Inception: Sweet Dreams are Not Made of This.

In this heist film by psychological-thriller doyen, Christopher Nolan, we enjoy the usual action tropes of car crashes and chases, bomb explosions and shootouts, and bound-and-gagged targets yet we don’t find ourselves hanging off the edges of our sticky, popcorn-studded seats. We marvel at the creative CG action sequences and chilly dream landscapes. We get spectacular scenes of men running up and around spinning hotel hallways. The meaning of a “caper” in this film does extend to “frolicsome leap”. While we follow the characters as they fall into or get blown out from multiple dream planes throughout the dizzying dynamics of this dense plot architecture, there’s an echo of baroque vacuity. For an original piece of work that Nolan spent eight years on, Inception doesn’t pack the same suspenseful punch as Memento or Dark Knight and it surely does not lack in pyrotechnics.


Cobb (Leo DiCaprio) assembles his A-Team of oneiroanuts to aid Saito (Ken Watanabe), who challenges him to take down Robert Fischer Jr.’s inheritance of an energy corporation through the inception of an idea in his dreams. I’d call it Operation Enron. In this escapade, he is ball and chained by the ghost of his wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard). So, he enlists astute (incoming Greek reference!!) Ariadne (Ellen Page), who will act as our straight, sympathizing character. The film stars an impressive cast with quality acting and the occasion nod to prior movie roles such as the echo of Edith Piaf’s “Non, je ne regretted rein” Marion sings in La Vie En Rose and the brown bag thrown over Fischer Jr. (Cillian Murphy) who played the Scarecrow in Nolan’s Dark Knight. There’s even an amusing placement of Dileep Rao from Drag Me to Hell as the exotic shop-owner of an apothecary of strange potions. I call, No racial!

For a dream film that acts as an allegory for filmmaking in the same manner as 8 ½, the problem isn’t that it’s too complicated. The cast, especially Ms. Page, explains things to us. Inception is imbued with strange tensions severed from the rules and empathies of reality so we watch it as we do a Luis Bunuel film or any film that operates within dream laws and mechanics. An awkward relationship exists in the joining of the heist and the dream film genres. Paraphrasing a line from the film itself, the meta- story-in-a-story plot does not make it deeper if there aren’t enough familiar meaningful things to anchor it.

First case in point, where is the cool and sleuthy music? Instead of soundtrack listings akin to Ocean’s Eleven, Snatch, or the James Bond theme song (which would’ve been awesome during the snow slope scenes), we get irritating echoes of “Non, je ne regretted rein”. The song is established as their alarm clock and who wants that repeated? As ironic as the song is to Cobb’s Mal complex and practical in application for diegetic music in dream, when does practical ever make for entertainment?


While tension is centripetal to the “prison-break” exploits, which is marvelously carried out (though technically incomprehensible), the audience anticipates fatalities and a central assassination scheme in heists (So, we open with Saito). In this realm, there are conditions for when to die and the characters either wake-up or drop into veggie-limbo. Since death is not an option and pain is only dream pain (man up, A-Team!), the thrill of trigger-happy onslaughts is mired. The visceral consequences are changed for the characters and ultimately, the audience. Instead Inception delivers a toss and tumble of slaps, head on collisions, and explosions to make us jump (and to kick everyone awake).

Regarding a macguffin specific to dream tokens used to anchor people to reality, this failing is due to the desensitization inherent in action films to exploit attention towards abnormal but let’s face it mundane objects. Lost in the marvelous special effects and settings that lack Kubrick or Lynch’s psychological nuance, it’s hard to appreciate the sublime in banally-veiled tokens used in surreal films to drive the narrative, be a focal point for tension and act as a vessel for character anxieties. When the role of the spinning top is explained and shot under close lens to render it totally familiar, it does not carry the same iconic enigma status as the monolith in 2001 Space Odyssey, the severed ear in Blue Velvet, or the blue box in Mulholland Drive. Although we are speciously advised that the spinning top is key to deciphering dream from reality, Mal makes a better and prettier token. But, she’s just a projection.


