Inception

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Hello, listeners, It's Caitlin and Jamie from the future. Sure, and we're just popping in with a note about this episode, which is that we recorded and released it before Elliott Page came out as a trans man. So if you listen to the episode in the present day, it may sound like we are misgendering Elliott and dead naming them. So that might seem kind of jarring and careless, but again, it's just that we were not to know at the time of this episode's recording. Yeah, that is just something we want to make you aware of.

00:00:42
Speaker 2: If we don't want to jump scare jump scare you with it. So yeah, because of when this episode was recorded, we are unvirtually using a dead name because we did not yet know. And with that, here's the episode on the Big Podcast.

00:00:58
Speaker 3: The questions asked if movies have women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, zeph and best start changing it with the Bechdel cast.

00:01:13
Speaker 2: Hey, Caitln, Yes, Jamie BA, do you ever think well that we might not be podcasting at all?

00:01:25
Speaker 1: Are we in a dream?

00:01:27
Speaker 4: Bra?

00:01:32
Speaker 2: And then we like look and then you look over, like your shoulder all sexy, and you're like, it's a dream, and then I go, no B. And that's basically the movie. Folks, that's the whole more or less. Welcome to the Bechdel Cast. All due respect to Hans Zimmer This like you have to imagine. Christopher Nolan was like, I just want the soundtrack to sound like a large electronic fart because it's so like, it's just it's overwhelming. Welcome to the Bechtel Cast.

00:02:11
Speaker 1: Yes, this is the Bechdel Cast, in which, well, hello, I'm Caitlin, I'm Jamie, and we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens with.

00:02:28
Speaker 2: As little sound effects as possible. We pull from. We use the Bechdel test as a jumping off point for discussion, pulling from a media metric invented by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, sometimes referred to as the Bechdel Wallace test, that requires, for our purposes, that two people love a marginalized gender talk about something with each other. They also have to have names, and they talk about something that's other than a sisman for more than two lines of dialogue. I have to be honest, Okay, we're also covering inception today. I was so, I was like, it's probably a no for this one, but I was surprised.

00:03:12
Speaker 5: But well, yeah, well yeah, I guess it's it's to all of our to all of our listeners who aren't actually listeners, who think we just talk about whether it passes the Bechdel test or not, that's incorrect.

00:03:23
Speaker 2: But I was pleasantly surprised. I'm like, does Ellen Page talk to Maryan Cotyard at any time?

00:03:31
Speaker 1: The answer?

00:03:32
Speaker 2: But then I also have I have that answer, but then I also have a counter argument. That's a whole thing.

00:03:38
Speaker 1: Oh sure, yeah, same.

00:03:39
Speaker 2: We're talking about inception today. We are okay, okay, I'm wondering if we hit on the same thing. I'm just like getting a big Jumanji energy from all of this. But yeah, Jumanji, the new one.

00:03:49
Speaker 1: Wait, in what way? What do you mean in the way that we.

00:03:51
Speaker 2: Had that discussion about Jack Black and Jumanji, I have sort of a similar feeling about marrying Coatillard an inception.

00:04:00
Speaker 1: On it, right, because her character is actually, oh, it's a projection.

00:04:07
Speaker 2: Of a man. Yeah, Like, I don't know if that counts as a female character because he says to her like, you're not you, You're me. So I'm like, okay, it seems like it's been confirmed in text very I mean, this is this is like I was really I don't know, I had to go on a walk.

00:04:25
Speaker 1: Well also, I mean, and we'll talk about this, but like, how little does he think of his wife? His wife if his projections of her behave the way that she does because she's like the villain of the movie. Anyway, we'll talk about it.

00:04:41
Speaker 2: She is, Yeah, she's a horror and then at the end he kind of like ret console thing. He's like, yeah, I'm kind of really remembering you falsely and exclusively at your worst. So right, that's kind of on me. And you're like, yeah, I would say that that is definitely on you. But don't worry. Ellen Page is there to just constantly be like you're great. Oh. And that's her character, h the redeemer and the projection. This is what we have to work with with inception people. This is what we have to work with. Yes, So what is your experience with inception, Caitlin?

00:05:21
Speaker 1: I saw it in theaters in twenty ten. I think, like many people quite enjoyed it. It was hailed as being you know, one of the smartest and most profound movies of the decade for a while, and I was admittedly fully on board that ship for quite some time. And then I don't remember exactly when this happened, but I felt like there was some kind of cultural shift where a lot of people were like, you know what, maybe Exception isn't as awesome and as smart as we thought it was. Maybe it's actually kind of silly.

00:05:58
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then I also midway through the decade, I feel like there was kind of this mass. I wonder if it was like when it hits streaming or something, but there was kind of, yeah, like a mass, like hold on, I just rewatched Inception for the first time since twenty ten, and it's silly, right.

00:06:17
Speaker 1: And I also, you know, boarded that ship for a while. But I have then jumped on These are deliberate Titanic references. I have jumped off.

00:06:27
Speaker 2: Of that ho k.

00:06:33
Speaker 1: I have jumped off of that door and climbed back onto the sinking Titanic of Inception being a good movie. And I am firmly in that camp again. And when I say that it is extremely pretentious, it is so far up its own ass.

00:06:51
Speaker 2: But it's like at some point in like I feel like not to movie blame, but at this point, if you're going to a Christopher Nolan moved and leaving like that was so pretentious. It's like, at this point he's made eleven movies. You gotta if you're showing up, you gotta be ready for a pretentious thing to happen. Like It's true, there's no I would argue, there's really no excuse at this point to not know that Christopher Nolan makes some of the most pretentious stuff in the game. I feel like we've been on kind of a similar ish journey with it where I saw it. This movie came out, they I think, I don't know, they're either like the year Yeah, I guess it would be like shortly before I went to college, because imagine going to film school right after this movie came out, like oh, just droves of eighteen year old boys that are just like I'm gonna make my inception and like just I mean students of all genders. But you know, I would I would argue a male heavy group that were just like, oh my god, like just just really very into inception. I definitely liked it. I thought it was really smart. I saw it in three D and I got a headache the first time, so then I had to see it a second time in two D and I really liked it that the second time. The first time, I was like, I have a migraine, but I really liked it. And then, similar to you, I saw it kind of midway through the decade after, and then I think I had soured to it because I was in film school when all the eighteen year old boys were really frothing at the mouth regarding Christopher Nolan sure, and I didn't love that. So I think I soured towards it kind of early, but then every and then I realized. And then I think midway through the decade, I'm like, this movie is such a waste of Mary and Cootyard because I saw Levianne Rose, which she won her Oscar for, and I was like, oh my god, she is so talented. How did Christopher Nolan like hire her after she like did a performance like that and then gave her this role. But in any case, rewatching it, I watched it a month ago before we decided we were doing this just for fun, and it's I guess it's it's a variation on a romp. It's a pretentious romp. Yes, I think it's like a very heady romp.

00:09:16
Speaker 1: Yes, I would agree with that. It's extremely watchable. It is too long for shorts two and a half hours, and that's just offensive. But I I do really appreciate the world building as far as like a script goes. It's a pretty you know, it's potentially confusing the whole dream within a dream, million layers of dreams thing, you know. I I don't know.

00:09:42
Speaker 2: I also appreciate it, like you can enjoy this. I can say from personal experience, you can enjoy this movie without fully understanding exactly what's going on, yes, and still just be like, Okay, that could have been a plot hole. I could have missed something, but like, well, I guess they're all wearing white now like that. I don't know why that reveal has always made laugh when they cut to like everyone's in the snow and everyone's wearing white, and its just like watching it this time, I'm like, I feel like Kanye West's like Property in Wyoming is like this where everyone's just like wearing the same outfit and it's huge and kind of scary. Yeah, but it's just like, I don't know, it's so over the top. I appreciate. I really like the practical effects in this movie.

00:10:29
Speaker 1: Great practical effects.

00:10:30
Speaker 2: I love the cast, except for Joseph Gordon Levitt.

00:10:33
Speaker 1: Oh no, I like him.

00:10:36
Speaker 2: I think I see. I think that what has aged the worst about this movie are it's it's treatment of gender and casting Joseph Gordon Levitt in a large role. I'm just kind of done with him. I don't know what it was that turned me on Joseph Gordon Levitt, but I'm like, he was in everything for five years and then he kind of was like where'd he go? But then I was like, I guess I just haven't been I haven't asked myself that question. But he was in everything. He was in every genre, and he was so chatty, and I was just like, I need a break.

00:11:12
Speaker 1: I understand that. Yeah. I mean to me, there's there's a lot to like about this movie in terms of pure entertainment value. I'm not watching it because I'm like, I want to see strong representation of women because you certainly won't find that no here, But.

00:11:30
Speaker 2: But I do I love that. Do you remember what a big deal it was that Ellen Page was in this movie. This was like kind of Ellen Page's like cinematic glow up, like she'd never been in like a gigantic movie like this before. I remember being really excited about that.

00:11:45
Speaker 1: Right because this was post Juno, Right. But Juna wasn't like a huge blockbuster hit kind of thing.

00:11:54
Speaker 2: Right, she She was kind of an indie darling for a long time, and then this was kind of her and I guess kind of for Mary and KOTR two in terms of like big American movies, right, this was her like huge spotlight too, So that's at least good. Yeah, I don't I'm reaching, but I still enjoy watching it. Yeah, even when I had kind of soured on it, I still enjoyed watching it, I have to admit so. And I honestly I like, Okay, just to quickly address right at the top, all of the ichy news items being bandied about about Christopher Nolan just about the way he treats his workers sounds absolutely atrocious. Did you see that news item that was like Christopher Nolan tells his employees they're not allowed to sit down for thirteen hours, And you're like, well, that's certainly uneth right, like he has a and I feel like this kind of even before we talk about the movie, this is such a problem with I would say, largely male outeur directors, where while it is genuinely cool and amazing, like we were just saying, to kind of see a person with a vision that has carte blanche in terms of money, like that very rarely happens, but when it does, it always happens to white men. But like yep, in any case. But the fact that on top of that, it's just like every with little exception, like all the stories you hear about these types of directors, they're just ego tripping, you know, over their own ego dick or whatever, Like it's just it. It is really frustrating to hear. And also the fact that he was so he was like, we have to release Tenet in the middle of a pandemic. I don't care. I have no regard for human life, which you already made clear by the fact that his employees aren't allowed to sit down, which is unethical, which is ablest, which is on and on and on big systemic issues with the film industry. So we're not I think we've made this clear in our dark Night episode is well, we are not vouching for Christopher Nolan. He sounds like a complete asshole, right, I just and and it, and I'm just like, God, damn it, why are the movies fun?

00:14:12
Speaker 1: You know, it's very frustrating. His movies are very I'm excited.

00:14:17
Speaker 2: To see Tenant, so am I see it? I pissed off. I'm so annoyed. I'm like, oh, I love John David Washington, and I want to see Kenneth Bronna play a Russian villain, Like, oh my ah, yeah, yeah, it sounds fun.

00:14:33
Speaker 1: I'll see it.

00:14:34
Speaker 2: I just it pisses me off. It's like you hate to see it, but then also in your heart of heart, you kind of love to see it. And I really hope that Warner Brothers starts to force him to treat his employees ethically. You know, Yes, I have infinite trust of a large corporation like Warner Brothers. I'm sure they'll do the right thing. Oh, of course, one when haven't they don't. Yeah, don't check the receipts on that one. In any case, Fuck Christopher Nolan. But unfortunately we enjoy watching his movies.

