Inception (Review/Essay)

Warning: This post contains spoilers for multiple movies.

I've put off writing this review because I think this movie is causing a lot of knee-jerk reactions. Whether from Nolan disciples who have been slavering for it for a year and a half loving every second, or people on the other side of the aisle who either genuinely hate the director or are just being anti-populist. Personally, when the movie was announced, my reaction was "wow, what a cast, but I'm not all that fussed." Then the trailer came out and my reaction was "wow, what a cast, but I'm not all that fussed." Then I saw the movie and my reaction was "wow, what a cast, but I'm not all that fussed." After letting it stew and thinking about it for a few days, that opinion hasn't changed. I'm not rushing out to see it again, nor will I, nor am I picketing the movie theater because I hate it so much. I have good things to say about the movie, and negative things, and I present them here.

I'll start with the first thing that piqued my interest in this film: the cast. Christopher Nolan now has enough power in Hollywood he can amass some of the best ensembles of any given year, but can he always handle them? First of all, I don't think the man is sexist but he's pretty terrible at directing women. His female characters range from uninteresting and almost unnecessary (Carrie-Anne Moss in Memento, Hilary Swank in Insomnia) to godawful (Scarlett Johansson in Prestige, both Maggie Gyllenhaal and Katie Holmes in the Batman movies). But Inception provides us, finally, with a strong female character. Marion Cotillard gives a very strong performance as the film's femme fatale. She is easily Nolan's best female to date, and she holds her own against the men, something women in Nolan movies have never done up to this point.

The film's other female doesn't fare as well. I'll admit I'm not a fan of Ellen Page. I think her characters in Juno and Hard Candy are two of the most detestable people ever put on film. My loathe for them makes me think I couldn't stand to be in a room with the actress who portrayed them. When I saw she was part of the cast I thought she'd ruin it. She doesn't, but she certainly doesn't help. Her character is the fish-out-of-water here. She's the audience for the most part. She exists so other, smarter characters can, even in the middle of action scenes, lean over and say "by the way, Ellen Page, this is what's happening!" What's annoying is she starts off knowing nothing yet by the end is, by some interpretations, the most powerful character in the film. Why? She has no growth and even during the climax she's still being explained the rules. She also looks like a child physically and skill-wise against the rest of the cast. There's many younger actresses who could have filled her shoes to alleviate this problem, but the character would remain the exposition-catcher.

Where the female members of the cast can fail, their counterparts can shine. And in Inception, boy do they ever. First of all, I'd like to state my bias towards the two male leads. Leonardo DiCaprio and Joseph Gordon-Levitt are probably my two favorite actors, they could be cast in Dictionary: The Movie where they simply read Webster's and don't even face the camera and I'd think their performances would be Oscar-worthy. That's the case here. Leo shines as he always does and Gordon-Levitt is, in my eyes, not just the best young actor working today, but the best period. He steals virtually every scene and is criminally underused, as he is in every movie he's in (even when he's the star).

The rest of the supporting cast is strong for the most part, but none stand out like Tom Hardy's Eams. He's an actor who seemingly came out of nowhere to become this film's action hero. I also subscribe to the unpopular internet theory that his character is gay, adding a whole different level to his badassery. Cillian Murphy does his standard supporting job and Ken Watanabe and Dileep Rao are nothing much to write home about. DiCaprio and Gordon-Levitt carry the weight in this movie and Hardy is the surprise, so not much room is left for anyone else in the cast.

Another positive thing about this film is Hans Zimmer's score. Zimmer is one of the great composers and he doesn't fail to disappoint here. Yes, it's very reminiscent of his Batman scores but it's different enough to hold its own. This video shows one of the interesting things done with the music. The problem with this score is that it's overused. There's hardly a point in the film where there isn't music. It gives the film a frantic feel it doesn't need, it makes impossible to catch one's breath and take in what's going on, it forces emotion unnecessarily, and above all just makes the whole thing loud. One could appreciate the score so much more if it were better used throughout the film.

