but - next time. First, as in the story of the film, the dreamspace needs to be built. Christopher Nolan (who else could do this? -- maybe "The Fall" guy..) has built that, has visually identified the stratification and deep invention of the psyche. Some ground, I think, has been broken here. The ground that is the 'idea of ground' while not being ground. That this is a territory that can be filmed is a feat.

I lay back in bed to think about it this morning. Not because of the film, but because these things happen, all the time, I spent forty waking minutes, an hour? watching what looked like the flurries of the teeniest particulate snowflakes or flakes, tiny particles of something, very individually clear, flurry and gather (whiter dust) and fly apart (blacker space - starlike) in a movement that was musical, dimensionally complex, absolutely in focus and perfectly 'observable' as it happened.

The mind is a miracle. It is itself visionary. I can't help but appreciate any effort to explore that fantastical reality.