Conflicted at the Movies
19th July 2010
Nancy Kress, famous science fiction author [read Beggars in Spain unless you want to remain an uncultured boob] and one of my Recommended Writers, does a review of the recent flick INCEPTION. (I just wish she would opt for legibility over hip-and-trendy and lose the white-print-on-black format. *sigh*)
INCEPTION is, in microcosm, the state of much current SF. It is so complex and self-referential that much time is spent figuring out what is happening, rather than inhabiting what is happening. Is this good or bad? I guess that depends why you like stories. If you want them to be puzzles, then INCEPTION is brilliant. If you want them to be reflections of human experience, then INCEPTION is still good but not as good as it could have been if the film maker, Christopher Nolan, had kept things a bit simpler (for one thing, characters could then have spent less time giving us info dumps). However, judging from the enthusiastic audience reaction last night, puzzles are what is wanted. People applauded at the end. Lobby comments afterward were positive (I eavesdropped). This is, apparently, what SF means to a mass audience.