The coming paragraphs will sound like a lot of complaining (trust me) but that doesn't mean I don't think Nolan doesn't have an original thought in his head. Now I'm the last person who would complain about the overabundance of sequels, but it is nice to every now and then see something new (or at least has the appearance of new, it's very hard to be completely original these days). I also think Inception was a nice break from the traditional over-stimulation of the summer season. Yes, this is odd coming from someone who calls Speed Racer one of the artistic achievements of the last decade, but every now and then you like to see what's going on in a frame. And Nolan and his cinematographer Wally Pfister deliver in that aspect. I would comment on the "lack" of computer graphics in the movie, but that would be disingenuous. Yes, Nolan will choose miniatures or practical effects when he can, but truthfully, Inception contains just as much CG as any other $160 million summer blockbuster. The director just integrates it better and uses it less gratuitously. To say he uses less CG than, say, John Favreau does in Iron Man is simply choosing to be ignorant and ignoring the obvious.

Here, I'm going to get complicated and wordy. I'll try to stay on track and not digress from my points. Stay with me.

Inception deals with dreams. That's what they're called in the film, they're defined as subconscious worlds and projections during sleep. That's a dream. I've seen in places people say that "dream" is movie jargon and that's not actually what they are. This is a frankly moronic interpretation. Yes there's jargon in the film ("kick" for example), but that jargon makes sense and really has no equivalent here in the non-movie world. Saying what goes on in Inception is not dreams is like saying Rosebud is not a sled in Citizen Kane. They basically tell us it's a sled, sled imagery is everywhere, Rosebud is a sled. "Sled" is not Citizen Kane jargon for "open-faced ham sandwich" just like "dream" is not Inception jargon for "computer simulation created by an architect and populated by a subject's subconscious". That describes something we've seen in film before, only in that film it's called "The Matrix".

Ok now that we've established dreams as the main realm of action in the film I can get to my first big beef with it: the dreams aren't very dreamlike. Call me nitpicky all you want but in a movie about dreams I think the subject needs to be portrayed better. The dreams in Inception are very linear, easy things. You could say this is because the architect designs them that way, preventing the weirdness we all know actually happens in dreams, but I think that's a bullshit excuse.

The oddest things that happen in the dreams aren't even because of the dreams, they happen because the body outside the dream is being effected. The hallway in the hotel is surely the strangest, dream-like thing that happens in the movie. But it doesn't happen because the dream is acting like a dream and being weird, it happens because the dreamer is spinning in a car.

What's a better representation of dreams in film? Satoshi Kon's Paprika. Similarities between these two movies abound, so I'll be mentioning it a lot. Paprika is about a scientist who enters people's dreams using a special machine and helps them analyze what they may mean. Then peoples' dreams start merging with the real world. And the dreams in the film are weird. They shift perspective and location and even artistic style on a dime, while the characters have to avoid giant dolls, butterfly men, and girls shaped like cell phones. That is what dreams look like, and I expected Inception would be a bit more insane. One could argue you can't be Paprika-insane in a mainstream Hollywood movie and my counter to that is: why not? Inception is supposedly the first movie since the original Matrix that's making people think, what would be so wrong in making them think a little harder?

On that note, I think it's a good thing that people are thinking about a movie beyond "that was coool" or "I liked it". But I think to call Inception intelligent and to place it among the films that have a lot going on under the surface as some have is wrong. Everything going on in the film, all the hints and images and nuances (if they could be called that) apply to nothing beyond the plot (and perhaps character, but even that is another plot point). All the arguments and debates going on on forums and blogs and in offices aren't about the meaning of the film, they're about what happened. That, to me, does not make an intelligent film. Now, there's nothing wrong with not being a smart film, I love films that have nothing going on past what you see. I think great films can have nuances that apply only to the film itself. Lord of the Rings is a great example of this. All the tiny details in those movies aren't metaphors or analogies, they're callbacks to earlier films in the trilogy or character parallels. There's nothing wrong with that. What's wrong is to act like a film is genius when really, it's not.

There are no arguments about plot with the great intelligent movies. We can all agree exactly what happened in The Matrix (which, yes, is one of the great intelligent movies, and has a lot in common with Inception, which is why I'm using it as an example). But we can discuss and debate forever about the meaning behind what happened. A debate about Inception sounds a lot like: "well this led to this then we saw this and if you squint you can see that, and THAT'S why I think you're wrong about it all being a dream starting at 95 minutes and not 92". That's not depth, that's plot.

