Inception

[rsbeck]

I admired Inception, but I didn't love it.

I'm a big Christopher Nolan fan and one of my favorite movies of all time is Memento.

To me, he's one of those guys whose movies are always worth checking out to see what he's doing.

I agree with Steve that there is a very interesting premise at the center of this film, but that premise is one that you think through, which, IMO, is the result of faulty story telling.

Nolan works double and triple time making up for the lack of interest we have in these characters. He's got plot coming out of his wazoo and man that's gotta hurt. He's got three and four overlapping, cutting slapping, zing-pow editing plots going sometimes.

Is it a film or a graduate course in film comprehension? It's two candy mints in one and it's a lot of work. By the end, I felt like my brain had gone 15 rounds with Mike Tyson. I checked both ears to make sure they were still intact. I like cerebral movies, but I like to do my thinking after the movie is over. When this movie was over, I wanted to turn my mind off and give it a rest.

Part of the problem, IMO, is that the premise is what is called "on the nose" rather than employing symbolism, metaphor or allegory.

This means the premise and all of it's rules, definitions, by-laws, and everything else has to be spelled out for you with tons of expositional dialogue. I'll give you an example of what I mean. Let's pick one everyone will know. In Star Wars, Obi Wan tells Luke to "use the force." We all get very intuitively what he means so he does not have to spell it out. In fact, it is ambiguous enough that we can also project something of our own onto the concept. This has the effect something like holding a mirror up to another mirror. Yo get meanings bouncing off each other and you just understand it -- you don't need a notebook by your side to keep it all together.

Take another one; Blade Runner. The replicants have several problems. These problems are all metaphors for the human condition and once again, after you hear them described, you're off to the races. When the film is over, you can think about all of the various themes as long or as little as you like. It's the mirror effect.

Inception asks the question, "where do ideas originate?" Then, it answers that question. Interesting question, interesting answer and I give Nolan all the credit in the world for taking the question and turning it into a non-stop action film. But, there's no intuitive feel, no metaphor, no mirror effect. These aren't really characters, they're vessels of information needed to explain the concepts. The closest Nolan comes to meaningful symbolism is when the characters take an elevator to the basement to get to Di Caprio's repressed (bad) memories. It's a pretty worn out cliche', but at least it was a visual way to illustrate a concept.

This is the problem when you don't employ allegory, symbolism, or metaphor. You have to spell everything out in concrete detail and that has the opposite of the mirror effect. It means everything is literal and that's a dead end.

As for DiCaprio. I had the same hard time with him in this film as I do in most of his other ones. He's a fine technical actor, but no matter how old he gets, he seems like a kid trying to act like an adult. I just don't get the feel of any life experience in his eyes or face. I'm too aware of the actor. To me, he doesn't really inhabit his characters. It doesn't help that they keep casting the kid in these world weary roles. But, he's got tons of fans, so it may just be my problem.

I'm glad I saw Inception. I have a feeling this may be the way films are going. The younger generation with their cell-phones, face book, and Twitter are used to participating in several realities at once and this movie seems paced to their metronome. Probably why younger people had an easier time following it. This kind of stimulation overload is closer to normal for them.

 

[The Smokester]

Very insightful review. Thanks.

 

[Steve Williams]

Rob

Thanks for an amazing, and understandable review. Had this been an end of term paper you would have scored A+

Me OTOH, would have failed because I called mine, "Inception , What am I missing" hoping others would give me their thoughts. I do agree about our kids and their multitude of ways to communicate. They have them all going at any one time connected by their phones direct to the Internet. My son and daughter couldn't understand that I didn't care for the movie.

This is the way movies are going but hopefully there will always remain the great Indie films that always come along.

I also agree about Leo. Great actor but how the he'll do they portray him as half the roles he plays.

A kid face but heck remember a guy named James Dean? Had he lived he would have been the Leo of that era

My kids go to see any of his movies. My wife loves to see his movies. I agree. Great actor but ........

