Inception: You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger

I've never particularly warmed to Chris Nolan's movies. I enjoyed Batman Begins well enough the first time, but find it less and less compelling after each subsequent viewing (those happen less frequently now that I don't have cable). The Dark Knight is pretty excellent, until Two Face's face makes an appearance, at which point the whole movie collapses into aimless, stupidly motivated denouement. And The Prestige was wholly unengaging - an interesting intellectual exercise, but lacking in anything resembling emotional connection.


However, I have always admired Nolan's ambition. He's a director who wants to achieve more than most, and therefore takes bigger and more interesting risks than most. Rachel's death in TDK, for instance: a hugely sympathetic character dies thinking that her friends have abandoned her in favour of her fiancé. Letting a prominent character die in such a hopeless way roughly halfway into the movie takes solid brass balls. He's also never afraid to challenge an audience, to make them exercise a bit of patience, and probably frustrate more than satisfy them. Directors like that are all too rare, and ones with enough studio backing to reach the masses are even rarer. 


Anyway, Inception marks the closest Nolan has ever come to finally winning me over (which I'm reasonably certain is his life's goal). I was excited, curious, scared, sad, and sometimes literally breathless. At one point - a fight scene involving Joseph Gordon Levitt* in a hallway in which the gravity keeps shifting - I realized that I could feel a completely idiotic smile all over my face. 

This guy knows what I'm talking about.

Nolan also includes enough meaty ideas to balance out the mind-blowing action and virtuoso set pieces, which is a refreshing change of pace for this and most every summer. Half of what blows me away is the sheer level of creativity behind almost everything that goes on - the fact that Nolan or whoever sat down and thought things like "What would someone trapped in a memory physically look like?" or "How would you drop someone if there was no gravity?" through, and came up with ways to show them that actually made sense. 


But, as usual, I wasn't as emotionally involved as I should have been. Part of the problem is Leonardo DiCaprio. I think he's terrific, I really do, but I'm having serious performance fatigue. He has cornered the market on characters who can best be described as clenched fists - angry, isolated, and not so slowly descending into madness. 

His most relaxed expression in the whole movie.

Luckily, Nolan populates the rest of the movie with actors I just love seeing under any circumstances, like JGL, Ken Watanabe, and Dileep Rao. The entire cast completely trusts and believes in the script, and that level of commitment is pretty contagious as well as necessary - after all, if you're not committed to a serious discussion of reality vs perception, then the movie has lost you entirely. Still, I should have been profoundly moved, and I wasn't. There is also the problem that Nolan constantly has with fight scenes involving more than two people - he has no idea how to shoot them so you know what's going on. (TDK scene in which Batman fights a bunch of armed guards for reasons still unknown is a perfect example - just a flurry of fists.) In Inception, we have a somewhat climactic scene take place on a snow-covered mountain, and everyone is dressed in white with white ski masks. A setup like that makes it hard to tell anyone apart, so when people get shot, I have no idea if I'm supposed to be relieved or horrified. 


At the end of the day, though, Inception is well worth the time and effort. And compared with all the dreck of the summer - Grownups, Twilight the Fucking Third, and The Goddamn Nicholas Cage Movie FOR CHILDREN HOLY GOD WHOSE IDEA WAS THIS - it's the best thing you'll see in theatres, guaranteed.


*Point of interest - I have actually been in love with Joseph Gordon Levitt since I was seven, and I am really fucking glad his career is what it is. He's absolutely terrific.

The case against To Kill a Mockingbird

In a bit of a departure from our normal discussion topics - e.g. things that appear on screen - I want to talk about To Kill a Mockingbird, which turns 50 this month. I'll cover my ass by pointing out that there was a movie adaptation of some renown, starring the incomparable Gregory Peck, which won roughly a million Oscars and whatnot. I feel slightly better about the movie, because Gregory Peck is pretty much my ideal man, and a genuinely good person whose goodness only made him more stunningly attractive. But I'm distracting myself. 

Simply put, I really loathe To Kill a Mockingbird. Judging by the amount of acclaim generally heaped on the book, I'm sure I hold the minority opinion here. But that is of no consequence. As far as social - and specifically racial - commentary goes, the book is terrible and frankly insulting, ranking (in my mind) alongside Uncle Tom's Cabin. 

Let's start with Tom Robinson, the black man accused of raping a white woman. This is a classic archetype, found mostly in art made by condescending white liberals- the "gentle giant," simple and kind, childlike and completely devoid of agency or sexuality. A man minding his own business who was ensnared and betrayed by an woman (whose reasoning behind wanting to sleep with him is that she was horribly lonely, terribly poor, and sexually abused by her father; because really, no well-to-do white woman in her right mind would go after a black man, am I right? It must be some form of insanity). 

He looks like an actual child, people.

