Inception

Over the last few weeks there has been a fair amount of discussion surrounding Inception, and when I say a fair amount I mean critics can't seem to stop arguing about it. This discussion has even invoked meta-critisism of how we view movies in general (AKA A.O. Scott's article today in the New York Times). So I was left wondering, at this late date is there even anything left to say about this movie? So I'm going to give an balanced reivew, and I'm also going to adress some of the major concerns that other critics seem to constantly bring up. And finally spoiler alert, because I'm planning on going into the movie relativly deeply and that requires discussion of the ending.

The most simple way to describe Inception is that it's a film directed by Christopher Nolan about dreams. Of course it's actually much more complicated than that. The film follows Cobb, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, a man who breaks into peoples dreams and steals their ideas for the benefit of the corporations that he's hired by. However for this film he's hired by the leader of a major corporation (Ken Watabe) to plant an idea in the mind of the son of one of his rivals(Cillian Murphy), this idea being to break up his fathers company. However this process called Inception is very difficult, and it involves drawing the target into dreams within dreams within dreams and tricking them to plant the idea themselves in the third layer. The benefit of doing this job for Cobb is that because he's an international criminal he can't return to his two children in the U.S., and Ken Watabe is able to grant him access to the United States.

That was my attempt at a plot summary, and it's very basic and missing several elements. So as you've seen Inception is complicated and several of my friends and even a few critics (Entertainment Weekley's Owen Gleiberman) have been completly baffled by Inception because they're unable to follow the plot. I'd just like to say contrary to popular opinion that Inception is not a mindfuck, in fact it's not even close to being one. Yes the plot is intricate and occasionally several things are happening at once but it always spells out to you what is happening. For instance there's this idea of how do we ever know is we're in a dream or not. Some people I know spent the entire movie unsure if what was happening was actually happening. But because of the devise of the top it's always very clear. The only part where that's left ambiguous is the ending and that's just to create some room for interpretation. Yes it's complicated, but in terms of structure it's a simple heist movie with a twist. If you want something that's actually confusing watch Christopher Nolan's own Memento or 2001: A Space Odyssey. So if you actually pay attention you shouldn't leave Inception completly baffled.

Speaking of 2001, I'd like to talk about probably my favorite thing in Inception which is the imagery. Nolan uses these dream sequences to toss us from one massive set piece moment to the next and it's really thrilling. First there's a crazy van chase, then straight to Joseph Gordon Levitts rotating hallway fight (one of my favorite movie moments in a long time), then straight to the giant crumbling skyscrapers of Leonardo DiCaprio's limbo world. He never stops throwing new stuff at the audience. I mean it really takes a special director to create four separate dream sequences all happening inside of each other happening real time with the events of all of them effecting the others. Basically the editing and direction is out of this world.

However Nolan still seems to be struggling with his main issue as a filmmaker, which is his unemotional storytelling. While Nolan does do a create job with his imagery and concepts, he shafts possibly one of the movie key things in any movie which is emotion. The one human element in the entire film is Cobb's relationship to his wife ( Marion Coltiard)and despite the superb acting of DiCaprio and Coltiard I had a huge amount of trouble caring about their relationship. Basically there's no emotional payoff in the ending. How am I supposed to care about two faceless children that I never meet? It's also dissapointing that he dosn't spend very much time with his non-Dicaprio characters. He has a terrific cast who play their characters very well (especially Thomas Hardy who steals every scene he's in) and I loved seeing them interact, but the relaitionships went nowhere because the film is overly obsessed with it's own exposition. Therefore Ellen Page's character simply becomes a devise for revealing plot details rather than an interesting an layered character (all of her dialouge basically goes like, "How does this work Leonardo Dicaprio?" "Well it works like...").

Then finally there's the issue of dreams themselves. In Memento Nolan toyed with this idea of memory, which was interesting because we have a very defined idea of how memory works. But no one really knows how dreams work, and when I've talked to people about this it seems everyone dreams differently. For most people I've talked to dreams don't take place in defined spaces like in Inception, they feel much more hazy and surreal. So the fact that he make's them these very straightforward defined spaces feels like a missed opportunity. But also there's this Freudian take on dreams, in which dreams express the way we truely feel about ourselves and our relationships. So the complete lack of that in Inception is dissapointing, but another example of Nolan's key weakness as a director. There's nothing more emotional than our dreams, yet he makes them all about technology and science.

So Inception is an incredibly well made film with several interesting concepts, but it's nowhere near being a perfect film. But it's a huge amount of fun to watch, and it's nice to see a big budget film that actually requires you to leave your brain on. So go see Inception, I really liked it.