Inception

I’d thrown together a discussion about the movie right after I’d seen it. Only one problem: everyone on the internet did too. Even people who don’t talk about movies. So I decided to just let things cool for a while, come back to the review, and then write a few things in a simple format.

Pros:

1. The film is definitely cool looking if nothing else. Nolan is a god of special effects that look like they’re “real”. Even Cameron’s Avatar and Jackson’s King Kong are guilty of looking like they don’t take place in the same space and time as their subjects. Nolan is grueling in his love of organic effects. Take the hallway/hotel room gravity scenes. When I originally saw the trailer for the scenes I was annoyed. How did he do it? I came to the conclusion that Nolan built big, fake sets and spun them like a top with actors inside. And so he did. Granted much is done with computer generated images, but to a different degree. Things don’t look synthetic. Or should I say, too synthetic.

2. Slowly science-fiction is being molded into the mainstream. This isn’t a thing I care much about. I have always been pro-science fiction and fantasy. I read Wizards First Rule and Sphere before I was ten. I even know what a Shrike is. But my point is Avatar and Inception don’t seem like fiction people would get invested in. Then why do they? I’m not sure. The love story and special effects in Avatar went well with most people. But why Inception? It is hard-core, nonsensical science-fiction. It is like a Philip K. Dick novel rolled into a Michael Bay film. Maybe it is the Bay part that people love? I think it comes from the very humanizing story of loss that is devastating in DiCaprio’s story.

Cons:

1. The story of loss could have been better and more devastating. Nolan was forced to pack in the action wall-to-wall. This isn’t a problem. The film had to be exciting for everyone. A film that was more psychological, Eternal Sunshine of Spotless Mind, was more devastating in its approach toward loss, memory, love, and dreams. I don’t think Inception will ever be essential. Maybe great, but never essential. I always base essential movies on the fact if I had twenty movies to be shot into space with, what movies I’d take with me. I don’t know if Inception will be one of them. Nolan could have spent more time on these ideas, but he wasn’t making a five hour melodrama. He was making a blockbuster. One isn’t better than the other, they’re just different.

Instead, I still imagine a version where Nolan scaled down the action and went a more terrifying approach. What would it be like if you could really actively approached dead or alive loved ones in your dreams? There are infinite ideas to be approached here. Anyone who takes issue with the film were probably fantasizing about these questions as well. There were inevitable discussions about how Kubrick or Charlie Kaufman would have approached these ideas. Maybe better, but would it have been seen? But then again, if Nolan had gone a more psychological route, it could have been long, boring, and make you want to put a pistol in your mouth at the end. For such a film, check out either version of Solaris.

2. A film like this gets over-analyzed. I walked away from the film pretty clear headed. Not because I understood the film up and down. But I knew there was really not much to get. It isn’t a film you understand because it is complete nonsense. It is visceral, not intellectual. Much of the film’s psychological and technological approach is fiction. The only thing to understand is what Nolan gives us, which is his own laws of the universe. Not ours. If anything, it is the films greatest asset that he makes people believe what they’re seeing makes sense and relate it to reality. If the dream sequences were a computer game I don’ t think people would be arguing about it as much. It didn’t help that Nolan through up an open-ending.

Released: Summer 2010

Collin says: A

You’ll say: A