The disappointments about this heist film can be summed up in a few enumerations.

· “WHY SO SERIOUS?” Where are the clever, badass one-liners? Spare us dream mechanic expositions (defibrilla-what?), cautionary goading and Cobb’s chagrin whining. Cool points aside, we can do with more emotionally nuanced acting and suggestive aesthetics in place of space-filling jabber.

· All crash but short of whiplash. With a straight shot to the mark on Fischer Jr. and parallel dream levels that reiterate (and buy time before the big kick) more than add profundity, the narrative is devoid of affective whiplash-conducive plot twists. The audience loves to be taunted and teased. Aside from the flaccid “washed-up on the beach opening” (thanks 8 ½) that is explicated midway, we get only one raging hard Shyamalan-style twist at the end.

· All fair-play in this game. Aside from the architect disposed of as quickly as we realized his betrayal, the good and the bad guys are identified early and no lines are crossed. Saito’s ominous admonishing line, “pick your men wisely”, is discarded like the original architect, as garbage.

· Where’s our T-1000 or Alex Forrest? The antagonists are mere projections that can be taken down like Putties from the Power Rangers. Aside from Saito’s incipient testosterone angst, he’s become an amicable invalid. Shortly after Cobb demonstrates a couple dream-parlor tricks, Fischer Jr. is at his beck and call. Even Mal, whose name suggests something invidious, is likeable as full of loving intentions and gorgeous as she is despite her vindictive ticks. You know, shooting Cobb’s accomplices, trashing a dream landscape, sending a TRAIN to run through them. Heeeere’s Mally!

· Scarecrow FAIL! For someone who is trained in mind defense, Fischer Jr. can send projections of henchmen but swallowed Cobb’s coaxing lines by hook and by crook. Considering the complexity of the idea incepted and the magnitude of the corporate empire inherited, the Scarecrow could’ve done a better job to match or “out-psych” these guys for audience sake!

· Lack of brainy, busty babes for a foil. Mal is frigid in limbo and Ariadne is a brunette Olson twin. In myth, she helped and seduced Theseus out of the Minotaur’s labyrinth (any more hair product and Mal could have bull horns). Here, she may inspire a peck from fellow baby-face Joseph Gordon Leavitt but there will be no adrenaline makeover to babe status for Ms. Page. And, there’s no follow up on a moment of potential interactive chemistry.

· Ironically, for a movie about plunging into the subconscious workings of the mind, there isn’t much investment in the other characters’ psyche. Everyone has nightmares right? Given the twist ending, it’s still better to color your characters, like Mulholland Drive dreamer Diana Selwyn does, than end up with a cast of somnambulists with frozen expressions.

All in all, Inception is good for a cerebral massage (reference packed and puzzles galore) and a veritable eyeball kick but there’s not much to remember afterwards. It’s more didactic than profound.

Greek Apple Pie

Dreams of antiquity are sweet beneath the skin of fruit,
auspicious oranges, passionate apples, whose goodness
spring forth from a porcelain bowl of low relief garlands
like a fountain in this marble metropolis.
Surrounding the gingham acropolis, forks pair off with knives
and take long crumb-spilling strolls across silver platters and salvers.
Young sugar cubes kneel by wizen salt and paper,
to venerate its ivory tower shakers.
Yet, baked in a fever on these antique plate grounds--
a glass and metal fort with its high-rise refrigerator and clamorous blender turrets--
dust heaps of flour,
sticky blocks of apple cores,
and yoked egg shells;
these are ingredients of homemade angst-coat tussles.
The portcullis chopping boards are drawn up
to wilted walls that pulse with the crackling waves of heat.
The billowing scent of death pervades like burnt golden apples.
Aside from the ticking of the timer and low grumblings, rumbling
from the oven like tart anticipation,
silence sleeps a room away.
Sudden, out from the motherly guise of delicious baked gifts,
the oven throws open its grills, and in a rush of torrid breath,
catapulting slices of bitter crust singe the dishwasher,
hardened spears of apple mar the microwave,
chocolate spitfire fly like a thousand arrows blotting out the face of tea kettles.
To the belligerent blaring of the smoke alarm,
swelling from metal pans, the hot melee of red and brown chunks
charge like gore-glorious Achaeans, flaring out of the Trojan horse.
A culinary tragedy in the aftermath
of everyone falling asleep on the homefront.

