"INCEPTION; or, Dream a Little Dream within a Dream with Me" by Kristin Thompson
from Observations on Film-Art, Bordwell & Thompson's Blog"Inception reminds me of the common claim that Hollywood films are no longer character-centered. Special effects and slam-bang action supposedly have replaced character traits as the basis for storytelling. Now, here is a contemporary film released as a summer tentpole film and definitely successful in box-office terms. It crossed the $200 million domestic gross figure on Tuesday, August 3. Yet the nearly universal complaint, for those who don’t like the film, or some aspects of the film, is that we don’t get to know the characters.
If modern tentpoles have generally neglected characterization, that must be a convention by now. Why would people expect to find rounded characters? Is this complicated/complex (take your choice) intellectual film aimed at adults ironically going to prove that the critics of modern Hollywood blockbusters have been right all along?
I agree that the characters in Inception, apart from Cobb, the protagonist, are barely assigned traits. Ariadne, for example, does not return to join Cobb’s team as its architect because she has some personal goal or trait that inclines her to want to do so. It’s just that everyone who experiences the possibilities of shared dreams gets hooked.
But if there’s little characterization, is Nolan substituting something interesting in its place—apart from the usual computer-effects and spectacle?..."
Continues
here.
Also,
here is Bordwell's presentation of his
The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in Modern Movies, a reflection on the cinema following the studios' demise and the end of the 'golden age'. The book is an attempt to reflect on how many norms—of plotting, characterization, narration, and visual style—have persisted across the last fifty years. Bordwell writes "focusing on the blockbuster, as many adherents of the post-classical position tend to do, ignores the vast bulk of production, which remain as in the studio years, program pictures. And some notable films (
Jerry Maguire is my main instance) are even
more thoroughly norm-abiding than typical films of the studio era." Bordwell also considers "alternative strategies of storytelling, such as “network narratives” or “puzzle films,” and some visual techniques (e.g., the spread of fast cutting)." Read on, you can find the Introductory Chapter
here in pdf.
Introductory Chapter here.
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