 

[amirm]

Just watched this on Blu-ray. MY wife and I both found it extremely entertaining and interesting. Surely it was a hair away from perfection. The rules of the movie are almost believable but don't quite, quite get there. That said, you accept the depth they went through to create a believable new world with new rules. Matrix achieved that perfection so in that sense, this is a step behind.

I also watched the extras just now. Boy, it is more amazing than the movie itself. Superb production values, using physical (and expensive!) sets instead of relying on pure special effects. The bar scene for example was really built and tilted as much as 45 degrees to each side! I shutter to think how much money was spent to bring us this intense movie to us. It seemed that there was no limit to what they tried to recreate.

The ending was a bit unfair though .

Big thumbs up from me to watch it on Blu-ray so that you can see how it was put together in addition to the movie itself.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

I didn't have any trouble following this one, and I'm not sure I get that common criticism. It is no more difficult to keep up with than The Matrix was at first viewing, and Memento was much more of a challenge. I liked this movie, but it has a weakness, I think, that it shares with all of Christopher Nolan's films and many, many contemporary movies in general: It lacks any real character development. We know the DeCaprio character is somehow motivated by his wife's death, just like we know Bruce Wayne is motivated by the death of his parents. But that's about as deep as it goes. Comic book depth. But it's certainly not DeCaprio's fault. Look at "Catch Me If You Can." We know understand that character better halfway through the film than we'll know about this guy by the time we get through "Inception 3." It's the writing. Maybe even more importantly, it's the impatience of the American movie-goer.

Tim

 

[flez007]

I agree on the DiCaprio comment above from rsbeck, as for the story, it is an interesting one that goes a step ahead on known-ends (predictible) and a "cerebro movie" as rsbeck also pointed out.

I usually do not see a film more than once, call me lazy - but once I see a movie for the second time my mind focuses on finding flaws, scene change errors and the like. This time I saw it twice with my son - I still liked the movie, surely one of the best of 2010 but shows the need to open my world to other genres from Europe, Asia (Films from India are starting to be MUCH better) and LA to hear other stories.

My two centavos....

 

[rblnr]

Saw it at home the other night after seeing it in theater. Outside of the visuals, it doesn't hold up well.

- You become more aware that 90% of what comes out of the character's mouths is nonsense.
- The romance plays even more strongly as a series of pharmaceutical commercial images.
- ALL of the characters have no arc, no development. Well cast though in that Joseph Gordon-Leavitt, Tom Hardy et. al. know how to hold the screen and create urgency when there really isn't any.
- Having Ken Watanabe injured most of the film moves from making no sense to silly second go round.
- The whole closing snow scene reminds of James Bond, feels like a differnet movie.

Having said that, it was fun to watch simply for the visuals, and I appreciate Tom Hardy's efforts particularly in adding some levity to it. I wished they ditched the romance that was pure cliche, and simply made it completely a puzzle movie as Memento was. Memento was a very literal extrapolation of an identity crisis -- agreed, the literalness worked less well here with dreams as the subject. As a side note, saw Memento at Sundance, and it just blew the whole unsuspecting audience away, myself included.

Leo is like a lot of stars nowadays, they don't yet have the character heft yet to be the leading men that they are. That heft is what makes Clooney a bit of a throwback, though he wasn't asked to front a movie until he was a bit older. The issue is, in part, that movies have a younger audience now and that yields younger stars. Agreed that he excelled in Catch Me.., thought he picked up a little weight in Blood Diamond

I'm a big fan of the Batman movies, and think from a character and theme standpoint, both of them were better constructed than Inception. #2 ended with Batman as clearly a vigilante -- we'll see where they take that with #3.

 

[cjfrbw]

I saw the blu ray last weekend.

I really liked the big, orange exploding fireballs and car chases, but it didn't have near enough gratuitous sex. More beasts and garbanzos and it would be a really fine film, as Joe Bob Briggs would say

Seriously, I really liked this movie. I was actually able to follow the plot without losing it completely while zoning out on the popcorn for a few seconds. Pretty good work to make an indescribable film reasonably comprehensible, and a nice human interest story as well.

 

[JackD201]

I'm very grateful to those that wrote negative reviews. Thanks to you guys, my expectations were somewhere between "let's kill some time" and "what the heck". This was a far cry from my expectations from the trailer. I'm glad I deliberately avoided the movie on the plane and waited for the BD.