Fiddling while the Woman Falls

Androgyny, your name is branded in city skyline,
soaring bands of steel skeleton, strength
kept under crowns of ziggurats or spires
of Corporate kingdoms, your intoxicant Maker's Mark.

Static, yet sailing on tempestuous winds
without the Mal de mer,
Warhol saw you as celebrity, an Edie Sedgwick,
but fallen, you are far from Vitruvian ideal,
twist and twined from sacred geometry.

The façades--cold and placid
without reliefs, tympanums or friezes--
are starved, weary for the timeworn
Ionic or Corinthian flourish.

To eclipse the fickle periods of vogue,
cheaply, you disrobed your entasis
of civic virtues, religion, and gender
that fall into the base you wear like heels of hubris
by Alexander McQueen.

Reflective with bays of glass,
which begs the question of purpose
for others to peer in or you to see out,
you shine less like a Starlet
than a salacious satellite of rock
and craters.

"Micmacs: the Greatest Show on Earth?"

Ladies and gentlemen, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, ringleader of vaudeville extraordinaire, has done it again! Come one, come all to see this magnificent troupe of outstanding oddities and this time, our simple and loveable folk are taking on the big guns, and quite literally they are taking down artillery manufacturers. Come see this show’s Grimm twist of ye olde tale of tragedy and conflict with evil MNCs and unassuming victims with vendettas. You are in for a steam-punk treat.

The self-aware Jeunet establishes a tentatively serious note for this revenge story; he opens with a man meandering through the sandy Arab desert before the camera pulls back to a birds-eye view of a violent explosion that blows him apart. There is a swing back to the family afflicted by this inordinate death, and we are introduced to a young Bazil. As the camera eye continues to project from the point-of-view of this little boy, we are brought back to Jeunet’s familiar playfulness despite the underlying morbidity of the sins of wealthy industrialists and terrorism.

Shortly after, we meet the grown-up Bazil (Dany Boon), recumbent on his armchair with squeezed cheese hanging from his mouth, reciting verbatim the dialogue while watching “The Big Sleep”. For a laconic man, his uncanny ability to recite from film scripts numbers one of his many quirks. Bazil reminds us of another Quentin Tarantino film nerd. Unsurprisingly, Bazil clerks a video store until his shot in the head from a stray bullet, later discovered to belong to one of two artillery corporations responsible for his father’s death. After losing everything during his convalescence from surgery with a silver bullet in his brain that can kill him at anytime, Bazil meets Placard while street performing for change. With a compassionate hand, Placard leads Bazil to Tire-Larigot, the junkyard home of cast-away belongings and cast-away people. Beneath the soot and rhythmic pangs of mechanical productivity, this new home feels a bit like the cottage of the Seven Dwarves and Dany Boon does make a charming Snow White with Nicolas Thibault de Fenouillet and Francois Marconi as his banishing evil stepmothers. While this film is a little too goofy and colorful to be a proper noir, with the evil corporations placed across the street from each other and Bazil’s hallucinations obtrusively edited into the narrative, the perilous atmosphere and artful exploits are just as intense.

