In Which Ellen Page Could Be Described As Incidental

Two Becomes One

by ALEX CARNEVALE

Beyond: Two Souls
creator David Cage

On the inside, the deep inside, are you aching to watch Ellen Page as a CIA agent gone rogue? Think about this, and realize that French auteur and all-around good guy David Cage has made it so that you can play as a four year old Ellen Page. Marking other people's graves there will be other accomplishments, but for David Cage there can be but one.

david cage watches them so closely

Jodie Holmes (an ELECTRIC Ellen Page) has lived with a spirit all her life. In the axiomatic, potentially libelous language of The U.S.A., this means this being comes from the Infraworld and must be used as a mercenary by the CIA. There was no one else to do this job but Ellen Page. Basically no one could look as good in so many different outfits.

When you think about it, most any job is more properly filled by Ellen Page. She can crow about how her shirt sucks and she got stains on her moccasins, doesn't this totally ruin an otherwise Ellen Page-worthy day?

you don't look a day over 900

French developer Quantic Dream uses advanced motion capture techniques to do the impossible - make Willem Dafoe look any age less than 90. Ellen's mo-cap begins to go awry from ages 8-16: Beyond: Two Souls covers her entire lifespan, including a completely unproductive goth phase. Before she goes out on state-sponsored assassination missions, she must cast aside the pendulous responsibilities of her bat mitzvah:

She is watched by men at all times, Ellen Page is. They want to harm her emotionally, usually, or beat her up. In a bar once, she murders three men who try to rape her. Cage follows this bromide of a scene with a lengthy sequence in which Page's Holmes finds a spiritual connection with some Native Americans.

Because of her service to her country, there is a deep and abiding possibility that Ellen Page could be nominated as the President of the United States. We are just dumb enough to convince ourselves of something like this, Cage opines. All his favorite movies (chief among them Requiem for a Dream quite obviously) and games are American, and Beyond: Two Souls plays out, in its segmented vignettes, like a collection or a compendium of his obsession with our country.

Hailed for his ability to bring true human emotion into gameplay, the character models of Beyond: Two Souls are so realistic that Ellen Page's presence is palpable, and if she overstays her welcome, just be glad that there's no abortion message in there. Oh wait there was one.

Ms. Page actually had to dispel some vicious rumors when the lifelike model of actress Ashley Jensen in The Last of Us tread on her recognizable image by resembling EP too closely. People kept going on tweeter and congratulating her about her performance, the one she never made. (It might have been too familiar a compliment long before The Last of Us ever came to be.)

"um, ms. page, she doesn't really look very much like you" "EVERYONE LOOKS SOMETHING LIKE ME BRENDA" Instead of having the good grace to recognize that not every brunette was her clone, Page issued a warning. She wrote in letters a sociopath cuts out of a magazine, and it said "don't tread on my IP" and there was, for some reason, an emoji after that. (If intellectual property belongs to Ellen Page, it is usually called EP after its Oscar-nominated namesake, Ellen Page.)

She could have further explained, but her new game was not out yet. She could have said, "Guys I have a spirit named Aiden inside of me in my next game, Beyond: Two Souls. Would you be willing to play as a spirit inside me? Sounds good, doesn't it? Chris Evans looks like a hunk of cheese up close. See you guys."

Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording.

"Infallible" - Pearl Jam (mp3)

"Sleeping By Myself" - Pearl Jam (mp3)

In Which Inception Dreams Of Us Beneath The Surface

Blind Night Errand

by BEN LANSKY

Inception

dir. Christopher Nolan

148 minutes

Movies are often talked about as though they’re America’s dreams, like surveillance tapes of the collective unconscious. Movies are analyzed to find out who we are today, and what’s brewing beneath the surface of daily news (maybe journalism is to fiction as waking life is dreams). The liberal arts student in me finds this take compelling, but I’m also skeptical, since movies are of course designed to make money and tend to be financed, produced, and directed by people of extraordinary privilege and wealth. Avatar, for example, probably reveals less about America’s unconscious concerns than it does about James Cameron’s. It’s unclear whether the “dream interpretation” approach to movies is a useful way of understanding ourselves.

