Inception: Why I wish there were more like it

So Inception blew my mind.

 

But not at all in the way that I thought it was going to. 

When I sat down to watch it last week, I was expecting something that left me in tortured confusion a la Nolan's earlier work, Memento. At the very least a head-scratcher like Blade Runner. And the first 15 minutes had me convinced that was what I was getting, and the amateur philosopher/puzzle lover in me was in paroxysms of glee.

But I got something even better - something that, after those first 15 minutes, I could follow perfectly - a perfect exercise in genre-bending, along with the most effective exploration of creativity, fear, and the human mind I've ever seen. It's cheesy, in the way that great heist stories always are. It's creatively stunning, in the way great science fiction stories are. It's utterly terrifying, in the way all great and memorable stories are, full stop.

Every visual metaphor seems to be entrapment. Entanglement. A maze. Nolan is both trapping us in the world he has created, and reminding us that we are all trapped by our own hangups and perceptions. There's shades of The Matrix here, and Solaris; Ridley Scott and The Italian Job. (Seriously.) He borrows from dozens more films, books, music, great sculptures, paintings, and every other medium you could possibly imagine, and makes them into something that both acknowledges and improves upon what's been done before. Instead of braving the blank canvas, he gives us a collage of tropes from every genre that, combined, are no longer tropes. And from that, every artist could stand to learn.

In Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver, one of her more obscure novels but my personal favorite, one character argues that all we ever have are "animal dreams" - dreams of things we did when we were awake. There's another passage, and I wish I had the exact quote, where the same character says he's dreamed of flying, but only when he was awfully close to flying in life. The world of Inception reminded me of that remixing of reality. The elements are familiar but the result is something entirely new. Intruders are attacked by your subconscious memories. Ideas are traceable like viruses; only emotion is our own (and even then, easily manipulated). It also plays upon our greatest fears. Going crazy. Not knowing the difference between life, dream, and death. Suicide. Creative theft. Manipulation. Loneliness. Being trapped inside of our own heads.

This movie is intoxicating in its simplicity of idea and complexity of execution. How I'd love to get inside Christopher Nolan's head for five minutes. He's made the conventional revolutionary. This isn't experimental film; it isn't indie. It's made over $825 million dollars worldwide. It is an almost flawless exercise in the timeless mainstream, transcending pop culture to go straight to classic. We all dream, we all have dreamed, we all will continue to dream for the foreseeable future. (That unforeseeable future is a terrifying dystopia idea in and of itself.) We all try to translate that rehashed dreaming back into the real world somehow, but few succeed. Inception is a tantalizing glimpse at what happens when we do.

As a reviewer, my question as the credits rolled was not the obvious was-it-all-a-dream, though that was certainly playing at the back of my mind (as I'm sure it was designed to do). It was, Why aren't there more stories like this? And seriously, why aren't there? Why do we obey the genre so blindly? (When was the last time you saw a romantic comedy you had to watch all the way through to know how it would end?) As a writer, my question was, How can I tell a story like this? And the bad news, or perhaps the good, is that I can't. The best I or any other aspiring artist can hope for is to create their own collage, dream, and limbo that captivates as many as this one has.

/gush.

Review: Malinche

Malinche by Laura Esquivel
Find it at a local indie!

• Why I read it: Like Water for Chocolate, Mexican history, La Malinche, gorgeous cover
• Disclosure: Bought the hardcover, because seriously, have you seen that cover? Even prettier in person!

Laura Esquivel, la Princesa de la literatura latinoamericana, está de regreso!Su nueva novela Malinche es el extraordinario recuento del trágico y apasionado amor entre el conquistador Hernán Cortés y la india Malinalli, su intérprete durante la conquista del imperio azteca.
Cuando Malinalli conoce a Cortés asume que se trata del propio Dios Quetzalcóatl que regresa a liberar a su pueblo. Los dos se enamoran apasionadamente, pero este amor pronto es destruido por la desmedida sed de conquista, poder y riqueza de Cortés.
A lo largo de la historia de México Malinalli/Malinche ha sido conocida por su traición al pueblo indio. Pero recientes investigaciones históricas han mostrado que Malinalli fue la mediadora entre dos culturas, la hispánica y la americana nativa; y entre dos lenguas, el español y el náhuatl.
Lo que Esquivel ha hecho aquí es desafiar la mitología tradicional mediante un retrato muy temperamental del Adán y la Eva de la cultura mestiza, Cortés y Malinalli, con la caída del imperio azteca como telón de fondo. Contada con el lirismo de la tradición cantarina y pictórica del náhuatl, Laura Esquivel nos brinda un mito fundacional de la cultura híbrida del Nuevo Mundo y una extraordinaria historia de amor.