As the others in his outfit of misfits show up and become accomplices in his vendetta against the two arms manufacturers, we find each and every one just as darling and spectacular as the last. A Jeunet film never feels proper without Dominique Pinon and so we have Fracasse as a Frankenstein of metalwork and very proud human cannonball. Calculette (Marie-Julie Baup) is the human calculator of everything measureable. Remington is a stenographer who speaks in quips, cultural slogans and French puns. Bazil’s later love interest, La Mome Caoutchouc, is a spunky contortionist somewhere between “a bad girl and a tomboy”. Petit Pierre acts as the Geppetto for their junk heap of mechanical puppets. As mother and chef for everyone in this ragtag house of colorful orphans, there is the loving Tambouille.

Even with the witty and loveable cast, the film has very much to say (and many puns to deliver that may be lost on the English audience) and we get no more than a one-liner for each character’s biography and a busy resume of the troupe’s quirky talents. Despite these foibles while not much is physically said by the characters, much of the charm is won by their exaggerated facial expressions and discourse of bodily movements reminiscent of Charles Chaplin and other mimetic actors of the silent comedy era.

Among the ideas tenuously juggled in this helter-skelter of misadventures, one that sets the teeth on edge is why, when their equipment repeatedly failed in the middle of the film, disclaim that it's because it's all scrap anyways and not follow through with that awkward refrain. Jeunet appears to suggest an allegory for the characters’ imminent failure due to their “scrapped” nature. If we're expected to anticipate the failure of their campaign, fans of Jeunet's films know better. When has he not delivered a fairy tale ending? He might as well devote more time bemusing us with a number of his other charming traits. The chimney references to “Delicatessen” are delectable and his slap-stick humor is contagious!

**Spoiler Alert**

For his revenge, Bazil orchestrates an intricate scheme to frame Thibault and Marconi as belligerent rivals in a series of scandalous and physical assaults. The antics come one after another with all deliberate speed and you feel like you’re tagging along a car chase with Guy Richie. Following the climax, there is a very public unveiling of their guilty pleas presented from the terrified perpetrators' perspective and from the makeshift reality of their Abu Graib-style capture and interrogation. However, when you consider the simplicity and silliness that led to the breaking points of the villains and third-party bad guys such as the African rebels, the story arch falls as flat as the Iron Man movies in handling the same subject. In addition, the ending does disappoint the promethean impulse when the silver bullet, we'll call it Bazil's poison apple, never ends up killing him and the initially hapless hero ends up with the girl. Although I am an avid fan of fairy tale narratives like those of Wes Anderson films, the five-year-old in me found their final kiss scene gagtacular. Despite the flat note, I'd say for the fairy tale charm, the wonderful jokes and crafty feats, send in the clowns!

Chuck Palahniuk's Diary: A Gallery of Horrors

For cult fans of Chuck Palahniuk’s self-destructive, freak protagonists, Diary provides the satisfactory quencher for bloodlust. Diary opens with a harrowing premise centered on the attempted-suicide of a contractor, Peter Wilmot, and the “disappearing” rooms in Waytansea (“Wait and See”) Island. The reader is introduced to three women--the elderly mother Grace, the haggardly wife Misty, and Tabitha, the daughter--torn by the imminent loss of their Peter, who lies comatose in the hospital, and the Wilmot family home. Palahniuk wastes no effort indulging sadistic fascinations. Coma be damned at Peter's beck and call, Misty Kleinman pushes broach pins through his skin while she reignites her passion for painting.

Misty, a hotel waitress and the hapless heir to the Wilmot family curse, records the destitute humiliations and mysterious headaches she endures in her coma diary with Peter. With expert graphologist, Angel Delaporte, she investigates Peter’s scrawled writings in a hidden room in the Wilmot home. In much the same way Matheson’s What Dreams May Come privileges a journal as the medium for communication between the dead and the living, Misty‘s diary and Peter’s wall scribbles guide the blighted lovers through Misty’s rise and fall from artistic apogee with none of the sweetness of Almodovar’s Talk to Her but all of the creepy revelations. The victimized women, yes including Grace and Tabitha, to whom we give condolences eventually betray graver motives that are not made clear until later.

