Inception (d. Christopher Nolan, USA 2010)

Oh dear. So much potential in this film, but so veeeeery looooooong!!! 

It brought up an interesting point, though. Very many films - especially those made in the US while the Hayes Production Code was in its heyday - operate to set up quite radically anti-establishment narratives that are then supposedly undone by an ending that shows the bad guy or gal getting his or her just desserts. So, for instance, sluts die, and men drawn into criminal behaviour by avarice or lust, also tend to die (or at least go to prison) - despite having a grand old time of it for the first 90 minutes of the film... The received wisdom is, of course, that the imagery and idea that stays with viewers is of the "bad" stuff (which is usally fun and sexy and alluring), rather than of the tacked-on ending involving jail or death.

What's my point? Read on. (But don't, in fact, read on unless you've either already watched Inception, don't mind spoilers, or had someone else ruin it for you before now, lol.)

My point is that Inception does this sort of thing, but in reverse. In particular, it spends most of its 148 minutes (count 'em!) setting up the protagonist's dead wife as a Bad Evil Crazy Woman, but then at the end does a speedy turnaround twist thingy that reveals that it was All His Fault, and that the crazy lady wasn't in control of her own mind, because it was HIM who placed the crazy idea in it in the first place.

Hmmmm. 

On some level, I was relieved: at least the film wasn't too trite and unthinking in its representation of a femme fatale as a crazy woman who was causing awful suffering for her still-alive husband and many others. But then again, the overwhelming representation the film leaves you with is of just that - and not, sadly, of a woman horribly fucked over and lead to suicide by her idiot husband planting thoughts in her mind.

Also, while the film has its good points, do we ever actually care whether Leo's character gets back to his kids? More importantly, since they appear to have by all of a week since he last saw them, why's he so angst-ridden anyway?