00:15:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, his sensibilities are like extremely in my wheelhouse because he's usually doing yuh. I mean this movie is a like action sci fi heist movie, which is like extremely like up my Alley.

00:15:25
Speaker 2: I was reading about and I was just like, oh, because I mean, I feel like he has criticized pretty frequently for like how sometimes people think his movie the themes of his movies are like a bit too similar. And I think that the way he treats gender in his movies, there's a lot of overlapping problems, just a real fixation on advancing the plot by killing off sis white women. Yes, but in any case, well, I don't even remember what point I was arriving at. I just got mad at him again. I feel like I feel like a lot of people were not alone in having a complicated relationship with the works of Christopher Nolan. Sure, and I wonder if it's generational. I want I wouldn't be surprised if the generation after us is sort of not in the way that we're like, oh, fuck Stanley Kubrick. We have no sentimental attachment to him. Where I feel like it's possible that some of our attachment to Christopher Nolan is sentimental.

00:16:24
Speaker 1: I don't know that could be nostalgia is a real emotion, as it turns.

00:16:28
Speaker 2: Out, Yeah, god damn it.

00:16:32
Speaker 1: Well should I try to recap this movie?

00:16:37
Speaker 2: Yeah? I have fun, I'll yeah, I'll yeah.

00:16:44
Speaker 1: Please do the sound effects.

00:16:45
Speaker 2: I'll be the top. H did you used to have I Okay, I this is really embarrassing. But I don't know, especially right after I watch a movie, I'm really easily like taken in by it. Sure, because it turns out media is influential to your life. But I did, like for like a week, just a week, but I did like carry around a little totem with me for like a week after I saw this movie. I'm like, I had is that horrible? That's really embarrassing, only because I would never expect you to do something like that, especially for a movie like Inception. I carried around dice for a week. I carried on It was Ellen Page that had the dice. I had dice. I'm like, yeah, I should carry out dice.

00:17:37
Speaker 1: It was uh, it was Joseph Gordon Lovett.

00:17:41
Speaker 2: Well that makes sense because when this movie came out, I was so I was like, Joseph Gordon Levitt, genius, sexy, sensitive. Do you remember he used to have that website called hit Record. Joe.

00:17:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, I had like the DVDs of that me too.

00:17:57
Speaker 2: I was just I don't know, Joseph Gordon Levity. I think it's I'm probably a wonderful person, but like he's just so corny. I don't know. Anyways, I carried around the dice and that's on me.

00:18:11
Speaker 1: That's incredible. I didn't do that. But as you recall, I used to I, well, I still have the ring from Lord of the Rings on a necklace that I only ever wore as I when I was cause playing as Frodo, which I did do multiple times.

00:18:27
Speaker 2: One of the most iconic pictures of you of all time, because you're selling it and you're so.

00:18:33
Speaker 1: Happy I'm fully in character. Yes, thank you so much. Okay, so the recap of Inception. Okay, this is a two and a half hour movie and the plot is very complicated, so I did my best to simplify it as much as possible. There's parts that I kind of gloss over a lot. So if you really want to know what the movie's about, just watch it. But here we go.

00:18:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's on Amazon on Prime if you're you know, also in Jeff Bezos his pocket because no ethical consumption. It's there indeed.

00:19:08
Speaker 1: Okay, so we open on Leonardo DiCaprio in the water, and we're like, what is this the end of Titanic?

00:19:17
Speaker 2: I have found Okay, this is a really early point to interrupt. But I I had a thought and when I consulted the one other person I've seen in the past six months, Isaac, I was like, I feel like Leonardo DiCaprio in his career is very often on the beach or in a body of water, fully clothed. It happens a lot, a lot.

00:19:41
Speaker 1: He's well, he's literally in a movie called The Beach. But I feel like, I don't I don't.

00:19:46
Speaker 2: Know, We're just closed for a lot of the movie.

00:19:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I feel like he's.

00:19:51
Speaker 2: Fully clothed in the water. In Titanic, he is in a body of water at some point during a shutter island clothed, clothed in the water. An inception. What is it with this guy and being clothed in the water. Just a fun movie trend.

00:20:05
Speaker 1: Wow, I'll keep my eye on that.

00:20:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, everyone in the comments, shout out your favorite Leonardo DiCaprio clothed in a body of water. I guess in The Revenant, he's clothed in the snow, and also The Great Godsby dies in the pool fully clothed. He's clothed in water all the time. Okay, it's a trope, a trope specific to one actor that has no implications of anything. Unlike most tropes, this trump is meaningless and I don't know why it is so.

00:20:40
Speaker 1: Or does it have meaning? Jamie Will you just have to discover the meaning?

00:20:45
Speaker 2: Is he in the water in Gilbert Grape? I'm just like, maybe it's every he is water?

00:20:50
Speaker 1: Well, he's not clothed, but in He's there's a scene where he gets left in the tub overnight and he's and he's really cold, but he's naked.

00:20:59
Speaker 2: Okay, I guess that's an out.

00:21:01
Speaker 1: So does it count.

00:21:03
Speaker 2: Well, it's maybe someone saw that movie and they're like, but what if he was fully clothed, and then that it's just the rest of his career. I don't know. I don't know what.

00:21:15
Speaker 1: Maybe it's in his contract. He's like, in every movie I'm in, you are contractually obligated to write a scene in which I am in. What Because there's another scene where he gets dunked in the tub in inception, and he is fully closed, fully closed in the beginning.

00:21:34
Speaker 2: It's not just like, oh, a T shirt and shorts. It's like he has like layers on in all of these movies. He's like fully dulled up, fully clothed. Underwater happens to him constantly. I couldn't stop thinking about it. Okay, that's all I had to say. Does he go into a body of water in Wolf of Wall Street?

00:21:56
Speaker 1: I have to imagine, Well, he's on a yacht at one point. Yeah, it's just probably swimming pools.

00:22:02
Speaker 2: I'm gonna try to make a remember, I'm gonna try to make a gallery for our instagram of well, you know, the DiCaprio underwater in clothes. It's just sy is.

00:22:12
Speaker 1: He in water in like Gangs of New York.

00:22:14
Speaker 2: Well, I still haven't seen that. I know.

00:22:16
Speaker 1: People love it. It's a slog. I'll tell you what, really.

00:22:20
Speaker 2: Oh I thought it was a wroth. I was wrong. Oh no, I'm thinking of catch me if you can. People love catch me if you can?

00:22:26
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I do like can catch me if you can is a romp.

00:22:29
Speaker 2: Because you go on underwater in that one.

00:22:32
Speaker 1: You know what, I would not be surprised at all. I don't remember if he does or not, but it seems very possible in that movie.

00:22:39
Speaker 2: This is mind blowing to me. This is I don't know. I'll source some images, post it to our Instagram be like any any film critics, have something to weigh in with here, it's I feel like the other underwater trope is like a white girl in a teen movie going underwater in a pool to a flecked on her changing life, which is a more gendered trope with implications, whereas this is just chaos. I don't know why it happens.

00:23:12
Speaker 1: Well, I think we should start a new podcast about it.

00:23:15
Speaker 2: Okay, I agree, it's.

00:23:18
Speaker 1: beIN Off Okay, so okay, Lee Leo. His character's name is Cobb. He is in the business of extracting information from people's minds yep, by way of infiltrating their dreams. So he and Arthur that's Joseph Gordon Lovitt are trying to extract something from mister Sido, whose name is also pronounced mister Sato sometimes, so I don't know which one it is because the characters say it differently.

00:23:48
Speaker 2: There's no continuity. The character never corrects. We just don't know. It's annoying.

00:23:55
Speaker 1: Yes, and he is played by Ken Watanabe.

00:23:59
Speaker 2: And Icon character actor love him.

00:24:02
Speaker 1: Yes. Same. So they're trying to extract something from him and they are inside of his dream in the beginning of the movie. Also in this dream is Mal played by Marion Cotillard.

00:24:15
Speaker 2: Which did you did you learn that that French? Okay, this is like peek Christopher Nolan, But Mal is French for bad or evil? If you want to finish how simplistically Christopher Nolan views gender, He's like, okay, woman, women, women, women, bad, I'm getting bad, I'm getting bad. Okay, we can't just name her bad. I guess we'll have to make it French like yike.

00:24:42
Speaker 1: Yes. So Mal is Cobbs, his wife, and she has a habit of popping up in dreams throughout the movie, and we will later find out why exactly. So it turns out that mister Sido knows that he's asleep and that they're all in his dream. But wait a minute, they're still in a dream. They're in a dream within a dream, and now he's impressed and they all wake up from the various levels of this opening dream and Saido is like, Okay, I want you to do an inception. Rather than extracting something from someone's mind, he wants an idea to be planted in someone else's mind, and Arthur's like, that's not possible, but Cobb is like, actually it is, but it's really hard.

00:25:33
Speaker 2: Fortunately, mister DiCaprio, mister clothe underwater himself has the goods.

00:25:40
Speaker 1: Yes, so he's like, it's possible. It's really hard. You just have to go really deep into a person's mind. And he's reluctant to do it, but Saido is like, if you do this for me, I will make it so you can return to the US, because Cobb has two young children who he can't go home to. But we also don't know why yet exactly. So the idea that Sido wants planted is in the mind of the son of Sido's main competitor. He owns some kind of energy conglomeratet.

00:26:14
Speaker 2: It's all vaguely evil.

00:26:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Sido wants the son to walk away from his inheritance to break up the empire. And I don't know if that's because he's basically trying to avoid his competitor from establishing a monopoly. And I'm like, okay, well, that's good, like monopoly shouldn't exist, but I feel like it's because he wants to have the monopoly instead.

00:26:37
Speaker 2: I think that's kind of my question is as I was at first, I'm like, oh, this is there's a really fun, like leftist way to look at this. But then the more I thought about it, I'm like, actually, I don't think that that is true. It seems like the reason they want the monopoly broken up are also capitalistic and pretty selfish. Uh huh, so zero out of ten on that end, Yeah, because I was like, oh, I forgot this kind of angle of how do you is it silly and Murphy? I think it's Killian Killian Murphy, but I'm not sure who has beautiful eyes. I think every time I see this movie like wow. And then also his whole thing is ultimately movies are about fathers and sons, which is just like, all right, I guess we're doing this again, right in any case, Yeah, I was thinking about that, and I don't think it's actually I mean, it's kind of like they're sort of doing the right thing, but it's not for the right reasons.

00:27:34
Speaker 1: So confusing, not enough information, But what seems to be there is not good. Okay. So now Cobb and Arthur have to find a new architect, basically someone who creates the worlds of the dreams that they go into. So they recruit Arianne, which is Ellen Page's character, and they show her the Ropes, and we learn that time and dream world moves more quickly or more slowly. I don't Basically, five minutes in the real world gets you one hour in dream world, right, And then we also learn about totems, which are the little objects that help these people distinguish dreams from reality. They recruit Emes aka Tom Hardy to be a forger basically someone who impersonates other people within dreams. And then they also recruit a chemist named Yusuf to create sedatives to keep people asleep and let them go deep enough.