This is the "right kind" of black man - of no threat at all, be it intellectual, physical, or sexual - and therefore worth defending. It leaves no room for real personality or human characteristics, and only reinforces the "black man as child" stereotype that is so palatable, because if black men aren't children, they're dangerous animals. Neither portrayal is a positive one, obviously, but a lot of people are in favour of the former. It gets worse when tied in to the meaning of the title itself, that mockingbirds are innocents who do nothing but provide music and happiness. It's neutralizing otherizing in the most offensive degree, and it reeks of Harriet Beecher Stowe. 

The other main black character we see is Calpurnia (really?), the Finches' housekeeper. Of course, like the only other black person Atticus spends any time with, Calpurnia is the "good kind." Atticus specifically tells us that she's not like the "other colored nurses" because she doesn't spoil her children. She's firm, judicious, responsible, and (unusually) intelligent, teaching Scout how to read and write. I'm sure I don't need to go into the long tradition of firm, plain-spoken mammies in the history of American literature. 

To Kill a Mockingbird also commits the terrible sin of letting people completely off the hook. In this version of history, the only racists are decrepit old morphine addicts, incestuous rapists, or drunken ignorants. It's so easy to point at those people and say, "Well, I'm not like that!" thereby acquitting oneself of any questionable feelings or ideas; it's easy to say, "Well, people like that don't exist anymore," thereby pronouncing racism to be dead. And that's why I think it has outlived its usefulness - it poses as much of a threat to the reader as Tom Robinson does, because it encourages no self-examination whatsoever. It just lets one weep at the tragic fate of the gentle giant, and rest assured that one is not at all racist. Completely lazy. 

If you're looking for a slightly more nuanced take on a similar story, I would recommend A Time to Kill (a mockingbird??!?). yes, with my beloved Matthew McCoughnastuff. There are obvious villains, of course - the drunken ignorants who are also child rapists, and the oily fat cats who defend them. However, it also has Matthew McC. needing to come to terms with his own ideas about black people, which he previously believed were beyond reproach. It has Samuel L. Jackson playing a black defendant who demonstrates real anger, and did, you know, actually murder people (and he HOPES THEY BURN IN HELL).

Compare this with the picture of Tom Robinson.

 Finally, it presents a spectrum of positions on whether principles and morals are more important than personal safety. It's not a perfect movie by any stretch, but it doesn't let the audience completely off the hook, and that's much more than I can say about To Kill a Mockingbird.

Marilyn vs Audrey: Or, why Janelle Monae is the future

There are two kinds of people in the world: Audrey Hepburn fans, and Marilyn Monroe fans. Look in any college girl's dorm room and you'll see a poster of one of them on the wall, guaranteed (for the record, I had a Marilyn Monroe calendar. Awww yeah). The two women are pretty much diametrically opposed - Marilyn is the curve, Audrey is the line; Marilyn is the glamour, Audrey the sophistication; Marilyn the diva, Audrey the gamine. 


For a long time, Audrey also represented the more streamlined model that took over from more lushly figured women like Marilyn in the 60s. After Audrey, thinness became chic and fashionable, and curves (for the most part) were somewhat sidelined. Mad Men actually does a great job of representing that conflict, and the demise of the voluptuous sex symbol, in the characters Joan Holloway/Harris and Jane Siegel. Joan loses her title as the office sexpot - and her office romance - to the slender, beguiling Jane, and quickly sees herself become obsolete.

iPhone G3 vs iPhone G4.

The reason I bring this up is that I suspect another such seismic shift is about to happen, and another curvy diva is about to be unseated. This time, however, it's happening to Beyonce. 


A quick google search of Beyonce curves brings up a plethora of positive snippets - "Beyonce loves her curves"; "Get sexy curves like Beyonce"; "Beyonce's happy to get her curves back." It's safe to say the girl brought curvy back into the mainstream, and was fiercely happy to do so. She has an entire song extolling the virtues of her diva-dom (having said that, I fucking HATE that song). So, for the purposes of this argument, she's Marilyn. These are women with undeniable sex appeal, unabashed desire for attention, and an unrivaled love for the bling. Words that come to mind when describing either of them include: fierce, glamourous, diamonds, ostentatious, boom boom.

Fucking diva alert, y'all.

In the other corner, we have Janelle Monáe. While she isn't a superstar yet, if there's any justice in the world she will be by this time next year. This woman is incredible (and here's the proof). At first glance, she doesn't out-and-out demand attention, the way Bey and Marilyn do. But she definitely commands it. There's a sort of slow burn about her that is extremely reminiscent of Ms. Hepburn: small, quiet, relatively unshowy - but suddenly you realize you can't take your eyes off her. In Janelle's latest music video, "Tightrope," she even moves in a similar way to Audrey, and works those black cropped pants like a damn professional. If the above ladies are showy, these ones are smooth. 

These are smooth operators.

Obviously I'm not advocating one type over the other. Divas can become exhausting, and gamines can become exhausting. But I do think that, whether she likes it or not, Beyonce is about to retire her crown, and if history repeats itself like the books say it does, Janelle makes the most sense as her replacement. I think America is tiring of Beyonce's conspicuous glam and aggressive pop overtures, and Janelle is the perfect antidote.