One could argue there's depth beyond plot in Inception, if one could stop debating about plot long enough to do so. Basically, it could be an allegory for filmmaking. You have characters that represent writers, directors, producers, and the audience. This is not a new idea. Both Paprika and Matrix are allegories for filmmaking and entertainment, this is not something new Inception is introducing, or even doing in a new way. But what Paprika and Matrix have is even more depth than that. Matrix is loaded with religious and philosophical imagery, as well as potential debates about technology and even environmentalism. Paprika (and most of Kon's movies) aren't just about movies, dreams, and blurring the lines in between reality and fantasy, it's also about a woman using her sexuality to manipulate men. Kon explores this theme in his series Paranoia Agent as well. In Paprika this can best be seen when Paprika is trying to wake up her friend from a dream he can't get out of. She lays on top of his dream-self and seductively says "I have something for you." He responds "is it a square," which is weird like a dream should be, but Paprika melts into him and he pops. She woke him up with an orgasm. Nothing remotely that detailed happens in Inception that isn't just trying to hint as to who's dreaming when.

Which leads me into my other complaint: Inception is too ambiguous. Far too much is left up to the viewer's imagination. I'm all for leaving some things out, I think it leads to more discussion, but Nolan goes way too far. There are, as I kind of joked about above, about half a dozen points in the film where it all could start to be a dream. Or the whole thing is. Or none of it is. All the characters could be in Dom Cobb's head. Or just some of them. Or just his wife. Or none of them. Ellen Page could plant an inception in Cobb at the beginning of the mission the team goes on. Or at the end. Or not at all. These are too many options. This is why there isn't more depth beyond plot. Even debating the nature of Cobb's character (and he's the only character fleshed out enough to have a nature) is only to come to a more concrete conclusion as to what the hell happened. Do I sound like I didn't get it? No, I followed it quite easily. The editing was done incredibly well, I was never lost or confused. I took it all at face value and am on team "the top fell and it was real" for what I think happened at the end. But the fact that there are no less than three schools of thought just over the last shot point to too much ambiguity.

The word I'd use to describe the movie because of its over-ambiguity yet discussability is "pseudo-intellectual". It gives the illusion of being intelligent when it really wasn't. The hater in me likes to think this was purposeful, that Nolan knew what he was doing: making a movie that people perceive is smart yet is really just complicated enough for general audiences to think more than 5 seconds about and for his rabid fanbase to debate for eternity. This probably isn't the case, but that doesn't make Inception any more intelligent. The problem is Nolan is a very polarizing director these days and sometimes you want to take a side. For the record, I'm on neither side. I don't think he's either a genius or a hack. The Prestige is my favorite film of his, so, what do I know?

My last two points I'll admit are a wee bit nitpicky. First of all, I don't think Nolan can direct an action sequence. He can't decide if he wants to emulate Michael Mann, Paul Greengrass, or the Wachowskis. Sometimes he'll linger on a long, encompassing shot, and then all of a sudden he switches to quick cuts and handheld shots. It makes it hard to follow characters in his action scenes, particularly when they're all dressed in similarly-colored suits in nondescript hotel rooms.

And lastly, and I hate when this happens because it's no fault of any of the filmmakers, Inception blew its load in the trailer. The big 3 money shots: the train barreling down a crowded street, the city folding in on itself, and the spinning hallway are all in the trailer. Sure, that spinning hallway is damn cool, but the awe it, or any of the other shots, could have inspired was gone the moment they showed up in marketing material.

I think I have said everything I wanted to about this film. If you didn't understand, I liked it, but "best of the year", I think not. I'm not yearning much to see it again either. It felt too long for me to do that. That's another shot against it I guess, it really felt quite long. I say people need to at least see it in the theater, but please, curb your enthusiasm. It's not the crowning achievement of the decade, or even the year. And it's not the smartest film you'll ever see, not by a long shot. My review boils down to: Inception is like if Paprika and Matrix got married, stopped having sex, got fat, and forgot why they love each other.