writing. photography. film criticism
Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk begins an existential nightmare and ends as nihilistic commentary on time and fate. But really, what war film doesn’t? And what could Nolan’s Dunkirk stand to teach us that Patton didn’t? That Saving Private Ryan didn’t? Or The Longest Day? The Thin Red Line? Atonement?
In the beginning, God created Adam. Then, because Adam was lonely, God made Eve. When Eve fell, she led Adam to fall with her and God expelled them both from the garden of Eden. In the 17th Century, English poet John Milton provided his own take on the story of Adam and Eve in his epic poem Paradise Lost. Milton’s version contains moments of sympathy for God, for Eve, and even for Satan, but most poignantly for Adam.
Milton, in his own problematic, misogynist view of Original Sin, presents the idea that Adam chooses a life of companionship over a life of bliss. In other words, the idea of a lonely existence in paradise is worse than whatever could await outside the garden walls, and his decision has haunted us ever since.
I’m having trouble with my ending. Many writers do, and for me it is a sign of having started more scripts than I’ve dared to see through to the end. So much more can depend on a film’s ending than its beginning. Think of M. Night Shyamalan—who would remember The Sixth Sense in the same way without its twist ending? Likewise with The Village, albeit more negatively. One of the hardest devices for any writer to avoid is the dreaded, yet oh so tempting Deus Ex Machina.
Apologies for the long hiatus without warning. Thesis Crunch. Let’s get back to the movies.
I embarrassed myself yesterday in an event that will not be recounted here, but for a while I could not stop thinking about it. Even an hour after the fact I was chiding myself for what happened until I finally just told myself that the event was only a memory now and that nothing could change it. Every once in a while I have these mind-boggling moments (I think Philip K. Dick is to blame with all his talk of memory implants) where I recognize that the only thing that I can be certain of is the moment I am currently experiencing. This is probably a personal mind-boggle for me; we all have our quirks. But for the first time I began to doubt even the present, because the present as we are able to conceive of it is based on memory. At that point I began thinking about the concept memory itself, which leads me to my favorite film on the subject, Christopher Nolan’s Memento.
Okay, that’s unfair. Inception didn’t win Best Original Screenplay because the Academy preferred The King’s Speech, and with good reason. It was a great film built upon the foundation of a powerful script. (Why Hans Zimmer didn’t win Best Original Score is beyond me though…)
The most common criticism I’ve heard regarding the execution of Inception was that it felt like too much of an information dump. Nearly everyone I spoke to who disliked the film cited this as a reason. Even among those who did like it, they found the numerous explanatory sequences to be draining and a hindrance to the action of the film.
Here’s my reaction: I honestly didn’t mind. I realized that there was a sea of exposition to wade through, but it didn’t bother me. Christopher Nolan created a complex alternate universe and then did his job as screenwriter. He made the rules of this new word accessible to his audience so that we could suspend disbelief. I see nothing wrong with this. It is the task of every writer who dabbles in speculative fiction, where the traditional logic is lost in favor of more fantastical approaches to looking at the world. So where did Inception go wrong?
© 2024 Mariel Calloway
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