With expectations low, I was primed for some surprises. I liked the movie very much. A straight up Hollywood Blockbuster with the pros and cons that come with it. I came away most impressed with the editing of the film.

 

[rsbeck]

I'm glad I could help lower some expectations, especially if it resulted in more enjoyment.

I couldn't resist getting this on blu-ray to enjoy the visual whiz bang of it all (if nothing else) and guess what?

With lowered expectations, I also enjoyed it more.

I find it much easier to get immersed in a film in my own theater, so that probably helped, too.

Further, having been through it once, I had already absorbed all of the tedious expositional dialogue, so this time, I could just let it slide on by.

I also watched Memento again a few days later, for about the 50th time.

I love that film!

It seems to me that Nolan used the basement as a symbol for the main character's subconscious in Memento, too.

You'll recall that Leonard (Guy Pearce) had to go down in the basement to see the guy he had killed in order find out about himself and learn who he really was.

I also love the two Nolan Batman movies.

In my opinion, it's the sophistication of the thematic development that is really impressive in those films.

In Dark Knight, Nolan developed the Joker along the lines of a classic Trickster archetype, a treatment for which the character begs, where every other adaptation barely scratched the surface on that potential.

Along with Heath Ledger's brilliant acting, there were many instances where I was more in sympathy with the Joker and felt the Joker's world view actually made quite a bit of sense.

IMO, the quality of the villain goes a long way towards improving the quality of a movie.

Silence of The lambs, for instance.

In just about every one of these super hero type movies, the villain is just a one-note bad guy.

IMO, if the storyteller, in this case the writer/director/actor, can get you to sympathize with the villain for any length of time, you get a much better movie because it creeps you out and creates moments of moral ambiguity that make a story ten times more interesting and gives you something to talk about over coffee later.

Playing off the Joker helps illustrate aspects of Batman's character so, IMO, we do get some character illumination and some development.

As for Leonardo Di Caprio, I hate to keep rapping the guy. I mean, I don't think he ever really ruins a movie, or anything like that, I just don't think he has enough sand in his pants to play a lot of the roles he attempts. Having said that, I, too, thought he was good in Catch Me and IMO, there's a reason he's good in that role.

It's exactly because of his deficiency as a leading man that he fits really well into the role of a guy who is a con man who takes on mannerisms in order to pretend to do jobs for which he hasn't been trained. In other words, the part called for him to play an actor who could imitate, but lacked the experience and gravitas that would have come from actually having lived the lives necessary to really perform those jobs and be those people. It's a perfect role for him.

This, IMO, is something similar to what happened with John Malkovitch, but in a different way.

You might recall that one of Malkovitch's early film roles called for him to play an irresistibly attractive ladies man in Dangerous Liaisons.

To me, he was completely unbelievable in that role.

It wasn't until he started playing villains that I found him more believable.

Roles where he was supposed to be unattractive, creepy and dislikable.

For me, I just feel like Di Caprio is miscast as these world weary older guys.

I don't think he'll ever be confused with Clark Gable, the actor I think he often has in mind.

As for Inception, in the end, I still find myself admiring it more than loving it.

Regarding Christopher Nolan, I am glad he is making movies and I'm sure I will be in the cue for whatever he brings out next.

 

[Steve Williams]

I have always been interested how a film can be nominated for Best Picture but the director gets snubbed.

I have it on Blu-ray as well but haven't had the urge to watch it. Perhaps this weekend but I'm with rblnr when he said

Outside of the visuals, it doesn't hold up well.

- You become more aware that 90% of what comes out of the character's mouths is nonsense.
- The romance plays even more strongly as a series of pharmaceutical commercial images.
- ALL of the characters have no arc, no development. Well cast though in that Joseph Gordon-Leavitt, Tom Hardy et. al. know how to hold the screen and create urgency when there really isn't any.
- Having Ken Watanabe injured most of the film moves from making no sense to silly second go round.
- The whole closing snow scene reminds of James Bond, feels like a differnet movie.