This is You. – Thoughts on Greenberg and Inception (2010)

I’ve hit a moment in my life where I’ve really been thinking about moments in film that reflect life with such poignancy that just experiencing the film, we have these moments of clarity(for lack of better terms), transcendence of an idea or emotion, the moments that changes the way we think and feel about life.

This is the basis of Christopher Nolan’s Inception, Let me give you my quick take regarding this idea and hopefully it’s not too convoluted to follow: Inception is about the idea that we are watching a world that may or may not be a cinematic reality or a dream in the cinematic reality. In this reality/dream state the characters go into dreams to create the inception of an idea. They go into the dream state, and then take the dreamer deeper into a dream inside of a dream, and further into a dream inside of that dream; this is where the moment exists that is supposed to create the inception of an idea. Overall, I think Nolan is concentrating on the leaps that the human mind can make while experiencing a film. Think of the leaps that our minds allow, Nolan’s notion is that while sitting in the theater we experience our own understanding of a moment of emotional breakthrough inside of a dream, that is inside of another dream, that is inside another dream, that yet still may or may not be inside of another dream (depending on your perception of the film) inside of a movie. Complicated right? But the idea is that we still have that moment, and emotionally and intellectually it’s just as real as the discussion it ultimately stimulates while walking out of the theater. Our lives are rarely as grandiose as in movies and we rarely have these monumental moments in our daily lives, but because we have the mental capacity to make the leaps like Nolan is suggesting, the art of film shares these experiences and moments all the time.

While Nolan wants the audience to follow along as the movie drops deeper and deeper away from reality but still creates a real response. On an opposite level, Noah Baumbach’s recent film Greenberg does this in a more direct manner. His world is a mirror of ours; his characters feel like people we could know, he achieves a poignancy with this film where they feel like a reflection of the writer/director. Baumbach and fellow writer Jenifer Jason Leigh explore the real fears and anxieties that people go through, the imperfections and eccentricities of our personas. The film feels real, Ben Stiller is a very pleasant surprise, finding himself far from his normally wacky likability, and  as Roger Greenberg. Roger is a downright asshole; he lives in a state of prolonged post-adolescent angst confused with his intellectualism and arrogance. He’s the lost cause in his family who transfers all the condescension he receives from them onto Florence, his mind is set on not liking her, he’s hung up on his ex, and his friends/ex band mates don’t know how to act around him. Opposite Roger is Florence, played by Greta Gerwig and she is as sad as she is likable, Florence and Roger spiral into this awkward relationship that unfolds nicely, but not until after Baumbach and Leigh make us suffer all the uncomfortable moments they can conceive. Florence is the protagonist that at once you kinda hate her, but you really pull for her. She is sweet and trusting and you pull your hair out watching and hoping that she’ll wise up. I think it’s a smart way to get the audience to see her like Roger sees her, the only difference is that the audience can also perceive who Roger is while he cannot.

The moment in the film that is probably the reason I wanted to write about it comes between Roger and Ivan (Rhys Ifans). The quick backstory is they were in a band that had a chance to get signed. Roger pretty much ruined the opportunity for the whole band, due to his own social rules and eccentricities.  Ivan is recently separated from his marriage and Roger is under the misconception that they can just start from where they left off years earlier. Anyway Ivan makes a statement that is somewhat along the lines of how he had never been able to accept that his life turned out to be the way it is. I think that it is not only the key moment for Roger and Ivan but it’s a moment that a lot of our generation, at least a lot of people I know, are missing.  Highly educated people are walking out of universities, degree in hand, with no clue as to what lies ahead. Were we not always taught that this is the way to pave your future? So here we are, a generation of people who have been lead through high school, on into college, then into a life that does not resemble our parents or what we thought. We fall into jobs that we need but not really want, we struggle with accepting in between the small joys in our relationships or career, and we search for the little victories because we feel that that is all we have. It gets overwhelming, anxiety, confusion, and detachment. This is not my beautiful house, this is not my beautiful wife. “You may ask yourself, my god, what have I done?”

Then one day you wake up and you think about Ivan’s dilemma and you think about your wife or girlfriend, maybe your kids or pets, and your home. Then you think about your job and maybe it’s not what you expected, most likely it’s far from it? You recount the struggles and the little victories. Your life is lying behind you in a trail of conversations and images it gets rocky and then smoothed out, rocky again. You accept that your reality is in fact, reality. You accept life is nothing like what you thought you wanted.  Inception…

You then realize that a line, a moment from a fictional film has created a yet another real moment in the intellectual and emotional status of your life. And it’s pretty cool.