00:28:34
Speaker 2: Who is the scientist from Avatar?

00:28:37
Speaker 1: Is he? I don't remember?

00:28:39
Speaker 2: Yes? Okay, yes, I went deep down the rabbit hole because I'm like, I like this character, director, where have I seen him before? And I'm like Avatar? And then it was like, what has he done since inception? Literally Avatars? So I think he's just been like trapped in New Zealand for ten years? Yeah, because Avatar.

00:28:57
Speaker 1: Well, James Cameron will do that. Yeah, So his participation in the story is necessary because they need these powerful sedatives because for inception, you need to go down, like Cobb is like, we have to go down three levels a dream within a dream within a dream. We also learn that mal is actually dead, and.

00:29:18
Speaker 2: We're like, well, it's the Christopher Nolan movie. I guess that stands to reason.

00:29:22
Speaker 1: That tracks so whenever we see her in any dreams, she is just Cobb's projection of her. And we find out the reason that he can't go home and see his kids is that people think that Cobb killed her. So they start planning the infiltration. There's this the kick that they have to synchronize.

00:29:43
Speaker 2: I'm sing something the kick right, And they.

00:29:47
Speaker 1: Figure out if they get stuck in the third level of the dream, it might be like ten or more years that they're trapped, so they have to like make sure that that doesn't happen. And the time comes to sneak into kill Murphy's dream. His name is mister Fisher. They're on a long flight from Sydney to la That's when they go in. They hack into his brain.

00:30:12
Speaker 2: But there's not a Matthew Lillard to be found.

00:30:17
Speaker 1: Where is Matthew Lillard in Hackers in this movie? Missed opportunity. So they get into the first level of the dream. They have a rough start, Cobb's subconscious projections keep interfering, Sido gets shot. You know, they're trying to get a combination from Fisher. All this stuff I'm going to kind of gloss over. They get into the next level the dream within a dream, Cobb tells Fisher that he's like, by the way, you're in a dream spoiler, and he convinces him that Fisher's uncle Peter is conspiring against him, and convinces Fisher to go into the next level of the dream with them, which ends up being this kind of remote fortress in the snowy mountains.

00:31:01
Speaker 2: Right, this is like the everyone is wearing matching outfits and has a machine gun. Question mark, Right, yeah, you're just like, all right, I guess we're here.

00:31:12
Speaker 1: Sure, chaos is happening all around them and in on the other levels of the dream. In the third level, just as Fisher is about to open a safe, which will effectively be the moment of inception, mal comes in and shoots Fisher, which means that Cobb and Ariadne Ariadney have to is that how you say your name?

00:31:35
Speaker 2: No idea again, I think different characters say it differently.

00:31:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, because like at one point, Michael Kine's like Ariadney except in a British accent.

00:31:44
Speaker 2: Right, And you're like, is it just because he's British? I don't know, not sure. I'm like, stop choosing these names if you're not going to tell your actors how to pronounce them, right, Christopher Nolan, it's like, literally, stat like you've made five hundred movies, tell your cast how to pronounce the name.

00:32:01
Speaker 1: Yep, oh, well shouldn't be that hard and yet okay, So she and Cobb have to go down to yet another layer of the dream I think, so that they can keep going and get the job done. So now that they're in like the fourth layer of dream world, and when they're down there, Cobb reveals that it was him who incepted mal with the idea that maybe reality isn't reality, and that's why she killed herself, because that's something we learn happened. But now he's finally able to let go of the guilt, and he stays behind to find Sido, who has died in dream world and will be stuck in limbo, so Cob finds him, which is the scene that the movie opens on, and then everyone you know wakes up from the various levels of the dream. We get back to reality on the plane, Fisher has been successfully incepted, and then everyone gives each other a meaningful look.

00:33:05
Speaker 2: It really oh my god. The Hans Zimmer is blasting that. Everyone's just like, we did it. We did it. We did it. We did it, we did it, we did it. Ellen Page is like I forgive you, and you're like why.

00:33:19
Speaker 1: Right Then Cobb returned home to see his children, but the ending is left ambiguous because of the spinning top. We don't know if he's in a dream or the real world. And it's like, Christopher Nolan, just let us see the top fall over, you coward.

00:33:36
Speaker 2: That's no, I think that. That's like, I was like, that's pretty cool. That is never not the coolest choice to me. I'm like, I hate no. I hate it because your team rose went to sleep and it's like, you know, I like that. They don't tell you and it's a little wobbly and you're like oh oh oh, like, oh my god, it's fun. You can argue about it with your friends on the way home. It's a movie fun whatever. Like what am I just saying?

00:34:10
Speaker 1: I think, Yeah, why are you trying to die on this hill?

00:34:15
Speaker 2: No idea? I retract dying on this hill.

00:34:20
Speaker 1: Well, let's take a quick break and then we'll come right back to discuss.

00:34:35
Speaker 2: Oh, Christopher Nolan, where do we? I mean, Okay, I have a really quick rundown. I'm trying to I'm struggling to remember exactly how much of this talk we have sort of had to an extent in our Dark Night episode, but I just wanted to give a quick rundown of I feel like it is semi common knowledge among movie lovers ficionados, if you will, that Christopher Nolan tends to kill off female characters fridging we call it killing off a female character, usually the significant other of the main male protagonists, in order to advance the plot in a rather lazy sexist way. I think Christopher Nolan is one of the foremost offenders of this trope in modern movies. I will at very least say that it appears that he has at least I mean it took him a long time, but it seems like someone has brought this to his attention at some point, because we have at this as of this recording, we have not seen tenet. But it seems like at least in his past two movies, he has not fridged female characters. An Interstellar, I don't believe it happens. And then there's like a dead there's a dead wife, but her death is an integral to the plot. And then what Dunkirk aka Boy Island has zero women? So I think he kind of gets off on a technicality by not including women at all, right, But just a quick rundown of how this very and I think it ties into a lot of how much Christopher Nolan pulls from film noir and especially in this movie the fem fetal tropes. Oh yeah, that he is referencing without building on at all. But how dead hot cis white hetero woman factors into his plots. It's remarkable. Okay, So apparently his first feature, which I've never seen, called following has a beautiful dead girl is the twist at the end. There's a twist at the end, spoiler, and it's a dead white girl. Okay, momenta, Okay, So I'm pulling here from a blog post from overthinking it dot Com, where they very succinctly put this so Memento. A man with amnesia is obsessed with finding the killer of his beautiful wife. Yes insomnia. A detective plays a cat and mouse game with the killer of a beautiful young girl. The Prestige. A magician engages in a bitter rivalry with a former friend he blames for the death of his beautiful wife. The Dark Knight. The lives of a masked vigilante and a district attorney are shattered when the beautiful woman they both love is killed. Inception. A dream thief struggles with the crushing guilt of his wife taking her own life. And that gets us up to so at this point, like this is like sixth or seventh time that Christopher Nolan has done this exact thing. Yes, I am all for a director, Like I don't really have an issue with Like I appreciate that Christopher Nolan seems to be really interested in the concept of time and time manipulation. That's his thing, not a problem. But he dismisses female characters the same way every time. It's like, not just insensitive, it's also stunningly lazy.

00:38:10
Speaker 1: It's like get some new material, bro, like write a new premise.

00:38:15
Speaker 2: Seriously, if I was Chris, I know Christopher Nolan's his wife, Emma Thomas, is a producer on I think maybe every single one of his movies. If I were her, I would just be so nervous. I'm just like, my husband seems really like fixated on a wife being dead in order to move on with their life. Like, yeah, what is he trying to tell me? Also, this is his brother writes some of the movies too, So Jonathan Nolan is also at fault here, sure, yes, for being obsessed with dead white ladies. I just think it's it's just so strange. And this movie, I think is This and Memento for Me are tied with them for the most egregious examples of this.

00:38:59
Speaker 1: But then the p Yeah, and we did talk quite a bit about Fridging in the Dark Night episode because the character whose name escapes me, oh no, Rachel Dawes, she gets Fridged.

00:39:14
Speaker 2: Or Maggie Jellenhall at death Bridge. But Katie Holmes at other points in her life.

00:39:20
Speaker 1: Right, she gets violence is you know, people are violent toward her three different times in that movie. If I'm remembering correctly, the final time being when she dies. So yeah, there's there's constant fridging, all.

00:39:36
Speaker 2: To advance the plot of Christian Bale and famously I Frankenstein. I mean, go to the Matreon, but here everything the whole teapot was spilled on Frankenstein.

00:39:55
Speaker 1: I'm I'm not seeing the thread. How does why Frankenstein connect.

00:40:01
Speaker 2: Aaron Eckhart.

00:40:07
Speaker 1: Right, because he plays Harvey Dent in Okay, I get it now.

00:40:10
Speaker 2: But then he later plays mister mister Adam Frankenstein. It sounds so ridiculous to say out loud Adam Frankenstein, but that's the character's name.

00:40:22
Speaker 1: But that's the only ridiculous thing about the movie.

00:40:25
Speaker 2: Otherwise everything else makes total sense. But yeah, I and I mean a lot of these Christopher Nolan movies I enjoy in a macro sense, but it is kind of stunning how the same thing happens over and over and over. And I think that especially how mal Mal's character, I'll just call her bad. How Bad's character is treated in this movie is very almost beat for beat, pretty similar to how the oh I'm not remember the character's name, but his wife in The Prestigious treated right. It's like she loses touch, she doesn't know what's real and what is and ends up taking her own life. And then men argue for an hour, and you're just like, why is this a thing?

00:41:12
Speaker 1: Wait? What I remember from that? I need to rewatch the Prestige. But the main thing I remember from that movie is a woman dying in the very beginning in that sort of like initiating that rivalry. Does another woman die?

00:41:24
Speaker 2: No, I'm referring to that woman, but she comes back through flashbacks and stuff like that.

00:41:29
Speaker 1: That's okay, got it, gotta got it.

00:41:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's I believe it's Piper Perabau, who is the the his wife?

00:41:37
Speaker 1: Okay, got it?

00:41:37
Speaker 2: In that movie?

00:41:38
Speaker 1: Any bottom line, Yes, Christopher Nolan has a terrible track record when it comes to including women in his movie. He has a real fixation on a woman has to be fridged and more specifically, die in a movie to characterize my male protagonist.

00:42:00
Speaker 2: Violently, die violently, especially like Memento and Insomnia. The whole point of the movie doesn't happen unless a woman is killed violently. Like it's really frustrating. I came across this very helpful paper by I believe a Swedish writer whose name I'm going to butcher and I apologize, it's Spherear Sigfusen. I'll link it. I apologize I almost certainly got that wrong. But they wrote a paper called Noir Guilt Complex the death of women as a catalyst for character development and plot in the films of Christopher Nolan, And basically, I mean a lot of it is stuff we're going to be discussing anyways. But I did think it was interesting and I had never quite made this connection very explicitly before of how dependent Christopher Nolan is on film noir tropes in order for his movie to work, and how I think like it's been regarded as like, oh, you know, Christopher Nolan is updating film noir, when it's like, you know, maybe he is esthetically and effects wise, but in its treatment of women, I would argue it's like even more regressive than your average film noir, where you have obviously, you have your your fem fetal who I think Mal falls into that very cleanly, down to her haircut. For some reason, she looks like it's a film noir movie even though it's twenty ten, and everyone else looks like it's twenty ten. But whatever, right, but she she falls very cleanly into that. But at least in most film noirs, which we have yet to cover on the show. But just what I mean, I've seen some of them. I'm not a huge fan. But at least part of what distinguished a fem fetal is she is always, you know, connected to the mystery, and she's often manipul There's definitely a lot of negative tropes in there. But at very least part of what makes a femme fatal interesting is that they have agency that at that time it was unusual for a female character to have, right, And I feel like Christopher Nolan presents you with the esthetics and some of the hallmarks of a femme fatal, but then generally strips her of agency entirely. So in some ways it's like even worse.