If movies are windows into the American psyche, then what to make of those that dramatize the unconscious mind at work? A bunch of recent examples spring to mind (The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus; Synecdoche, New York, Pan’s Labyrinth, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), but of course it’s a legacy dating back to The Wizard of Oz (spoiler alert, sorry). One theory: just as movies are metaphorical dreams, maybe dreams are metaphorical movies, and the postmodern refractions of Gilliam, Gondry, et al are attempts to represent the uniquely contemporary experience of daily life crowded with alternate experiences, with scenes and stories from other people’s lives. Movies about dreams might be dreams about movies.

Inception has been called both a masterpiece and an object of delusional hype. If you’re reading this, my guess is that you’ve already read some other review somewhere, so I won’t go too far into explaining the premise: a group of very well dressed, good looking “extractors” (con artists who specialize in sneaking into people’s dreams to steal information) are tasked with “inception,” the implantation of an idea, which sets in motion a Mission Impossible-type heist caper set in Cillian Murphy’s subconscious. Meanwhile, lead extractor Dom Cobb (Leo) is tormented by visions of his dead wife, who routinely tries to sabotage his missions within dreamland.

Peevish reviewers — and point-missers everywhere — have observed that it technically should be unconscious mind, not subconscious. Even Wikipedia gets all sassy about it, reporting that “the term subconscious is used in many different contexts and has no single or precise definition. This greatly limits its significance as a meaning-bearing concept, and in consequence the word tends to be avoided in academic and scientific settings.” But I’m glad that the term “unconscious mind” isn’t used, because that is clearly not where the movie’s action unfolds.

The unconscious mind, as Freud had it, is the seat of desire, fear, instinct, appetite, trauma, and so on: it’s a wilderness, swampy and overgrown, its inhabitants feral, its images distorted and surreal. That’s not what Inception imagines: the artificially-induced dreaming that the movie depicts is a technology, not an organic process, and the “subconscious” of its shared dreamscape is orderly and realistic, clean and spacious.

The setting of the movie inside the mind isn’t arbitrary, but it is a means to an end. Apparently dreams play by Narnia rules, where minutes in the real world amount to hours in the dream, and days in the dream-within-a-dream. Due to this conceit, the movie is a structural marvel, and its method of storytelling is dazzling: the narrative arcs are strung from one another like the balanced wires of a hanging mobile, and all of the (seemingly unending) exposition serves to create a space within which this unique and intricate structure can take shape. (Grammar nerds: if conventional narrative is paratactic, Inception is hypotactic.)

These strengths are more or less uncontested. The movie’s detractors complain that Inception has no heart, that it’s a mere action flick rather than an emotionally mature work. But the whole tortured-by-grief widower thing totally had me, and was less contrived than anything else onscreen. It’s central to the plot, it includes Inception's cleverest twist, and it holds plenty of emotional wallop: a sudden image of (significance-laden) billowing curtains made me gasp in the movie theater. It is pretty crummy that the two female leads (Marion Cotillard as the specter of Leo’s dead wife, Ellen Page as the extraction n00b who needs everything spelled out) are moreso plot-advancers than people; but they’re much richer characters than the merely instrumental roles played by Joseph Gordon Levitt, Tom Hardy, Dileep Rao, Ken Watanabe, Cillian Murphy, etc, all of them tools in the purest sense.

Hardy makes the best of his part, trying his damnedest to charm the audience into looking up his name on IMDb when they get home. Murphy, skeletal cipher that he is, delivers his few flat lines as though hypnotized. But flimsy as the parts are, the women have the most to work with after Leo. It’s Page’s character (Ariadne) who enters Dom Cobb's mind, and repeatedly confronts him about his derangement; these scenes are played with a dark, weird intimacy. They don’t know each other very well, but she’s toured some of his most personal memories.

Somebody once said that Buffy the Vampire Slayer's satire is based on literalizing metaphor — that when a student remarks that the school principal is a monster, the principal does then turn out to actually be a monster. Inception is up to something similar, making the mind a stage and embodying the tormented memory of a dead loved one as an antagonist. It's typically considered bad writing when characters "speak their subtext," declaring aloud the motives and feelings that should be conveyed through the actors' performance. But Inception is about subtext as text.

I have a theory about why some critics might not be moved. In photography (I’m told), black-and-white images work best when they include both “true black” and “true white.” If the image’s shades only span the spectrum of grays, then it’s un-anchored. Black appears darkest, and white brightest, when juxtaposed with the other. The same is likely true for drama: the low notes of guilt, fear, and conflict are felt much more fully when set against the high notes of levity and humor. Inception takes itself very seriously, and deserves to; but if audiences aren’t moved by the hero’s tragic romance, it’s probably because Inception’s emotional range is narrowed by the absence of jokes. I can only remember two.