No, I didn't buy the Spanish version, though I wish I had (more on that later), but I couldn't find the English summary on Goodreads so here goes my rough translation: Hey, it's Laura Esquivel again! The one who wrote Like Water for Chocolate/Como Agua Para Chocolate, a.k.a. the most delicious book never written in the English language that was turned into an equally delicious movie! She's back to tell one of the greatest legends in Mexican history, the love story of Hernan Cortes, the Spaniard that conquered Mexico, and Malinalli, his Nahuatl translator that helped him do it, destroying her own people in the process. It's a fascinating story that still has a powerful impact on Mexican history and culture: think Pocahontas, but grittier. Needless to say, I was thrilled to find this at the dollar store. (How do hardcovers even end up there, anyway?)

Unfortunately by the time I'd finished it I was wondering if Laura Esquivel had lost her touch or if she'd just been saddled with a really, really sucky translator. The writing reads only slightly less clunky than what I'm sure mine does in Spanish, with awkward metaphors and characters we're sure would be more than flat if we could only penetrate their stilted internal monologues. Esquivel commits the deadly author sin of telling far, far more than she shows, making what could have been an interesting exercise in moral ambiguity and the lengths we go to for love into a preachy lesson about how Malinalli has been misunderstood, without ever really explaining why she's been misunderstood.

While I enjoyed Esquivel's well-researched portrait of Nahuatl life, which I knew nothing about, the very blurred line between the magical realism Latin American literature is famous for and history left me confused up until the very end what was driving Malinalli to hate her parents and to have been enslaved. Once those pieces clicked into place, I enjoyed the novel much more, but it happened just too late in the story to engage the reader and left me feeling somewhat used. To be fair, this subtlety is the part I think was lost in translation, and if I had read the Spanish version I might have gotten a lot more out of it. But the writing certainly didn't help, and for that, I'm going to give it two and a half out of five stars, despite its intriguing premise. Unless you're willing to pick up the Spanish version and tell me different, it's nowhere near the genius of Like Water for Chocolate - read Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Isabel Allende instead.

Now Listening: "Creep" by Radiohead.

Double Review, sort of: Flash Burnout and The Mermaid's Mirror

Flash Burnout and The Mermaid's Mirror by L.K. Madigan
Find them at a local indie!

• Why I read them: Hype, William C. Morris Award, Feast of Awesome giveaway
• Disclosure: Received both from the lovely 2009 Debutantes as part of their Spreading the L.K. Madigan Love Feast of Awesome Giveaway. Thanks!

Blurb for Flash Burnout:

Click.
Telephoto lens. Zoom. In a shutter release millisecond, Blake’s world turns upside down. The nameless woman with the snake tattoo is not just another assignment. “That’s my mom!” gasps Marissa.
Click.
Saturated self-portrait: Blake, nice guy, class clown, always trying to get a laugh, not sure where to focus.
Click.
Contrast. Shannon, Blake’s GF. Total. Babe. Marissa, just a friend and fellow photographer. Shannon loves him; Marissa needs him. How is he supposed to frame them both in one shot?
Click.
Chiaroscuro. Lightdark. Marissa again, overexposed. Crash and burn.
Talk about negative space.
Click.

Blurb for The Mermaid's Mirror:

Lena has lived her whole life near the beach — walking for miles up and down the shore and breathing the salty air, swimming in the cold water, and watching the surfers rule the waves — the problem is, she’s spent her whole life just watching.
As her sixteenth birthday approaches, Lena vows she will no longer watch from the sand: she will learn to surf.
But her father — a former surfer himself — refuses to allow her to take lessons. After his near drowning years ago, he can’t bear to let Lena take up the risky sport.
Yet something keeps drawing Lena to the water . . . an ancient, powerful magic. And one morning Lena catches sight of this magic: a beautiful woman — with a silvery tail.
Now nothing can stop Lena from seeking the mermaid, not even the dangerous waves at Magic Crescent Cove.
And soon . . . what she sees in the mermaid’s mirror will change her life forever.

After a lot of thought, I decided trying to review these was an emotional minefield I didn't really want to enter. Even though I didn't know Lisa personally, her passing last month upset me very deeply, and I can't even imagine how those who knew her must feel. So while giving these a totally honest are-they-good-or-bad review is out of the question, I did want to share some thoughts on her work and on the refreshing voice the YA world lost.

Flash Burnout was the first to arrive after I was one of the winners of the 2009 Debutantes' Feast of Awesome giveaway in Lisa's honor, and was also the book I was most interested in reading. The prospect of a teen boy voice written entertainingly, honestly, and well seems to be enough to drive any YA-er into incoherency, and sure enough, Flash Burnout is easily one of the best teen novels I've ever read. I laughed, I held my breath, and I cried, all in the same sitting. It was that good. And it made me think about the teen relationship angst I'm currently in the throes of right now, especially what to do when you know you should break up with a guy's @$$ but also that he means well anyway and it's all complicated and gahhh. Seriously, it's always bothered me that YA always seems to look at the true-love-found or the abusive-relationship sides of teen love, and any book that looks at the shades of gray in between is enough to make me sing. It's rare that I mean it when I say a book is un-put-down-able, but this is that book. (My 14-year-old sister that I passed this on to immediately after finishing it agrees.)