00:44:25
Speaker 1: I don't know, right, Oh yeah, Well, let me tell you a little something that Christopher Nolan himself said in an interview with Wired in twenty ten, shortly after the movie came out, because he was asked about his like noir references in his movies and particularly in Inception, and he said, quote, the key noir reference is the character mal It was very important to me that she come across as a classic femme fatal. So he is literally identifying her as such. That was extremely deliberate on his part. M hmm. Okay, back to the quote. The rest of the quote is the character in her relationship to Cobb's Psyche is the literal manifestation of what the femme fatale always meant in film noir, the neuroses of the protagonist, his fear of how little he knows about the woman he's fallen in love with, that kind of thing. End quote.

00:45:22
Speaker 2: So see, I feel like, I mean, you know, everyone is free to interpret anything anyway they like, but that seems like a pretty unsophisticated interpretation of what a femme fatal is supposed to. Like. I feel like he's kind of telling on himself there a little bit, because to me, that's never been to me what a femme fatale is as a manifestation of the male protagonist insecurity. It's like, I think that's how Christopher Nolan's fem fetals present mm hmm. But I don't think that that's I mean, for me, I always viewed the fem fatale in terms of like the negative stereotypes associated with them of being like the threat of a woman who is sexually empowered and has agency, and that this presents a danger to the protagonist, and like it falls into the you know, stereotype that women are always trying to deceive you and you can't trust women. When they say yes they mean no, when they say no, they mean yes. And to me, that was where those tropes lie. So the fact that he interprets fem fatals that way is also like kind of I don't know telling to me, I.

00:46:27
Speaker 1: Guess, yeah, I don't And maybe that's just like the way he thinks he's updating, But no, he says, like this is a very classic femme fatale. So yeah, I don't know exactly what to make of this, aside from he extremely intentionally wrote Mal as a fem fatale, which in itself is sort of confusing to me because, as we already hinted at, the character that we see on screen as Mal is in some cases in flashback, she is a real person and alive in the context of that flashback, but most of the time we see her, she is a projection of Cobbs subconscious, right, So she's not even real. She's just his guilt ridden version of her, buried deep in his subcondion, which.

00:47:25
Speaker 2: Is also in text explicit too, like they say that by the end, which brings me to I mean, we were sort of referencing this at the beginning. But even though there is an exchange in this movie that on its surface may appear to pass the Bechdel test, I feel like, with the exception of a few flashback lines, most of the time we hear Mall speak, she's speaking through Cobb's subconscious And so I don't think that really qualifies as a female protagonist because it's made explicitly clear intacts that she is a manifestation of his, which is like, I mean, could you have less agency? No right, you're being repeatedly murdered, but you're also just a projection of your husband. But we get to see her die violently several times, don't worry.

00:48:13
Speaker 1: Yep, yes we do. Does it pass the Bechdel test when Ariodney kills her in the end, And does it pass the Bechdel test when she stabs Ariodney towards the beginning of the movie. Women are killing each other more than you'd expect.

00:48:29
Speaker 2: At least her being a manifestation of like Emo Cobb like at least justifies how overwrought Mary and Courtyard's dialogue is. And she's like a fabulous actor and she I mean, I really liked her in the movie when it first came out. I was like, Wow, she's so cool. She's so like compelling in the way that fem fe tel characters can be. And she's really talented. But like on paper, my god, where she's like circling ellen Page like a hawk, and it's just like have you ever been a lover? And you're like, oh my god. And if you think that that's actually like if you think about it, and you're like, that's actually Leonardo DiCaprio subconsciously asking her that you like leave ellen Page alone.

00:49:13
Speaker 1: Right, And on top of that those lines that are being delivered by his subconsciousness version of mal she's just quoting stuff he has said, like earlier in their life to Ariadne, So she's like not even saying her own words. She's just like quoting Cobb's character.

00:49:33
Speaker 4: So like, yeah, and the and even like the physical implications, and I know that the story is not intended to be read this one to one, but it's for the sake of argument.

00:49:44
Speaker 2: I just I really it didn't sit well with me on this viewing that it is like a victory every time Leonardo DiCaprio shoots his wife and kills her, like in this movie, brutalizing a woman means a really good thing and progress for our protagonist. That he is able to shoot his wife with a machine gun. That's good, that's progress. We like that. Like, it's just I don't know, it's just kind of I know that it's not that one to one, and you know, if you're watching the movie, you understand, but it is just on the surface is kind of ugly. I don't like it.

00:50:21
Speaker 1: Well, it's so weird because one of my big things with this movie is that a lot of the complications that arise in the story could have been eliminated if Cobb just like went to therapy, because so many of the obstacles are mall showing up and like trying to interfere or sabotage their mission. And it's because he has so much guilt about the circumstances surrounding her death, and he's like buried all of this guilt in his subconscious So these projections of her based on all this guilt he is feeling keep popping up and ruining everything and like messing with their whole operation. And it's just like, if you just go to therapy, go to therapy and work.

00:51:14
Speaker 2: This shit out therapy, if Ellen Page will just do it for free.

00:51:19
Speaker 1: Like oh that, yeah, I have a whole I have a whole spiel about that.

00:51:23
Speaker 2: But before we get to Ellen Page, I also wanted to just quickly like the way that and I honestly like, I don't have a direct fix for this, given how rooted this movie is in the brain and the subconscious. But the way that Maul's what manifests mental illness mm hmm, that leads to her taking her own life. It just is very I think under thought and pretty sexist in the way that it's presented to the viewer, where you know, you are told by Leonardo DiCaprio like, well, I implanted this sick thought in her brain and that blossomed into and on and on, and you're, you know, it's like he's towing a line there. Okay, let's see where this goes. And and the way that it manifests I just I didn't really care for it all where you know, it did lead to her becoming deeply paranoid about what is you know, what is real and what isn't. That's inherent to the story. But when it comes down to we see her take her own life without knowing you know that her husband is the one who has, you know, basically forced this circumstance on her. And on top of that that she did. I think this is like a combination of handling mental illness very poorly, badly interpreting what a fem fe tale is, and just good old fashioned sexism where he had, like Christopher Nolan has Mary and Courtyard's character say well, I've basically framed you for being a horrible person, so you also have to take your own life with me, and I've kind of like it just makes her seem so devious. And the specific mention of I've had myself quote unquote declared saying by three different doctors and vagueness of that, I thought was very troubling. And I don't know, I mean, it's like I feel like, you know, if Christopher Nolan is going to root a movie in the brain and in the dark recesses of the brain, and what are the consequences of exploring that you have to do your homework and like deal with that responsibly, Like that's literally what the movie is. But then when you actually get down to the specifics and this, you know, this criticism exists on many levels of this movie. You're like, huh, but this, but this is I think, like a genuinely harmful one of just kind of casually being like, I don't know, defining reality, implying that women are more susceptible. I mean, it's just I don't know. I just didn't like it. I yet it was handled very unresponsibly, irresponsibly, My god, I.

00:54:08
Speaker 1: Have a whole thing about this where sure, we've talked about the idea of a woman being a bitchy obstacle for a male character to deal with quite a bit. I think there's a variation on this trope, and I think it ties somewhat into the fem fatale conversation. But I think there's a slightly there's a different version of it, because if you do look at some like really well written film noir, you do see femme fatale characters who are nuanced and interesting fully characterized like have and not in every case, but There are definitely case studies you can do of certain fem fatale characters who are like really interesting, compelling characters. If you take like the husk of that, you get what I'm about to talk about, which is again this variation on the bitchy oppos I don't know exactly what to call it, because, as we've talked about recently, we're doing our best to really eliminate words from our vocabulary that have any disparaging or negative connotations surrounding mental illness. So I was inclined originally to call it like a crazy obstacle, but I don't want to use that word anymore. So I'm trying to figure out exactly how to best characterize this. But basically the.

00:55:27
Speaker 2: Idea group effort, we got this right.

00:55:29
Speaker 1: The idea is a woman will be depicted as having behavior that is erratic or unstable or irrational or obsessive, and that behavior becomes a major obstacle for other characters, particularly the male protagonist. We see this in movies such as Glenn Closest character in Fatal Attraction. This is a huge one. We see it in Kathy Bates' character in Misery, even like Wayne's ex girlfriend in Wayne's World. You see it in Andrew Garfield's character's girlfriend in the Social Network. This is the whole plot of my super ex girlfriend. This is uh Isla Fisher's character in Wedding Crashers.

00:56:15
Speaker 2: So it is so I mean, so pervasive that and I think that, I mean, this goes to a lot of tropes that go I mean, even hearing that list like sends me kind of back to like research I did on mensa in just terms of like how it's a generally accepted thing for for a very long time and still by many people now that the brain of a woman or just a not a cis male, is weaker and more fragile and more, which is stigmatizing to everybody. Yeah, because I feel like it also reinforces this hyper masculinity of like I'm a boy, my brain is stronger. I couldn't you know, I couldn't possibly need therapy, I can possibly need to seek out help because I have a strong brain. And just I mean the implications that this go on and on and on. But yeah, there is like this very common perception that you know, women are not I don't know that. Yeah, Like there I think that it's been often labeled as women are inclined towards hysteria. It's stated explicitly in many cases, and I think that it's stated not quite as explicitly in this movie, but it's heavily implied. And yeah, I mean it's incredibly frustrating, and it's still you know, in movies to this day. This was ten years ago, and it's.

00:57:37
Speaker 1: Weird because, like so this is kind of a different circumstance than a lot of those other movies I listed, because in this case, mal being this obsessive, unstable person is well, okay, part of it is what she becomes after having been incepted and effectively gasline it, because what is inception besides it being like gaslighting someone.

00:58:05
Speaker 2: On a like you know, a chemical level.

00:58:09
Speaker 1: Right, So, after after he incepts her and makes her question her own reality to the point that she dies by suicide. So there's that factor. But then also a lot of what we see of her on screen again is his projections of her, and she is again very meddlesome. She's showing up to sabotage their mission all the time, and in that way, she becomes this obstacle who is again characterized as being irrational, unstable, et cetera. But like that's his version of her, so like which we learn.

00:58:51
Speaker 2: At the very end. But I feel like at that point the damage has kind of already been done and it's well, it is an interesting twist, I guess, Like I remember when I first saw the movie, when you find out what the real circumstance of like her death was, You're like, oh, this okay, but but it's just not handled. It's handled so I think strangely, and I think it is a lot of what it is is she's treated so poorly and kind of so inconsistently because it's just like, that's not who the writer's concern is. The writer is concerned with basically absolving Leonardo DiCaprio from as much guilt as they possibly can before the movie is over. And that is I think a huge reason why Ellen Page is involved so heavily. There's elements of her character that I like, but her you know, huge task here, I think is to take on, you know, Cobb's emotional baggage and absolve him of guilt. Yeah, that is basically her plot function, and and it's just I don't know, it seems like the plot is designed to examine his guilt, explain why he's feeling that guilt, and then say, actually, we forgive him.