One of Inception's key tropes is the maze, and keeping up with the puzzling story is just challenging enough to resemble playing a game. Several reviewers have remarked that Inception needs to be seen twice to be understood. I disagree, but I would totally go see it again.

Ben Lansky is a contributor to This Recording. He is a writer living in Portland. This is his first appearance in these pages. You can find his website here.

"Field" - Mount Kimbie (mp3)

"Between Time" - Mount Kimbie (mp3)

"Blind Night Errand" - Mount Kimbie (mp3)

In Which Ellen Page Fills Our Heart To The Brim

the iTunes Playlist: Ellen Page

Oh to be Ellen Page! We already want to be a lesbian, and Ellen takes it up to another level. All music is new to Ellen. She heard of music about three months ago when Sean Penn told her who Eddie Vedder was. Ellen was produced via an immaculate conception somewhere in Halifax, much like Howard Norman's classic novel of the city, and one of our favorite books of all time, The Museum Guard.

Ellen probably has an addiction to cute pills, otherwise it would be difficult to look like this all the time. I wonder if when she stares at Alison Janney and Catherine Keener she thinks that is what she will become. Diane Keaton is v. jealous of Ellen. Jack Nicholson is jealous of Ellen. Fuck, we all are. Being a cute little lesbian like Ariel Schrag in Potential is pretty much as good as it gets.

The celebrity playlist she made for iTunes follows.

"Possibly Maybe" - Bjork (mp3)

I adore Bjork. The swan dress and all. This is probably my favorite song by her. Feels like someone stuck in their head while falling for another, but not knowing how the other individual feels. Intense, beautiful, and scary.

"Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl" - Broken Social Scene (mp3)

I would love if some sort of machine existed that could tell me just how many times I have listened to this song. I guess iTunes tracks it, but I only recently got into this iTunes thingy. Anyway, the point of that ramble is to say that I adore this song. Emily Haynes (from Metric) singing with Broken Social Scene. It's just a cosmic blend of awesomeness.

"Wild is the Wind" - Cat Power (mp3)

I am crazy about Cat Power, she is one of my favorite musicians. I could create an entire playlist with just her songs actually. In any event, here is a cover of 'Wild is the Wind' that paralyzes me. It is so gorgeous.

"Honey or Tar" - CocoRosie (mp3)

This song is beautiful, still, but very dirty. Elements that I love compacted into one stunning song. CocoRosie is fantastic.

"Gymnopedies, No. 1 (Bank of America)" - Erik Satie

Erik Satie's music is the score for my favorite film, The 400 Blows. I cannot even describe how his music makes me feel. So simple, but full of so much emotion.

"En Gallop" - Joanna Newsom (mp3)

When I first heard Joanna Newsom, I immediately fell in love. She was all I listened to for awhile. Both of her albums are insanely amazing. This song fills my heart to the brim.

ellen & catherine keener are the same person at different times

"You Love Me" - Kimya Dawson (mp3)

Kimya Dawson inspires me to no end. She has an enormous heart. She is one of those people that makes me feel better about being in this world. This song is extremely touching.

"Please" - Mary Gauthier (mp3)

This album was just recently introduced to me. I am loving Mary Gauthier. Her voice blows me away.

"In a Manner of Speaking" - Nouvelle Vague (mp3)

I was obsessed with this song at one point. There are no words.

"Ice Cream" - New Young Pony Club (mp3)

Wow, all the music so far is incredibly beautiful and also very mellow. So here is one that makes me feel sugar high. It makes me feel other things too...as in it gets me pretty excited...tee hee.

"Break It Up" - Patti Smith (mp3)

Patti Smith is one of my icons. This song is from one of my personal favorite albums of all time, Horses. It makes me want to tear off my clothes and run through a field or something. Is that weird?

"Entertain" - Sleater-Kinney (mp3)

This song makes me freak out, basically when I listen to it I can't control myself. For intense, their album Woods should never be playing if I am driving. I love these girls, but I am also totally jealous, because I will never be them.

"Love Will Tear Us Apart" - Susanna and the Magical Orchestra (mp3)

This song knocks me out. It is so beautiful, honest, and sad. Sends a feeling straight to my gut.

"Lover's Spit" - Broken Social Scene (mp3)

Leslie Feist singing this Broken Social Scene song...need I say more? Let's just make out.