The Oscars are a great cultural conversation for all to participate in, but it’s all too easy to only have surface knowledge of the nominees. It’s all too easy to know “Black Swan” as the ballet movie, “The Fighter” as the boxing movie, and “The Social Network” as the Facebook movie. But don’t you want to know more and stun your friends with your knowledge of the movies in the weeks leading up to the awards and ultimately during the broadcast itself?
That’s what my KNOW YOUR NOMINEES series hopes to do. Every three days, I’ll feature ten interesting facts about the ten Best Picture nominees of 2010 that would be fascinating to pepper into any conversation. My hope is that you will come away with an enhanced appreciation of the movies but also enjoy learning strange and interesting things about them.
So, as we proceed in alphabetical order, our next stop on the tour is “Inception.”
So what was the inception of “Inception?” According to director/screenwriter Christopher Nolan, the movie began as a heist film mainly as a way to provide entertainment and exposition for the complicated dream structure. But concerned with the cold emotional detachment to the characters in a heist film, he began to add the hero’s story to get the audience to connect with the movie.
What’s real and what isn’t was a big talking point about “Inception,” but it may interest you to know what was shot on location (real) and what was shot on a soundstage or studio lot (not real). The snow fortress was a built set, as was Saito’s castle. With a few other exceptions, most scenes were shot on location in Tokyo, Paris, Mombasa, Los Angeles, and a small town in Nolan’s home country, England.
How about that spectacular anti-gravity fight scene in the hotel hallway. According to Christopher Nolan, Joseph Gordon-Levitt did all his own stunts for the scene, only using a double out of necessity for one scene. The scene was done by creating a spinning set, not through CG.
Another fantastically well-executed scene of mind-blowing visual proportions was the scene at the Parisian café where the city implodes. How did they shoot that? According to cinematographer Wally Pfister, they used a camera that captures 1,500 frames per second (in contrast to the average camera which captures 24) to create the slow-motion effect. In post-production, the visuals team added effects to make the objects look like they were floating. (Everything was shot out of air cannons for the explosion effect.)
Throughout the second half of the movie, we saw plenty of the van falling off the bridge. But what you might not know about this scene is that it took months to film and entire days were dedicated to the shot. But it gets better: the van was shot out of an air cannon and when the van hit the water, the actors actually had to stay underwater for four to five minutes holding their breath and taking air from a tank. How’s that for dedication?
The ensemble cast turned out perfectly, but it wasn’t always what it was. Before shooting, Evan Rachel Wood was slated to play Ariadne but dropped out and the role went to Ellen Page. Another big casting shift was the exit of James Franco, who was originally cast to play Arthur, due to scheduling issues; the role ultimately went to Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
Fans of Marion Cotillard got a chuckle when they heard “Non, je ne regrette rien,” the closing song of the film “La Vie En Rose” which won her an Oscar for Best Actress. The title means “No, I regret nothing” when translated literally into English. Was it a clever nod to her previous role? Actually, no. Nolan and composer Hans Zimmer chose the song before Cotillard became attached to the project because of its booming rhythmic qualities, not because of its association with the actress.
Many people have seen “Inception” as a metaphor for filmmaking, and Nolan has said that these musings aren’t entirely off-base. But the craft he was most interested in exploring was architecture. In an interview with WiReD, he stated, “I’m very interested in the similarities or analogies between the way in which we experience a three–dimensional space that an architect has created and the way in which an audience experiences a cinematic narrative that constructs a three–dimensional -reality from a two-dimensional medium—assembled shot by shot. I think there’s a narrative component to architecture that’s kind of fascinating.”
NEWS FLASH: The kids at the end of the movie are not the same as the ones before! Adjust your explanations of “Inception” as necessary.
Don’t worry, no top theories here. Only some insight on where the idea came from – not exactly inception. Nolan gave a top as a gift to his wife and then rediscovered it, incorporating it into “Inception.” The one used in the movie was symbolically designed by the prop department to represent Cobb’s universe.
Check back on February 7 as the KNOW YOUR NOMINEES series continues with “The Kids Are All Right.”
George Clooney’s “The Ides of March” makes plenty of references to the brokenness of the American political system, something you can observe by merely turning on the news nowadays. But perhaps the most problematic indicator of the nation’s shortcomings is how easily the film can be read as a black comedy. Clooney and co-writer Grant Heslov’s script is chock full of cruel ironies, many of which are veiled references to various political scandals. And the very liberal Clooney is all too happy to throw Bill Clinton, and to some extent, Barack Obama, under the bus.
Marshall and the Movies 
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