01:00:04
Speaker 1: It's fine, right, because like there should be more stories about men dealing with their feelings and acknowledging that they have feelings and coping with them in healthy ways. Like there are not stories about that very much. Not that this is a story about that either, because he does not deal with his feelings in a healthy way.

01:00:25
Speaker 2: No, he just waits for someone to tell him to not deal with it, and then he doesn't like, well, I mean, I guess, I don't know. I guess in that last scene, I will say this is embarrassing also, But like that last scene with him and mau it still gets me a little bit when she's you know, they did grow old together. That's very sweet that part. You're like, okay, fine, you got me for a second there, But but it's like it's just so it, you know, even that moment is designed to absolve him of the consequences of his actions. The fact that he did a bunch of sweet, nice things in the dream world before gaslighting his wife and causing this personal catastrophe and taking her life from her. The fact that they grew all together in the dream world is supposed to make that okay, And and the movie just kind of runs with that.

01:01:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, because he should feel guilty.

01:01:22
Speaker 2: He should feel I don't know why everyone's like, don't feel guilty. It's like, yeah, go to therapy, feel guilty. Probably go into a different line of work like that. These are these are the things I see. It's like, be a father to your children. Huh, get a different job, like just come.

01:01:40
Speaker 1: On, become a real like an architect who just designs buildings in the real world. Like stop it feel.

01:01:46
Speaker 2: Like Joseph Gordon Levit in five Hundred Days of Summer God, because Okay, I honestly, I kept getting confused because I know that everyone in that I couldn't tell you who's doing what in the in the tea, the dream tea, and they're like, I'm the architect, I'm the PA, I do the lights, or like whatever the fuck they're doing.

01:02:06
Speaker 1: The inception squad, they're all they all each have their little job.

01:02:10
Speaker 2: Ye squad. But I kept thinking that Joseph Gordon Levitt was the architect because he's an architect in five Hundred Days of Summer. But he's not he's like the gaffer of dreams. I don't know what he does.

01:02:23
Speaker 1: His job is never given a name, because you have Ariadney is the She's the architect. Eames aka Tom Hardy is the forger. We've got the chemist and Yusuf. But we don't know what Joseph Gordon Levitt's character is, what his job title.

01:02:40
Speaker 2: Is supposed to be, like cute and around he I don't know, I don't I like need to get past by Joseph Gordon Levitt, Like I just find him bothers them. But it's fine. He's not a bad person and that doesn't happen enough so.

01:02:56
Speaker 1: That we know, of Gosh, they still care before you drag me check the date that this was really.

01:03:05
Speaker 2: Right.

01:03:06
Speaker 1: God, But I guess where I land on Mal's character is that like the way she behaves is not her fault because Cobbs gas lit her into this warped version of reality. And then the rest of the time we see her is his perception of her. And again he barely thinks very little of her.

01:03:32
Speaker 2: If he just and then at the end he kind of like self owns himself by being like yeah, obviously or nothing like this, And you know, I guess I'm just a little better. But but then it sounds like he's like calling, he's insulting her. It just sucks like every like it's a personal victory when he's cruel to her, and it's a personal victory when he murders her because she is his guilt. Right, find a better metaphor for that, Like, oh, don't keep killing Mary in Courtyard, she's she's so talented. Yeah, I found that whole thing. Really, this is just a plot issue. Why wouldn't he just tell her he incepted her when she's on the ledge? Feel like that might do it? Right?

01:04:14
Speaker 1: There are many plot holes in this movie, and I don't even know what they all are because it's so complicated.

01:04:21
Speaker 2: I'm not paying enough attention.

01:04:23
Speaker 1: But I know that they're there. I just don't know what they are. But like, right, what is Why wouldn't he just because she's not real? What are the what would be the consequences if he told her that sooner? Because him got worst a divorce? Right in dream world even or in the real world? Like why doesn't he just tell her at any point in the movie prior to the end, Like there's no I don't understand what the disadvantage of revealing this sooner would have been, and I understand story and whatever. But yeah, so it's like right, so like in storytelling, the character arc doesn't happen until the like the full arc doesn't come all the way around. He won't change or grow until the end. But like what just oh it goes back to like find a better way to deal and like again, a man dealing with grief, Like that's an interesting story. Like men are so conditioned to be emotionally closed off and to like not acknowledge or feel their feelings, and like so a story that explores that is worthwhile. But even like in this, he just doesn't. He doesn't deal with his grief in a healthy way at all. He's just he's so he's just keeps well, I mean it's coming and.

01:05:41
Speaker 2: His characters grow too much. Then Christopher Nolan might have to do that, and that's clearly like not something that is on the table. So I don't know. And again it's like when we talk when we talk about Christopher Nolan, I guess I'm also including I mean not in Inception. Jonathan Nolan didn't write Inception, Christopher did he? But Jonathan Nolan is very present in the perpetuation of this in the Nolan Expanded Universe.

01:06:07
Speaker 1: Sure whatever, So like, I guess my point, we're like, kind of what I'm trying to figure out here is mal The way we see her behaving in the movie is really not her fault because the gaslighting and her being a projection of his subconscious when we do see her. But even so, the movie frames her as the villain who we are not supposed to identify with or we are not, like she's just there to further characterize Cob, So we as the audience are meant to see her as an obstacle, as a complication. I think there's part of it where like we are supposed to be like, oh no, we especially at the end when she's like when she finally learns because he finally tells her that it.

01:06:53
Speaker 2: Was him and gave her the agent that him. Isn't he just telling himself, like he's the truth to himself, because like she's dead, You're like you're making amends with you You're subconscious you're not even making amends with your wife because it was your fault that she died.

01:07:09
Speaker 1: Which is an important part of like growth of like admitting something to yourself and acknowledging that you have a problem. That is literally step one of the process.

01:07:20
Speaker 2: But I feel like it's framed like he's making amends with which is so weird because in the previous moment he's like, I know that you're not you. I know that you're a part of me. But then it sort of evolves into my read And maybe I'm just like an unsophisticated viewer, but like when I was first watching this movie, I thought the movie was very clearly saying like, oh, and isn't this nice. He made amends with his wife and he apologized to her. But it's like, if you think about that for even point oh one seconds, he's not she's dead. It's done. I just ugh, messy, messy, messy Chris.

01:08:00
Speaker 1: In the real world, after they have woken up from that like fifty years long dream where they grow all together and build a whole world together, he knows that there's something the matter because one because he incepted her and two because he's done right says like, yeah, she wasn't the same. I could tell something was wrong. Then like make sure she gets help, like go to couples counseling together.

01:08:27
Speaker 2: I don't like to do somebody but his but I but I feel like they dodged that by being like, well, we can't tell people about the whole dream thing or or or, which is like okay, but nuh. Also, I thought this is like the Moo's minor character to the point where you don't even see her. But they made Grandma seem also like a very cruel bad character that was like you can't, I don't want you to talk to later, and I'm like, uh, look at what she has to work with here, Like she thinks that you murdered her daughter, which basically you did, so stop being such a baby. Of course she doesn't like you. There's so I wouldn't If I was the grandma in that situation, I would be like, these kids are being raised by me, bye bye. Like Leonardo DiCaprio doesn't get with in I also don't fully understand why he gets to be with his kids at the end, but I think that that was because I always stopped listening. By the end of this movie, I'm sure it's justified. But this, okay, so this kind of do you have anything else on? Mal?

01:09:28
Speaker 1: I guess the last thing I wanted to say, and it's it's a little bit of repetition of what we've already said. But this is coming at it more from like a screenwriting point of view, not that I have a master's degree or anything, because I would hate to bring that up.

01:09:43
Speaker 2: Oh. Also I thought Ellen Paige in this, I was like, Wow, gradical visibility. Caitlyn's going to be thrilled.

01:09:48
Speaker 1: Yeah. I did appreciate that. Anyways, So the like, okay, so a movie generally has an external struggle and an internal struggle. Here's just many mini screenwriting lesson for all of our listeners out there. The external struggle is more or less the outward plot of the movie. So Inception, the external struggle is the Inception squad trying to accept Killian Murphy. The internal struggle of a movie is whatever emotional struggle that the protagonist is dealing with which exists alongside the external struggle. So in this movie, the internal struggle is Cobb dealing with the guilt and regret and memories and all that stuff surrounding his wife Mall, which I feel like is such a and we've talked about this a lot in different episodes of a female character whose only function in the story is to be a male character's internal struggle as a way to like further characterize the male protagonist, Like she doesn't have any of her own agency or interiority or anything like that. And this was like such a I'm example.

01:11:02
Speaker 2: I mean, this is egregious, like an egregious example of like very I mean, you couldn't more intentionally take agency away from a female character than to make her a projection of the male protagonist. Like that's just above and beyond.

01:11:20
Speaker 1: It's comical almost, It's like it's funny, how ridiculous it is. But yeah, that was That was the last thing really that I had on mall.

01:11:33
Speaker 2: Justice for Mary and Cotyard. She's wonderful. Why would you do this to her?

01:11:38
Speaker 1: I know, let's take a quick break and then we'll come right back and we're back.

01:11:49
Speaker 2: Let's talk Ariadne woo. So I mean, first of all, goes with that saying Ellen Page queer icon love her. Oh yes, big fan another egregiously named Christopher Nolan character. I learned that Ariadne is a mythical reference. Yes, but it basically translates to it it's it's a redeemer. Literally the Redeemer, Ariadne the Redeemer, and boy does he have some follow through on that one that is pretty explicitly her purpose in the plot, as we referenced multiple times, Yes, there are, I think. Okay, So in that same paper I was referencing earlier about film nor our guilt complex, Yeah, I sort of agree with the writer in saying that Ariadne is kind of an outlier in the Christopher Nolan film canon in that, at least on the surface, there's a lot of things that Ariadne like has that Christopher Nolan would usually only afford to a male character, such as she doesn't die.

01:12:59
Speaker 1: This is.

01:13:01
Speaker 2: Such as we know what her job is, and she is not defined by being someone's romantic partner or by being a mother. It truly is like the most bare minimum shit possible. But it's worth saying that this character. And then I guess I haven't seen Insomnia in so long, but I guess that there is a character in Insomnia who has a similar position of just like extended the basic courtesy of not being a murdered wife.

01:13:31
Speaker 1: Imagine that I.

01:13:32
Speaker 2: Would still, I mean, and we'll talk about like, I don't think Ariana is in any way a developed character, and she doesn't have as much agency as she should, and her storyline is so chained to Leonardo DiCaprio's progress as a character. And I think that she is very much I think it is somewhat some. I mean, I think it's pretty gender that she is brought in as kind of the person to take on his emotional baggage and absolve him of this guilt. Right, that's all very true. But we know what her job is, we know what her interest is. She isn't brutally murdered. I hate that we have to like grasp for these straws, but there it is.

01:14:15
Speaker 1: Yes, what struck me very very initially before we even before I even like started prepping for this episode or anything like that, just kind of thinking back on the movie, remembering having seen it in the past, was that she is a character who is new to this world of infiltrating people's dreams. And one of the functions of her character within just the context of the movie is that she is a conduit by which the audience receives information and exposition about.

