Once, I got this idea in my mind - an idea about a movie, one that looked kind of like “The Matrix” but more expensive and without stupid Keanu Reeves. It did not generate deep within my subconscious, but instead entered externally, via everyone around me talking about it all the damn time. Finally, I went out, braving hell and high water (literally, drove my car like a boat) and saw it.

Since my old journalism days firmly tell me it’s too late for a relevant review, I’ll just write a few Becky Talking Points. I will intersperse them with minimalist “Inception” posters for your enjoyment and also to prime you for a later post about minimalist posters.

-I think that Christopher Nolan came up with the idea for “Inception” when he was watching “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and that beach house fell down at the end. He was probably like, “Whoa shit! Why can’t this movie be nothing but houses falling down in your mind? Now THAT would be a movie! Now if only someone could mix it with the sweet-ass, slow-mo, anti-gravity bending in ‘The Matrix,’ that would be $$$$$$.”

-While I liked the suspense, part of me kept wondering what “Inception” would have been like if it were more about character-development and emotion. Like if the idea they were planting was less important (a new flavor of Vitamin Water?) and we really zeroed in on Cobb and his wife and the hot business guy and his dad. I would have liked to see that go really Freudian. Less bombs please, we’re talking about the time he walked in on his parents having sex here. 

-Expanding on that idea, “Inception” was a pretty pure concept film. There was almost no cultural context. You could say it was kind of like the opposite of a Nick Hornby book/film; no one’s gonna stop and talk about Joni Mitchell or the price of hot tubs. That makes it easier for the film to avoid being dated and to feel more “universal,” but that got me thinking: Isn’t most media now primarily about cultural context? I feel like media that doesn’t reference pop culture and current events feels flat and boring, and now we expect films and books to be time capsules for future nostalgia. The idea of separating themes like love and death from our personal connection to media seems completely foreign to me now. What’s a breakup this decade without listening to The National?

-There also weren’t many phones in “Inception” - I think I counted 2 or 3 times when they took out phones, and that was only, oddly, in the dream. I’m not crazy about what I’m about to do, but I’m going to try to connect it to a common “problem.” The characters in “Inception” seemed to have an uncanny knack for connecting with one another, meaning they knew how to be in the same place at the same time, without letting us know how they got there (like a dream?!). To an audience that coordinates every second of their day using cell phones, Twitter and Facebook, that seems strange. Maybe it’s expressing a fantasy of modern society where people a) wish they could take the next step, unplug from the wireless hub, and connect with people on a more psychic level b) feel paranoid about this wireless hub of connection we’re on and want to connect with people in a more private place, which, at its most exaggerated, would be a dream.

-Would you say “Inception” is this decade’s “The Matrix?” That was the dumb question I liked to ask people who talked about “Inception” all the time. So, asking myself, I would say yes. It makes people question reality, has enormous presence as a meme and created special effects that are novel and haunting. I do think “Inception” shows society at a different place than “The Matrix” did. Instead of feeling paranoid about institutions and disenchanted with urban isolation, “Inception” is more about foggy introspectiveness. Whereas before we were worried that we were dissociated with reality and other people, we now feel so wired into other people’s lives that we feel comfortable turning inward, and even letting other people in on the process.

Or maybe it’s that we fear we are boring so we all want to imagine that we have complex layers and massive creative power that could bend Parisian cafes in a million directions and spray them all over.