I just saw Christopher Nolan’s Inception<\/i> for the second time in the same week. It’s not that I loved the film so much the first time, but rather that I find myself in a different city, with different friends who hadn’t seen it, and it just seemed like a good idea.<\/p>\n
I won’t say much about the film here, because I wouldn’t want to ruin the experience for those of you who have not seen it.<\/p>\n
But if you have<\/i> already seen it, I am happy to report that it is vastly better the second time. The first time around the experience is something like trying to catch up and learn the rules of a strange game. It’s hard to focus on the experience of playing a game when you’re worrying about where the ball is supposed to go, or how many houses it takes to make a hotel. The first time seeing Inception<\/i> is very much like that.<\/p>\n
The second time around, everything makes sense — perfect sense. All the pieces fall into place, and moments early in the film that seemed on first viewing to be mysterious, or even downright impenetrable, are a complete delight the second time around. Which means there is more room to concentrate on the powerful underlying themes of the film, which I now finally appreciate.<\/p>\n
I wonder what it says about a film when the second time seeing it is a vastly more rewarding experience than the first time. Does this quality speak well for the work? “Better on second viewing” seems like a rather unusual and intriguing quality. There are many movies I’ve enjoyed just fine but wouldn’t dream of ever seeing again — generally silly comedies or straight-ahead melodramas that promise very little and deliver faithfully on that promise.<\/p>\n
At the other extreme, there are films like Casablanca<\/i> and Blade Runner<\/i> that I can watch over and over. Each viewing is different, and I find I am never bored. In some sense the true subject of such endlessly watchable films is film itself — the mystery of sitting in a darkened theatre and experiencing living dreams about the human condition. Like a great painting by Magritte or poem by Walt Whitman, they illuminate the mystery of the human heart while managing to preserve that mystery, in all its complex magnificence.<\/p>\n
It’s too soon to tell whether Inception<\/i> falls into that category. I suppose I’ll know better the next time I see it. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I just saw Christopher Nolan’s Inception for the second time in the same week. It’s not that I loved the film so much the first time, but rather that I find myself in a different city, with different friends who hadn’t seen it, and it just seemed like a good idea. I won’t say much … Continue reading “Reinception”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4320"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4320"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4329,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4320\/revisions\/4329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}