01:14:49
Speaker 2: She's your the world.

01:14:52
Speaker 1: She's perhaps the avatar.

01:14:54
Speaker 2: She's your avatar.

01:14:55
Speaker 1: And this is obviously not an uncommon function for a character. But but I feel like the optics of one of only two female characters in the movie and the only female character on the inception squad not knowing anything and having to be taught everything, like having to have men tell her all the stuff that I have mixed feelings about it, because on one hand.

01:15:22
Speaker 2: I hate it.

01:15:22
Speaker 1: You do get to see you do get to see how smart she is, how quickly she's able to learn and piece things together and like create mazes and complex architecture, But it also means that you do have to see a lot of men explaining everything to her, and it means that all of the men on the team are way more seasoned.

01:15:42
Speaker 2: And experienced exactly than her.

01:15:44
Speaker 1: Even like even.

01:15:45
Speaker 2: Killy and Murphy, who's not even who's being gaslighted, knows more than she does.

01:15:51
Speaker 1: Right, he knows more about inception and like extraction than she does.

01:15:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean, even removing gender from the discussion. I just always find this to be very obnoxious to have to sit through that, you know, because it's literally just like, what is the first rule of writing show don't tell? But this is just like, yeah, I mean, I have this same issue with Harry Potter where it's like the whole first movie is just like Harry Potter's like, what's this? And then an adult is like, well it's that and he's like, oh interesting, and like that is the whole movie. I just I don't know it happens in Avatar. But also it's the title, so whatever, he's like, what's this.

01:16:37
Speaker 1: Well, in a lot of movies with like heavy world building, you do need sure to be explained the rule. The audience needs to understand the rules of the world, so you know, you usually have to have a character act as like the proxyed Avatar by which that information gets explained to us. So I don't necessarily even have a problem. I don't have a problem to that is just a concept. But for it to be like the one woman on the team, yeah, is the one who doesn't know anything and has to be told of because like, why couldn't there have just been another woman in the squad maybe she's the chemist or why couldn't and we'd have a woman in stem Yeah, why couldn't like.

01:17:16
Speaker 2: Joseph Gordon Levitt have been the newbie? Like why did it have to be a female character, especially with and again it's like like you were kind of just saying like, if we had more women in the story, this would be less of a problem because there would be more women in the story. There is only like really one and a half women in the story because mal is only mau some insteads so right, So it's like, yeah, the fact that I got really frustrated. I kept like pausing the movie and like stomping around and being like, I'm elm page, what's this, what's this?

01:17:49
Speaker 1: What's this?

01:17:49
Speaker 2: What's this? I forgive you? What's this? Because that's just like she forgives them for stuff that she doesn't need to and then she's like what's this And it's frustrated because we are given Like I don't know, I feel like this is a weird phase of Christopher Nolan slowly realizing that he keeps doing this, and so I mean, I'm this is conjecture, but maybe this is like the point in Christopher Nolan's career where he's like, okay, okay, okay, so I keep killing wives. What if I did that and there was a second woman? Like I think he's just kind of messing around with the formula and being like, maybe they won't see this if I put this over here, you know, he's like the prestige, but but it doesn't work. And it's really I like that at least, I mean, it's just I always find it really frustrating when you're given the infrastructure speaking as an architect, speaking as a guy from five hundred Days of Summer, you have the you're being given the like the bones of a character that could be really interesting. We know at least some things about her. We know that she is good at what she does. We know that she's a fast learner, we know that she's interested in all this stuff. But then it just kind of like goes nowhere. They only characterize her as far as they need to in order for her to engage with Leonardo DiCaprio on his terms. And most of her agency I do think she has. I mean, she certainly has more agency than mal who has nothing where like she does, you know, choose to kind of she wants to know what is Cobb's deal. She is like actively pursuing answers there, but it's about but it's just about him, Like all of her agency is directly connected to learning more about him.

01:19:40
Speaker 1: The one time that it deviates from that as far as I could tell. Maybe there were other small moments, but if they were, I didn't even notice where. Toward the very end, it seems like they have failed because mal came in and killed Killian Murphy. So it's like, well, that was it.

01:19:57
Speaker 2: Then, I don't know why I always feel so bad for Killy and Murphy in that moment where I'm like, he does not know what's going on. He's like, where am I? And then he just's like really suddenly murdered by Mary and courtyard. And it's kind of funny because Ellen Page is like, don't let her kill Kelly and Murphy. He's so confused, and Leonardo DiCaprio is like, I don't know, maybe I'll let her do it, and then she does it. I don't know. I always laugh and any guy.

01:20:27
Speaker 1: In any case, it is Arid's idea to go into the next level, go into a deeper level so that they can keep going and succeed in incepting Fisher.

01:20:40
Speaker 2: That's true. That's true. I had I hadn't. Yeah, we'll give her credit for that. That's smart, and that's and it's only because she had that outsider's perspective too, right, So that's fair.

01:20:50
Speaker 1: I appreciate that, but that was kind of the only moment where she's really given any agency that impacts the narrative in a way that is not directly tied to Cob and his like guilt.

01:21:03
Speaker 2: Also, I didn't like the moment where it's kind of I mean, this is nitpicky, but there's a moment where kind of like DiCaprio implies that she's a real one for not assuming that he killed his wife. Like he's like, you're not like the other girls. You didn't assume that I murdered my wife. Like, I just thought that was a really annoying Dialogue edition where he's like, yeah, everyone thinks I killed my wife. What the hell? And then she doesn't really say anything for a second, and he's like, yeah, thanks for not assuming I killed my wife. That's a first. And you're like, she's just like, you did kill your wife.

01:21:37
Speaker 1: She's like, go to therapy, bro, what are you talking.

01:21:41
Speaker 2: DiCaprio's whole thing is I didn't kill my wife, but like he absolutely did kill this what one hundred.

01:21:46
Speaker 1: Percent indirected though it may have been, he is he is one million percent responsible for her death.

01:21:54
Speaker 2: In a court of law culpable, Yeah, culpable, he did it. I would not yeah, let him have his children back. Sorry, I just wouldn't.

01:22:04
Speaker 1: They are not safe with him.

01:22:05
Speaker 2: Those kids, Okay, those kids imagine being older and then like finding that out. I would have been like I wish they had left me with Grandma.

01:22:14
Speaker 1: Like right, this is bullshit seriously.

01:22:18
Speaker 2: Also, oh wait, okay, sorry, one more annoying aside. Can you imagine I wonder okay, what's your opinion on this, because not all of the effects in this movie have aged super well it's been ten years. Some moments you're just like, oh, that's a computer. But the okay, the kids running away, are they like photoshopped in running away? Or did they like shuttle these kids all around Burbank for weeks to just run away.

01:22:46
Speaker 1: I would imagine that they green screened that. So they just put the kids in front of a green screen, showed them running away, and then just like imposed that image of them. Because you see that, I'm like, that's really basically every scene in the movie except for like the snow, like the blizzard fucking world.

01:23:07
Speaker 2: Not green screen. That is so much work for those poor kids that aren't even allowed to show their faces until the end of the movie as a plot point. I also couldn't see like what he was like, I can't look at my children's face. I'm like, just go to therapy.

01:23:23
Speaker 1: Ugh, my guy.

01:23:27
Speaker 2: But yeah, no, I wouldn't give him his kids back. I don't think he should have gotten his kids back. Sorry, no career change, honey.

01:23:35
Speaker 1: A couple other things I wanted to say about Ellen Page's character. This is an action movie. There's a lot of action. There's a lot of fighting, there's a lot of chase sequences. But she does not get to participate in any of that. And it's like, well, you could argue, okay, well she's not a trained fighter, she doesn't have any of that training. But even so, again the optics of like having your one female character not be able to participate in any of the fighting except for that, except for the scene at the very end when she does pick up the gun and shoot mal but other than that, like she's which.

01:24:06
Speaker 2: Does pass the Bexel test, Yes.

01:24:08
Speaker 1: Yes it does. When a woman shoots another woman, it passes the Bechdel test. No, but well, bullets are men, so I think I think maybe not wow phallic?

01:24:22
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, no, I agree. I mean the fact that like, and this is like, I mean, we're really like getting into it here, but I feel like that's what Christopher Nola does, so it's fine we can too. But the fact that, like the only woman in the movie who's allowed to do combat is a projection of a man, is my god, my god, like because it's not like regular like mal when she's herself and she is like prior to her death, she doesn't fight. It's only when she is in the dream world as Leonardo DiCaprio's hyper mask projection that she is a skin killer, you know, Like it's just like, yes, I'm so, I'm so annoyed by by all of us, I think, I mean, yeah, I mean, Ellen Page also deserves better than this part. Also, there was like, okay, genuinely I can never get a read on, like are they trying to like push some sort of like subtle love story with Joseph Gordon Levitt and Ellen Page in this Because if so, I don't, like I've never been less compelled by anything in my entire life. But they keep putting them together and like saying cute things to each other. I'm like, am I supposed to like want more? Of this because I just like, I just don't I.

01:25:40
Speaker 1: Never thought that. The only thing to me that would indicate that a little bit is that scene where they're I think they're in like the second level of the dream. Cobb has just told Killian Murphy this thing, and they're in like the lobby of a hotel or something, I think, and Killian Murphy has just learned that he is currently in a dream, so like now his projections of his subconscious are like basically trying to figure out who who's the dreamer or like who are the outsiders? So they all look at Ellen Page and Joseph Gordon Lovett and He's like, oh no, here, maybe it'll distract them if we kiss each other, give me a kiss.

01:26:22
Speaker 2: I feel like that is like a I don't know, I thought that. And the only reason that I'm kind of willing to go with like I think that we were supposed to like want that is because Christopher Nolan is so profoundly unskilled at writing anything like romantic that isn't traumatic. Like he can't just write people that have a crush on each other. It's just not what he does. I think we were supposed to be into that it's either way. It's like if so, that's even more insulting to Ariadne to think that you need to like try to like force a love interest on top of all the you know, disservices she's that are being done. But it barely reads because she and Joseph Gordon Lovett just like couldn't have less chemistry. It's given like two seconds of attention.

01:27:08
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, kind of I can maybe see that, but it also it never occurred to me that they were trying to like push a little like romance between them. If anything, I thought that Joseph Gordon Lovitt and Tom Hardy were like flirting. They were like nagging each other a lot. But I'm like, you guys are flirting and you should just fucking kiss already, like just make it out.

01:27:30
Speaker 2: And I like want that, And I feel like that was all performance, Like that was like the way they performed. It was like you're like, Okay, I like this more. I like this way. Mmm, this is good. Chris. Ever, no, I mean this kind of brings me to It's not a point that I don't know I was. I was thinking about it because subtle plug, I guess, But like I have been watching Maggie may Fish's Friend of the Cast, her YouTube series on the works of Zack Snyder and how Zack Snyder and I think Christopher Nolan falls into this exact same thing, and I've seen this criticism of him. Coincidentally, they also have done Batman's whatever. But like Christopher Nolan is a profoundly sexless director, Like his work features couples but only at the worst moment of their entire lives. And it's just like for all of the heteronormative couples you see in his movies over and over and over, it's profoundly there's no intimacy in it. Really that isn't rooted in trauma. And Zack Snyder's film canon is really similar to the point where it's definitely not in this movie. But I think that each of them have each done one sex scene. I know Zack Snyder's was Watchman and it's so hard to watch, but like, just it's very bizarre like these and they both did sexless Batman movie that are rooted in you know, mommy girlfriend, trauma. It's like, just let a woman direct something, please, for the love of God, It's just so strange. That's just more of an observation. It's I don't know, just the most traumatic moments of a relationship are all that gets the worst, which is why it's like they if he was trying to write in a cute moment that sort of hit the cutting room floor for two other characters, it falls completely felt flat, and it's confusing because you're like, Christopher Nolan can't do something that's just like kind of cute.