Palahniuk’s colloquial prose and steady pace sustains the reader through convoluted art lessons punctuated by nihilistic caveats of “what they didn’t teach you in art school.” Similarly with Haruki Murakami novels, Palaniuk makes the reader work, filtering through the metaphysical and psychological miasma. Then, the tragic hero's journey to discover, in every visceral sense of the word, cathartic release ends up severing her like a textbook Sybil. This trope, a shock ending that reveals an ego-centric verisimilitude that exists alongside a more tragic, repressed reality, was employed in a related manner with a narrator and his alter-ego in Fight Club. Yet, the realization of the doppelganger delivers a greater punch in the latter since in Fight Club the narrator and Tyler Durden co-existed for most of the story duration and is the penultimate big bang. By the time the reader is led through the gallery of horrific yet provocative caricatures and scenes, of which the narrator alternates beween the omniscient and Misty, the final chapters jerk like a rickety roller coaster with the gratuitous vomit and piss.

Just when the art schooling, for which Palahniuk clearly did his homework, sounds a bit like sententious prattle (about the sanctification of art and the necessary sacrifices), bodies fall and phantom figures appear. Misty trips and breaks her leg, Angel (who surprise, surprise was Peter's gay lover) is murdered, and her daughter supposedly drowns. Detective Stilton and Harrow Wilmot (Peter’s father) weave in and out of Misty’s fog of consciousness and Tabbi, quite literary and figuratively, leaves a blazing trail for Misty. The long anticipated denouement comes after the reader is made to trail many a squalid litter of Macguffins.

Misty’s paranoia explodes into a community-orchestrated conspiracy. Misty’s torments as a result of her artistic genius becomes the sacrificial offer fated to save Waytansea Island. The profound pause Palaniuk allows for paranormal eeriness behind the perfect angles and curves of Misty’s paintings and the exact depiction of the never-before-seen Hershel Burke chair, perhaps a nod to Vincent Van Gogh’s Chair, is effective. The schizophrenic jumble of epiphanies and frenetic pace that mirrors Misty’s mental disintegration is a questionable literary device in this case. The morbid Sondheim-worthy refrain, “kill every one of God’s children to save our own” (which seems to be the moral behind Misty’s realization that Tabbi may be her dearest treasure) is drowned by the many voices in both her and Palahniuk’s head.

The Tree House of an Irian Jaya

Slow, the dandy Korowai sips
his coffee. A fetid scent
of sago palm fronds billows
upwards to rattan-latticed frieze,
a wispy lick of the facade
of animist caricatures. The cannibal muses
as the purr of Kopi Luwak settles,
steeped in carrion-coated deals and
polyglot grunts and grumbles
from the electric donut.

Human flesh differs naught from pig
when raised to a green empyrean
nestled on thirsty cement roots
crust with salted grime.
A stainless steel backbone,
glossy marble finishes,
and titanium security net
to keep the plebs from climbing up
and for the prodigal to englut
an eyeful of birds of paradise
and twangy city symphony.

Waiting, far below the placid chitter
outside the emerald glass, a rumbling
splits the grimy bottom parched
too long. The greedy pirate,
cut by shattered ceilings, loses
his head. It rolls like a coconut
and spills a sweet nectar below.

A Dedication to Remembrance

A long day passing
Passing by like the precious final breath of waking life
Before the soul succumbs to sleep, I lay and wonder
How much of the ethereal being is embodied by the consciousness
And how much beyond
If erasing blocks of memories will change the person now
If memory was temporal like a breath but still I fill in the inconsistencies and missing spaces
I lay and wonder if, like a soft polymer tablet, something organic is altered
With each impressionable encounter
Now
I can never if desired be the same again
Even if the memories fade or expire
When we meet again
By chance encounter
Before the soul succumbs to sleep, I lay and wonder
A different time
A different place
Was it through fortune
I came to know you
Or was it something
Much beyond
Waking life
And how much beyond
When we meet
Again
A long day
Passing