I was more cautious about The Mermaid's Mirror. First of all, I'd heard it ended on a cliffhanger, which is clearly the universe's bad joke. And second, I wasn't sure I wanted to leave the incredible real-ness of Flash Burnout behind for fantasy - even mermaid fantasy, which I freely admit to being a sucker for. Sure enough, when it arrived, I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as I did Flash Burnout, and found the Lena-Kai-Nox triangle particularly grating. But. The way Lena's best friend had two moms and it didn't read like a desperate ploy for diversity. The way that same best friend ends up in a relationship with a college student, and it's not a moral about how Older. Boys. Are. Bad. News. (Even though they are.) The way her dad's remarried and she calls her stepmom "Mom" and they're really close in a totally realistic way (which, as someone who has a stepparent, I can attest to). It makes me really, really, really sad that this is the last book I'll ever read by L.K. Madigan, because she had a tighter grasp on what really makes teens tick than almost any other YA author writing today.

It's a lot like something that's been bugging the crap out of me forever: the belief that listening to My Chemical Romance and The Cure and Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana and Bright Eyes and any other angsty band of my/our choosing is what makes me/teens depressed and issue-ridden. It's a confusion of effect and cause. I don't listen to angsty music because I want to be angry/lonely/depressed, I listen to it because I am angry/lonely/depressed and because sometimes I really need to remember that I'm not the only person who thinks that the world sucks sometimes. Actually, I feel better after I listen to Gerard Way shriek into my ear about not being okay (he promises), because then at least I know that someone "gets it." What makes Flash Burnout and The Mermaid's Mirror so excellent is that L.K. Madigan also "gets it." These books, especially Flash Burnout, are the teen experience in novel form - and for that, for giving us a voice, I am eternally grateful.

Now Listening: "Jiya Jale" by A.R. Rahman.

In My Mailbox/Read This Week

In My Mailbox is a meme hosted by Kristi of The Story Siren about books bought, borrowed, or otherwise (legally) received. And while my real-life mailbox was sadly empty this week, I realized that I'd forgotten to share the review copies for my NOOK received through my inbox that I'm reading this week, and so, without further ado:

Right Side Talking by Bonnie Rozanski.

Imagine that you are a young girl with intractable epilepsy. As a last resort you submit to an operation to sever the connection between the two sides of your brain. Though the operation successfully reduces your seizures, you are left forever with two separate minds: left and right, each unaware of the other.
Imagine further that while recovering in the hospital, you witness a murder. Your dominant left brain cannot recognize unfamiliar faces, and is, therefore, unable to identify the killer. Your right brain can, but is unable to speak. Gradually, painstakingly, the right learns to spell out its thoughts in scrabble letters. At long last, on a table in a hospital lab, you describe the person who committed the crime. Too bad the killer is reading that very same message.….
Right Side Talking is a thriller that will grip the reader from its opening surgery scene to its dramatic courtroom climax. Its cast of characters: a 15-year-old epileptic; a brilliant surgeon; an unlicensed, resentful doctor from abroad who must work as an orderly; a grumpy, relentless detective, and a feisty psychologist Finally, most fascinating of all, there is the human mind itself.

I started reading this one last night and I'm not sure how I feel about the writing, but the premise is fantastic and I can't wait to see how it all turns out!

Outspoken by James Vachowski.

Abraham Lincoln Jenkins is a teenage vandal, social activist, and aspiring revolutionary, but with only four months left until his high school graduation Abraham’s lifelong dream of attending Harvard College is put in jeopardy when he learns that he is still in need of two core credit hours in Physical Education. Unfortunately for Abraham, the only available spaces in a P.E. class are as a cadet in the Army’s JROTC program!
Told almost exclusively through Abraham’s one-sided complaint letters, OUTSPOKEN is the natural result when the War on Terror collides with the War on Christmas.
OUTSPOKEN is a digital short (<18,000 words) and a fast and funny read for both teens and adults.

Gahhh I love this premise to death. I'm pretty sure my family would laugh if they knew I was reading this, because while I'm too square for vandalism, I am certainly a social activist and aspiring revolutionary who would probably die of righteous indignation in the JROTC program. (The fact that I'm out of shape wouldn't help either.) I haven't read much funny stuff lately, so I'm looking forward to it!

What's in your mailbox this week? Please leave your links and titles (along with a thoughtful comment) in the comments section!

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Read This Week

The Mermaid's Mirror by L.K. Madigan

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures by Ann Fadiman (for school, and it was incredible!)