01:29:35
Speaker 1: He does not have the skills. Well, kind of going back to Ariadne, where in my list of like very bare minimum things this movie does that are like I guess not negative and its like representation of women, but like again bare minimum or like neutral I wrote down in my notes. Well, at least Ellen Page's character isn't poised as the romantic interest for any of the men, because again I did not interpret like the movie attempting to push her and Joseph Gordnon Levett together at all.

01:30:09
Speaker 2: Curious about what our listeners think, because yeah, I've heard differing opinions on that where I don't know, I texted. I texted people about it because I'm like, am I totally misreading this? Or and then some people were like, no, I thought I was supposed to think that, and then other people were like never picked up on it. I wonder I would be curious if there is like if previous drafts of this movie were kind of pushing it, because it seems like what we have might possibly be remnants of something else. That's my theory.

01:30:40
Speaker 1: I downloaded this script, Brag, and while I did not read it because it is eight thousand pages long, no thank you, I did do like control f to find if the word kiss appears in the script, because I wanted to see if that scene where he where like Joseph Gordon love It's like give me a kiss quick, it'll distract them or whatever, if that is in the script, and it does not appear to be. I read that scene and that's not even in the script. So that either just got thrown in on that day of shooting or something, or you know.

01:31:16
Speaker 2: Like the Red Mystery.

01:31:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think I think maybe it's just that like that got wedged in at the last moment.

01:31:24
Speaker 2: We're just like Christopher put in something, put in something flirty, like this is the least flirty movie I've ever seen, Christopher, and then he's like, make someone kiss it. I don't know how a joke.

01:31:38
Speaker 1: It's like, women won't want to see this movie unless there's a kiss in it, so throw in a kiss. God damn it, Chris.

01:31:46
Speaker 2: Your movies aren't flirty enough. And he's like, oh rats, Like it's just I mean, no one's coming to Christopher Nolan for like even a compelling love story, like just it's just not why we show up for him. We keep showing up because of Hans Zimmer.

01:32:03
Speaker 1: Possibly the other bare minimum thing I wrote down as it pertains to Ellen Page's character, which is more syllables than Ariadne. But I don't, I can't. I keep not being able to say that name, Ariadne.

01:32:20
Speaker 2: I mean, it's an unusual name, and it's also it is so like Maul and Ariadne are so freshman year in film school name choices. It kills me. So yeah.

01:32:38
Speaker 1: But anyway, the other like bare minimum thing is at least the male characters around her notice and acknowledge that she does a good job. Yes, there's a few different lines of dialogue that I wrote down where Cobb says to Arthur, he says, I've never seen someone pick it up so fast about Ellen Page. At one point Cobb says, kind of apropos of nothing. He's just like a terrific work. By the way, Yeah that is nice. And then right before she gets recruited Michael Caine, Cobb says like I need someone who's as good as Cob is, like I need someone who's as good as I was, And Michael Kaine's like, I have someone even.

01:33:21
Speaker 2: Better or I have someone better. Quick recommendation. If you haven't ever seen Michael Caine's acting lesson tape from the eighties.

01:33:35
Speaker 1: On you the blink, the don't blink you never blink?

01:33:37
Speaker 2: Doink? There it is like very funny and also like low key, kind of helpful. I and now every time I'm on camera, I'm like, blink with intention, Jamie you you heard the man wow, blink with intention. And so whenever Michael Kaine blinks, it's at a moment where his character is feeling vulnerable. Always I always notice, imagine that in this movie for fourteen seconds.

01:34:02
Speaker 1: Yes, and too bad. He loves Brexit.

01:34:04
Speaker 2: Yeah so whoopsies, he loves Brexit. He hates blinking, and that's just this unfortunate truth. But yeah, no, I agree. I was a little leery on the I've never seen someone pick it up so fast, because I that like, it didn't cross the line, fortunately, but sometimes I worry about like kind of like when a woman joins the squad and they're like, wait a second, she can do something. I'm shocked, but it did, but it kind of stayed on the other side of the line of like they were genuinely impressed that anyone could pick this up so quickly. They appreciated her work, and then when she made the suggestion to go down deeper, they take that suggestion seriously and they take it on and no one else takes credit for it, and just like yeah, yeah, like she Christopher Nolan is such a strange writer where I'm like, did he just treat like He's just like, oh, just treat this character with the you would treat a male character. But then no, because she has to do the emotional baggage stuff. I don't know. I don't know.

01:35:06
Speaker 1: I have a couple other things that are not at all gender specific but that I thought were very funny.

01:35:13
Speaker 2: Go for it.

01:35:14
Speaker 1: This movie only works under the assumption that the idea that you have during a dream. If you have a dream and you come up with an idea of an idea happens in your dream, that that idea will stick with you under any circumstance, and it might change everything about who you are as a person. Because, like was watching this movie, I was like, this would be like if I woke up from a dream where in the dream I started a podcast about the movie Inception, and then I wake up and I'm like, oh my gosh, I have to start a podcast about the movie Inception. I you know, I had a dream about that, so I guess I have to do it, Like.

01:35:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, you are just behold into every lark that you're subconscious, like imagine the most bizarre dreams you've ever had, and then being like, well I guess, then, well I guess I have to do it. Like I used to have this really scary recurring dream about Bob Saggat on a trampoline where he would be like, get on the trampoline, Get on the trampoline. Like it was just a recurring dream I have when I was a kid, when they used to be re airing a lot of reruns of Full House on ABC Family, but it would just be Bob Saggot on a trampoline in my backyard. We didn't even have a trampoline, but he was like, get on the trampoline, Get on the trampoline. And I would always be like if something if I get on this trampoline, something horrible's gonna happen. It's like if I woke up and I was like, I have to get a trampoline and I need to get Bob Saggott to your stat and investigate this.

01:36:50
Speaker 1: I mean, now is as good a time as any to announce that I am going to start a podcast about the movie Inception I had a dream about. I have to do it.

01:37:00
Speaker 2: I am literally Bob Saggett is on a Spirit Airlines flight here right now to find out what was going on there. And that I mean, it's like, I know, I know that dreams can be very profound, but the assumption that all dreams are profound is ridiculous and very funny. That's also, okay. A quick thing I had was that like the Killian Murphy thing, the whole the corny levels of him holding his his like evil dad's hand and he's the evil son, and the dad is like, I wish you just were a different evil than me, and he's like he's just like Rich boy crying. You're just like I felt it the first time I watched the movie. I feel it now. I'm like, I could not care less about whatever is happening here with the billionaires. And they're like, how do we approach an oil fortue? You're like, I don't care? Who is this character? Like, oh my god? Could we just like let Ellen Page do something else?

01:38:07
Speaker 1: Like uh yeah, Well. One of my other things exactly it's in every movie, is it turns out well. One of the other things I wrote down was inception is what like uber rich people do with their money to get richer, because like Sido buys an airline so that they can incept Killian Murphy like, why not just use the joke? And yeah, He's like, huhu, it would be I just thought it would be cleaner if I just bought the whole airline, which, by the way, I hope that flight attendant.

01:38:39
Speaker 2: They said that they bought her. First of all. They said we had to buy a flight attendant, as if it was just like something people do.

01:38:47
Speaker 1: It's like, I hope they paid her. Well, I like why wouldn't Why would they? Like now she has dirt on you guys, Like why wouldn't you just have one of.

01:38:57
Speaker 2: The other She saw that story to variety right. Also, they live in la I don't know why I found that detail to be obnoxious, But at the end they're like, you're about to land in La Baby, Like I'm like Leona DiCaprio's is like landing at his house, like what are you what?

01:39:16
Speaker 1: And then he's like, got off the plane at lax and with a dream.

01:39:20
Speaker 2: And a color. Welcome to the land of famouscess. Is he gonna fit in? We don't know?

01:39:32
Speaker 1: Something something about Stiletto's.

01:39:35
Speaker 2: Oh my god, that's like every school dance I ever went to that song when you play it like volume deafening at some point, the butterfly flu that's like Leader DiCaprio reunated with his children, nodding his head like yeah, moving his hips like yeah.

01:40:00
Speaker 1: I'm sweating so much. Okay, So Sido he buys the airline, and it's like, why not just use that money to like bribe Fisher or buy him out of the company, or buy some stock in his company, do something like why are you going through all the someone of doing something that does not sound like it would work at all. Inception does not sound like a thing that would work even a little bit, But the movie's so hell bunt on convincing you that it is like the most effective. Like there's like an idea is the most effective parasite ever. Like it's just you can't kill an idea.

01:40:40
Speaker 2: You have to admit. That's just like Christopher Nolan fully jerking himself off, like being like ideas are I mean, I see what he's saying, and I understand the reality under it of like a an idea can be very pervasive. But I feel like he's being like the Dark Night changed your life, right, Like I just I don't know, it's it's all, it's all annoying. I really enjoy watching this movie, but it's also so annoying. It's such a weird that's such a Christopher Nolan thing where you're like I'm having a great time, I'm deeply annoyed. I'm like, how dare you make me enjoy this movie.

01:41:21
Speaker 1: I also think that at the end, when after Killian Murphy has been incepted and he decides to like break up this multi billion dollar empire, I like to think that he just like starts an Etsy store selling his like cross stitches or something, like that, Oh, I know.

01:41:41
Speaker 2: Like what happens to these people afterwards? Like I don't. I mean, if I were Ellen Page, I would just I'm like, I have no allegiance to these people. I'm gonna just write a tell all, sell it to random House for a million billion dollars. Like see you, this guy killed his wife. Everyone's saying he killed his wife, and guess what, it's true, like he fully did. This movie is weird, but it's fun. I also appreciate. I mean again, it's like I think that with white male o tour culture, the negatives outweigh the positives. But to give Christopher Nolan the smallest bit of credit, I appreciate that there was not a sequel to this movie because I know people wanted it, and I can't imagine something more exhausting than a sequel to Inception. I'm like, I don't want a single, I don't want another detail about this. Let's just bury it. We're done. I am curious about Tenant. I want to see John David Washington and Robert Pattinson together. I know, yeah, I hate that I want that, but I do want that. I do I do we fully recognize the At what cost? Of this movie as such an all time high. The fact that Christopher Nolan was pushing and seemed like, imagine taking a global pandemic this personally, Like it's just absurd. That said, I really hope And the whole time, I'm like, I just like would love to see this movie at a drive in, Like this would be a great drive in movie. I would happily see this movie at a drive in. Can't we just do that? I don't know? Yeah, Like how deeply selfish and like just uncaring do you have to be to be like, yeah, someone might die to see Tenant? Like what are you doing with your life? Don't see Tenant in theaters? See it safe? Please and let us know what you think, because it's been getting pretty good reviews.

