Inception, dreaming and is Cobb 'awake' [whatever that is] when the film ends ? (work in progress)

Inception, dreaming and is Cobb 'awake' [whatever that is] when the film ends ? (work in progress)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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26 July

Inception, dreaming and is Cobb 'awake' [whatever that is] when the film ends ? (work in progress)

Ignoring the complexities of 'Borges and I' (and / or of translating it*), why am I sure that, when I just typed these words, no one else has ever written them ? :

'Dreamers and Rules (or, at least, as Cobb represents them to Ariadne)'

* A text is at : https://t.co/2z0pP1PaOM.

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 19, 2023

Michael Caine, as a lecturer in an unspecified discipline at a French academy (which, however, we may rightly assume to be La Sorbonne), graces a scene close to the start of Inception [which, thanks to this word from the world of insurance, necessarily sounds like the start of the start], and then does not reappear until the closing ones.

From their conversation, we learn that Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), whom he addresses as 'Dom', is his son-in-law and that he had once been one of his brighter students. (The credits tell us that Caine's character is called Miles, but we do not hear that name used.) Despite Cobb's seeming implication in the death of his daughter (Mal**, played by Marion Cotillard), Miles appears to have relatively few reservations about introducing Cobb to one of his current students, once he has first urged Cobb 'to come back to reality', and Cobb has argued both that, after what happened, he has to use what he was taught to do as he does (but cannot now be the architect of his own dream-deceptions), and, moreover, that the job that he is undertaking represents his only chance to be what Miles and Cobb want him to be able to be, a father to his children.

When Cobb asks for someone 'at least as good as' he was, Miles claims that Ariadne (Elliot Page) is 'better than' Cobb. (Apart from at the end of the film, where Miles meets Cobb at the airport, we see Caine do no more than effect an introduction to Ariadne. (If, that is, Cobb and co. have actually reached Arrivals...))


More to come...


























Appendix :

Clues to a re-watched film :

1) Dies irae

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 1, 2023

Clues to a re-watched film :

2) Non, je ne regrette rien

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 2, 2023

Clues to a re-watched film :

3) Cotillard

Any guesses ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 3, 2023

Clues to a re-watched film :

4) Arthur

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 5, 2023

Clues to a re-watched film :

5) 'Chambre'

Any guesses ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 6, 2023

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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Titanic (1997) : revisionism, after the fact ?

Titanic (1997) : revisionism, after the fact ?

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2018 (25 October to 1 November)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

10 February

Titanic (1997) : revisionism, after the fact ?

Via AOL [https://t.co/Dhzj97VAlp]

‘Titanic fans have long wondered why Jack (DiCaprio) couldn't climb aboard Rose's (Winslet's) door-turned-raft at the end of the 1997 movie.

‘Now, director James Cameron is addressing those "dumb-ass arguments" on BBC's Movies That Made Me.’

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) February 10, 2019

'Plumb interjected "It's called...", as James added, "writing". The pair then laughed.'

To get shot (if omitted), the scene had been written. Decades on from Titanic, one can be revisionist of the director's career / films - but not let him unfairly bemoan 'dumb-ass arguments' ? https://t.co/ZFUQUT3AcC

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) February 10, 2019

In the RMS Titanic version of Verona, a member of the Montague family would not have been travelling steerage, and, although Cameron believes that his lovers, Jack and Rose, somehow mirror Shakespeare's couple, it is hard to see how :

Act V, Scene 1 (ll. 34-86), is spent on obtaining the poison. Shakespeare follows the source The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet (Bandell trans. Brooke), Seeing Juliet (Scene 3, ll. 85-120), he does as planned, and takes the poison.

2 / 3

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) February 10, 2019

Shakespeare omits detail from Brooke, including a prayer (ll. 2670-2688). Does Cameron ask Romeo to be 'smart' by knowing what only Friar Laurence does, that his wife is not dead, and that she could use his dagger ?

3 / 3

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) February 10, 2019

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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)