Am I Odd?

Yesterday I saw Inception, and, given its multitude of 10-star imdb.com reviews-- which arrive, one after the other, like broomsticks carrying pails of water-- I don't think I was misguided in expecting (at the very least) a thought-provoking movie-going experience that would justify driving to Cleveland to view it on an IMAX screen.

I walked away more annoyed than disappointed, wondering to myself if I were stupid for not following the plot, insensitive for not caring about the characters, and a shame-worthy film-goer for letting my mind wander throughout the whole thing.

"Ah, but there weren't any good characters!" I said to myself. After all, director Christopher Nolan had given us Heath Ledger as The Joker just two years prior, and my hat went off to the first filmmaker to actually make me like a superhero movie. The Joker was alive, funny, mysterious, demented. But in Inception, there wasn't much to Leonardo DiCaprio's boring character, Dom Cobb (isn't that an awful name?), besides a cliched backstory about a dead wife, and oh Lord, have we ever seen that before. The dead wife! His motivation! For what, though? I'd tell you, but my mind wandered so damn much that I can't remember the plot too well . . .

It may be, here, that you start to discredit me, and maybe you should. If I didn't grasp the story-line, maybe I should hit up a Regal tomorrow night and fill in the blanks.

It's a good point you have there. You consider yourself a fairly-sophisticated film fan, and you'll be damned if a wild-haired kid will sit behind a computer and blast a film he's only seen once and apparently didn't even pay attention to. Not to mention dismissing it on the flimsy grounds of "no good characters."

Like I said, it's a good point. And I'm not dismissing it. Oh, I understand there was an intelligence in this film, and that Nolan took eight years to write it. I may give it another shot, but for now I'm miffed. I know that I was uncomfortable in the theatre. I know that, despite moments of awe at some of the film's technical achievements, I was mostly fighting off the thoughts that came into my head.

"Where's this film's heart?"

"Remember Ellen Page in Juno? When she pulled her car to the side of the road and cried?"

"And how about Leo in Catch Me If You Can, when he walked out of that bathroom and cleverly fooled Tom Hanks into thinking he was a CIA agent, handing him his wallet stuffed with food labels."

Oh, I tried to fight these off. "Watch the movie, you idiot!" another thought said. "This is an intelligent thriller."

And maybe it is. Oh, it certainly is. Yet still I feel as though I have been treated to nothing more than a silly dish of Violence, Guns, and Shit Getting Blown Up aimed at the "Fuck yeah, dude!" crowd.

There were so many people shot, so many people punched in the face, so many people getting guns wrestled from them and being tackled to the ground, that I wondered, perhaps for the first time ever, "What's with all the violence, violence, violence in movies?" It all bounced off me. Okay, so a car flips, fire erupts, a bigger gun than the last is yanked out, someone dives, rolls, gets up, shoots. Who cares? I felt nothing. What was going through my head was, "How is Leo 40 years old and still unable to grow complete facial hair?"

It's not even a glorification of violence that bothers me (though that's a different discussion); if anything, I feel like the excess of violence in movies is . . . pathetic. Little boys who want to see two hours of fighting.

But maybe I'm getting preachy. Alright, I'm almost done bashing, just a little bit more . . .

Oh. There was also an agonizing Hans Zimmer score that was akin to the composer standing behind you in the theatre and using your head for his drum.

And poor old Michael Caine even appeared for seemingly no other reason than for us to suddenly buy into the presence of a wise man. Oh, it's Michael Caine! He must be wise, I'd better listen up.

And then, perhaps most of all (I swear I'm almost finished), I objected to the depiction of dream-land. Inception seems to be the work of someone who knows nothing about dreams, what they stand for, and how they feel. First off, it didn't look like one. In a dream, the landscape is constantly in flux, nothing is stationary. Okay, so the film knows this, but it didn't successfully depict that transientness (yes, that's actually a word).

Waking Life found a way to express this through its animation. Luis Bunuel knew how to do it. So did Andrei Tarkovsky and Bergman. They knew that, to make dream-land work, small things had to be off. But I can't help but think that Nolan doesn't really care about this. To him, dreams are an excuse to create a sci-fi alternate reality. They're a MacGuffin.

Is the joke on him? Since dreams are not logical, if you try to hang a plot onto them, it won't work. Dreams are the domain of nonlinearity. Right? Therefore, they can't really factor into a plot-driven movie. I think. (I said in my first post I was going to keep an open mind about things)

Whew. I feel like I totally (and possibly (no, definitely) unfairly) bashed this movie. I mean, I really went on and on. I'm surprised you're still here. But . . . maybe it's no big deal. Christopher Nolan isn't going to find his way to the tiny corner of the Internet that my blog is hidden.

So where am I getting at with all this? Inception is obviously not my kind of movie, so why can't I just let it be? I mean, I admit it, I don't like thrillers or action movies.

The truth is . . . this movie just triggered a little depression, because I almost never like the same stuff that other people like. I feel odd. And it's further depressing, because I feel exhilarated when walking out of a movie such as Greenberg, but barely anyone seems to know that movie exists.

Am I a snob? Maybe.

"Oh, he's too good for popular movies," you're saying to yourself right now, arms perhaps folding or head perhaps shaking. "He drops names like Bergman and Tarkovsky, throws around terms like MacGuffin. And the creep didn't even give the movie a second viewing! And his hair is just too crazy. He's not 19 anymore, he should just cut it already."

Yes, yes, this is all valid. But here I am, sitting before my laptop, thinking about movies. And I'm drawn to the Noah Baumbachs, the P. T. Andersons, the Todd Solondz's, the Ingmar Bergmans, the Luis Bunuels. And I'm largely baffled by the Christopher Nolans, George Lucases, and James Camerons.

Oh, I'm a snob! Drawing a line through the dirt, arbitrarily separating the "artistic" directors from the "commercial" directors, proclaiming my side "right" and the other side "wrong."

Am I doing this? Oh no, I am. I am. And I don't like it. But gee, isn't there some saving grace? Do I feel hostility to those commercial directors not because they're bad in any way (and they definitely aren't; and I like them at certain times) but because I know there are other kinds of art that are equally touching, that have affected me in a great way and have provided something in my life I desperately needed?

It's 2 a.m. At 2 a.m., words get lofty. Sentimentality creeps in. Exclamation points get used, and you feel like what you're typing is so deep, so profound . . . it's not dissimilar to something I call The Phantom 4 a.m. Facebook Status.

A definition of The Phantom 4 a.m. Facebook Status (of which I've had maybe 5 in my life): at some wee hour of the morning (not necessarily 4 a.m. but close enough) a dramatic, sentimental, over-bearing, possibly alcohol-induced facebook status appears on the page of some youth, 16-28 years old. The following day, the status is miraculously missing, presumably erased by the now-sober youth.

In a sense . . . this journal entry. So I end it here, hoping I don't regret it in the morning, having arrived at nothing close to the point I wanted to arrive at when I first started typing, and thankful I haven't yet given this blog's link to anyone.

Goodnight for now.