01:43:39
Speaker 1: I mean, he makes good movies.

01:43:41
Speaker 2: Unfortunately he's like it's a Tenant, it's a palindrome. I'm like, I get it, I get it.

01:43:49
Speaker 1: He's so he's a genius.

01:43:51
Speaker 2: He really, I mean is not, but like he he wants you to think, right, No, it's like he's really just like some of his movies feel like he's screaming that he's a genius, like into your mouth, like he's I will I mean, perhaps to Hans Zimber on this score. It is an iconic score. And we have we have, we culturally have not escaped this farting noise in movies to this day. Ever since Inception came out, the fart noise is now cannon and we can't get rid of it.

01:44:27
Speaker 1: So it's as ubiquitous as Leonardo DiCaprio being clothed in bodies of water.

01:44:35
Speaker 2: What is going on? I just men need to stop, they need to stop. I will I will again just give a shout out to Emma Thomas, who is Christopher Nolan's spouse but also has produced all of his movies. And I would say, well, actually I wouldn't say, wow, I give credit to a man right now. It's ruining my life. But I reas listened to friend of the Cast Krarina Longworth's season of You Must Remember This about Polly Platt, which I highly recommend to our listeners. It is all about poly Platt is like this iconic producer who her skills were repeatedly discredited and buried because she was always working for men. And so it is kind of this incredible investigation of her life that just reveals exactly how much she did, and she was married for a while to Peter Bugdanovich, and like how much credit he took from her and all of his good movies were with her, So what does that tell you? Et cetera. Yeah, and Isaac brought up as we were watching this, He's like, Oh, I wonder if like Emma Thomas is potentially a similar Polly Platt story because she's pretty exclusively produced Christopher Nolan movies. But we don't really hear her spoken about much. It's not a name that is like brought up. I mean, given how much she's done and how many billions of dollars movies she's produced have generated, I'd like to know more about her. I'm curious. And also being married to Christopher Nolan sounds terrible, like I don't but maybe it isn't. I don't know.

01:46:13
Speaker 1: He seems to want you to die.

01:46:15
Speaker 2: He seems to want to kill you. Let's hear more about No, but I am very curious. I want to like give her her due she has. I mean, yeah, she's produced quite literally all of it, and a few non Christopher Nolan movies, but for the most part they seem to work together. Yeah, in any case shout out to her, this is I wouldn't say it's a diverse cast. I think that, like, there are non white important cast members, but for the most part, they are relegated to the sidelines with I guess the exception of Ken Wantonabe, who I think he does such an iconic Oh. I just love how he delivers a line where I forget what line it is, but there's like one line where he also like he's on the floor and he has to turn over his shoulder and he's like, this is a dream, isn't it.

01:47:07
Speaker 1: Or it's like it's just so because he's on the rug and he's like, my face is in polyester right now, not wool.

01:47:13
Speaker 2: There's a whole monologue about a rug and it's so it's so goofy, but he is great. I mean, that's a this is I mean, and the extended Nolan universe is a very very heteronormative white universe, and this is certainly no exception to that. And this is something that we have an ongoing conversation about on this show is that otur culture in general is so white dominated and so male dominated, and Christopher Nolan has perpetuated that in or and is complicit and that in many ways down to I don't know, I mean, I would I would recommend that that people check out that Polyplat mini series because they're really I mean, we all know that women and people of color are constantly erased from the narratives of I mean of quite literally everything but pertaining to our show, to to movies, and just like hearing the details of that and just like the psychological trauma that comes with that from being repeatedly erased and discredited. It's a wonderful series, and we're gonna see Tenant, but we don't have to, Like, we don't have to. I'm really struggling with how much I want to see Tenant. It makes me feel bad.

01:48:32
Speaker 1: Same.

01:48:32
Speaker 2: Ah.

01:48:34
Speaker 1: Well, well, we've had a discussion already a bit about whether or not this movie passes the Bechdel test. I think if you were I'm gonna say no, if you were just looking at it on on paper, you could argue that it technically passes because there is that small interaction between Mal and Ariadne, where like Mal's like, what are you doing here? My name is I know who you are. What are you doing here? I'm just trying to under stand, bub blah blah, and that goes on for a little while. But it is, like you said, but.

01:49:04
Speaker 2: It's projection, mall.

01:49:06
Speaker 1: It's projection, mall. So she's not even real for the rest of that scene, she's like quoting stuff that Cobb had told her. I would say, considering the context of this exchange, I would give it a no. I think again, it's like a technical pass. But yeah, factoring in the context, not a pass anymore.

01:49:26
Speaker 2: I'm a hard No. I think this is a galaxy. This is like Christopher Nolan, not that I think he knows what the Bechdel test is. I would be shocked, but I mean, prove me wrong, I guess. But yeah, no, I think that he I mean no, I'm he does not deserve to get away on a technicality here mm hmm. It's a no, ye're for me? And how okay, let's go. Let's go to the nipples. Nipples scale wow? Wow?

01:49:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, so zero to five nipples based on how it represents women's slash, how does it fare from an her sexual feminist point of view? I'll give this I guess one, maybe a half even.

01:50:06
Speaker 2: I was gonna go half.

01:50:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean there are there's a few very like bare minimum things to like about the way Ariadni is characterized, and that she's smart and capable and we know what her job is and her team members appreciate her and never call into question her skills or abilities or anything like that. But again that's extremely bare minimum stuff. And most of the time she is doing Cobb's emotional labor for him, and she's being like, you need to.

01:50:38
Speaker 2: I'm just absolving him for things at random, for things he doesn't deserve to be absolved for.

01:50:43
Speaker 1: Because plot, I mean, the fact that she picks up on what he's going through, I think is also an extremely gendered thing. It's not necessarily a negative trope.

01:50:53
Speaker 2: But like right, but it's rooted in something right because.

01:50:56
Speaker 1: Like the one woman on the team is the one who's able to see that, like, hey, baby, the Cob is being tormented by guilt, and it's like it's like, come on, dude, like you there are other people around you, Like don't you notice that your friend is like going through something like you know that his wife, his wife died, Like it's just baffling to me that it's like, well, but of course the woman is the one to figure it out anyway.

01:51:26
Speaker 2: Right, like it is. In fact, that's that's negative for everybody too, because it also just implies that the people that Cob is with every day seem to have no idea that he's under this intense psychological torture.

01:51:39
Speaker 1: Yuseff is like administering the sedatives and stuff to enable him to go under on his own time, right to like be with his wife in dream world, Like how does he not know what's going on?

01:51:52
Speaker 2: Logically he should be the one to know, I think, right, Like, logically he would be the person to pick up on this, the closest access to Leo DiCaprio's actual brain chemistry. But he's busy. He's an avatar, so I don't know.

01:52:09
Speaker 1: So yeah, there there's some positives and negatives about Ariadne. And then when it comes to mal like woof, it's but again it's like.

01:52:20
Speaker 2: I think, like the worst of the worst in terms of Christopher Nolan's gender problems.

01:52:25
Speaker 1: For sure, And it's like, again, if you think about it for two seconds, you realize that all of her behavior, which is being framed by the movie as as like villainous and and sabotaging.

01:52:38
Speaker 2: And bad mall, it's mall A bit mall, Yeah.

01:52:42
Speaker 1: MOI Mal, if you think about it for two seconds, you realize, like, well, none of what she's doing is her fault. She was gas lit and then everything else is a projection, So like, we can't blame her for what she's doing. But the movie very very very much wants you to blame her for what she's doing. So it's not good one half nipple. I guess I'll give it to mal because she deserves I'll give it to Marion Cotillard because she deserves better.

01:53:12
Speaker 2: Yeah she does. She's I just I can't recommend her work enough. I really like her. Same with Ellen Page.

01:53:20
Speaker 1: God damn it, I love Alan Page.

01:53:22
Speaker 2: So yeah, I'll give it a half as well for at least the outlined sketch of a good female character that was not followed through on, and also for not murdering her. I really you couldn't ask for less. I will say that this is I mean again, it's like you don't want to hand it to it. But in the context of Christopher and Nolan's career, the fact that Ariane is not brutally murdered is somehow progressed for him, and ugh, what I feel so grut, but like, and this does seem to put him on some track to treating his his female characters in ensuing movies, starting with The Dark Knight where he's kind of trying to have Catwoman be empowered and it doesn't work, but it's an attempt, and like, I feel like Inception is kind of an inflection point for him in terms of like making an effort or at least recognizing that he cannot continue to treat his female characters like this. Maybe Tenant will blow up this theory, but it seems like at least around this time, he starts to realize that, like, people are not gonna stop giving you shit for this. You have to find a more compell You need to just like simply take women seriously. Imagine your wife has produced every single movie, like right, how it's It's a bird. So this is I I like, you know, white male a tour culture is very frustrating, and I want to see Tenant.

01:54:45
Speaker 1: So in conclusion, we're going to see Tenant.

01:54:49
Speaker 2: In conclusion, we're gonna see Tenant, and honestly probably will like it seems like people like it.

01:54:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I'm prepared to look.

01:54:57
Speaker 2: God damn it. In conclusion, God damn it all to hell. To quote Titan.

01:55:04
Speaker 1: H, I'll be goddamned.

01:55:07
Speaker 2: I think that's all I have to say. I don't know. I'm so frustrated with myself. I'm like, I want to say Tenant like stop, don't look.

01:55:16
Speaker 1: We contain multitudes. We are multi dimensional female characters in our own movies, in our own dreams. What if this whole episode was a dream the whole time and we wake up and we're like, fuck, we didn't even actually record anything.

01:55:39
Speaker 2: Uh So, you know, goddamn it all to hell, and we love you. This has been the episode we Also, you'll notice there wasn't a guest on this episode. It's just just the two of us because I'm still trapped in Wisconsin and we both felt guilty that we liked inception. So in conclusion, you can follow us on all the social media platforms. You can follow us on Twitter at bexel Cast, Instagram at bexel Cast, subscribe tour Patreon aka Matreon, where we will be doing get another exciting month of I think we're going to be doing another Llen Page classic this month.

01:56:15
Speaker 1: Yes, oh yeah, so yeah. I pitched Sport Timber Sport timber, which is which we're gonna cover, whip it and stick it because all movies about.

01:56:29
Speaker 2: I'm calling it it's timber.

01:56:31
Speaker 1: It's timber because all movies about women's sports have to have it in the title.

01:56:36
Speaker 2: It's another baffling. It's a trope that's neither here nor there, much like Leonardo DiCaprio underwatering clothes. It's neither here nor there, but it's the thing for some reason.

01:56:47
Speaker 1: Yeah true.

01:56:48
Speaker 2: So anyways, you know, head over to the Matreon for that.

01:56:51
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm. You can go to tea public dot com slash the Bechdel Cast for our merch and uh, you know, give us a little rate and review. Why don't you on you know, Apple Podcasts or wherever you find your podcast and otherwise, just be really careful that you don't get incepted because obviously it's going to change your entire life, because the ideas that you have in dreams will change you forever.

01:57:17
Speaker 2: I was like to conclude, rah rah, like, uh, you know, I hope you're hope you're doing well, take care of yourself, help other people, yes, and and you know, at least feel a little bit bad when you watch Tenant.

01:57:33
Speaker 1: Yeah.

01:57:34
Speaker 3: Bye,