Inception

Did I say something about an inventive sci-fi earlier? I hope not, because for a film about dreaming, Inception was as imaginative someone using a comic simile at the start of every film review.

By being the smartest film out this year without using irony (yes, that means you Scott Pilgrim vs. The World) Inception has managed to incite an internet-wide critical debate as to just how smart smart is. Well, kudos for that, but it’s not the masterpiece that other reviewers have branded it as. However, it’s probably best to say early on that I’ve been assured that it improves on repeat viewings. Indeed, the more I talk about it after seeing it, the better it seems to get. It’s just the seeing it bit that lets it down.

Inception tells the story of Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), who along with his business partner Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), makes a living by invading the dreams of others and stealing their secrets, selling them to the highest bidder. After a failed heist in the mind of a powerful Japanese businessman (Ken Wanatabe), their target presents them with a unique opportunity. They must enter the dreams of his competitor’s heir (Cillian Murphy), and plant the notion of dismantling his father’s empire, hence Inception.

However, this means not only putting them into a sleep so deep they might not wake up; it exposes them to the dangers of the subconscious, including Cobb’s deceased wife (Marion Cotillard) who continually haunts him. It also requires a special team to be assembled, including an intellect keen enough to construct the various worlds that the thieves will travel to (Ellen Page), a chemist with a cocktail capable of keeping everyone trapped in their heads just long enough to pull-off the heist (Dileep Rao) and a con man with the mental charisma to mimic the various characters of the target’s subconscious (Tom Hardy).

Writing out the synopsis here, it all of course sounds rather ambitious. That’s the problem; great on paper, but left in the prototype stages when it came to, well, making the film. The vast majority of the positive reviews so far forgive the many of the weaker elements in execution for the sake of a brilliant concept- something that director Christopher Nolan has been sitting on for nearly ten years.

Entering one’s dreams or even dreams within one’s dreams dates back to early efforts in the 20s, and has been repeated in films like Donnie Darko, Mulholland Drive, Fight Club, Vanilla Sky, Dreamscapes, Dream a little dream, Brainstorm or even The Matrix ever since.

This marks the latest film by Nolan concerning reality and unreality using an unconventional plot structure, beginning with Following (1998), Momento (2000) and later The Prestige (2006) (in between working on Batman Begins and The Dark Knight). Nolan wanted more experience with directing big budget sci-fi before tackling this project, so in many ways those films could be considered dry runs for this one.

Which is a shame, because while the idea itself is an insightful one, it’s certainly nothing new. Entering one’s dreams or even dreams within one’s dreams dates back to early efforts in the 20s, and has been repeated in films like Donnie Darko, Mulholland Drive, Fight Club, Vanilla Sky, Dreamscapes, Dream a little dream, Brainstorm or even The Matrix ever since. Even the final twist, (potential spoilers ahoy!) which makes the audience doubt the reality of their own lives, the moment where the film ends and the critical discussion begins, is one borrowed straight from The Cabinet of Dr.Caligari- which also manipulated the audience by establishing reality and then turning it upside down.

Unlike those efforts though, it completely cops out on tackling that sort of introspective thought head-on, instead focusing on fast-paced action sequences to distract the audience, rather than drawing them into the dream themselves, or question the reality of events in the film; making excuses for the sheer ludicrousness of some scenes (including an Indiana Jones-esque market chase) rather than properly incorporating them into a cohesive and overarching plot, which would have made them work. These scenes make sense in retrospect, but whatever passive cleverness there is, intended or not, it’s wasted through a lack of visual storytelling.

Much of this will become apparent after you see the film, and indeed there is a great deal of depth to be had. The multi-layered approach towards depth is admirable, as it doesn’t attempt to hold your hand too much, but a series of fairly mundane or underwhelming aesthetic choices hampers the scale or profoundness of the film. It suffers Dark Knight syndrome. Ingenious and relevant, but restricted from true potential simply by what it is; a complex idea tied to a predictable template.

It takes dreams; something abstract and lucid yet familiar to us all, and gives it a set of rules (some of which contradict each other but are cunningly glazed over), which to me just seemed completely devoid of imagination. For what they were, the dreams seemed grounded, lacking the surreal quality that has earmarked other films in the genre.

Probably the most interesting (and longest) shot in the film.

It takes dreams; something abstract and lucid yet familiar to us all, and gives it a set of rules (some of which contradict each other but are cunningly glazed over), which to me just seemed completely devoid of imagination. For what they were, the dreams seemed grounded, lacking the surreal quality that has earmarked other films in the genre. While I’m not asking that the film should have been weirder for the sake of weirder, Nolan could have done more to lead the audience in terms of what they should be feeling at any given moment.

On that note, the music was abnormally good. I’m not normally a fan of Hans Zimmer, who has generally become the face of generic action-film background noise, but in this case he really shines. The thundering dramatic mix of classical and electronic music added a sense of scale to the opening and closing segments of the film, and to the tension of the action sequences, and it’s these scenes which are easily the most memorable.

That unfortunately brings us to the editing, which was probably the best and worst aspect of the film. The plot has several relationships of importance which intertwine with the story, but none of these ever becomes so developed that they, which is a shame because Cillian Murphy and his dying, billionaire father (Pete Postlethswaite) put in some very convincing performances. Yet, towards the end, I actually forgot what they were going into Cillian Murphy’s head to do, until they got there.

When a scene cuts from one to another and it’s not in chronological order to the previous one, it’s taken by the audience that it is happening in another dream level. While a simple and effective way of keeping the plot understandable, it means that the multiple narratives, while well written and interesting, received very little screen time individually. For similar reasons, the relationship between Cobb and his wife, again core to the plot, was boring.

Some of the characters, while still likeable, were throwaway. Tom Hardy and Dileep Rao felt token at best, providing a little comic relief but never becoming properly developed. Ellen Page I’m still unsure about, I’m glad she’s been able to break out of doing heartwarming teen comedy, (leaving Michael Cera to continue ageing backwards) but I found myself questioning whether or not she has maturity to play anything other than an overly sarcastic teenager that acts like she’s thirty. It becomes apparent that the student-mentor relationship between Cobb and Ariadne, Pages’ character, is of some importance, but again, because of the pace of the film, the allusions to Greek mythology around the two characters were left entirely to speculation.

It’s worth seeing Inception twice. Even though the film lacks the mise en scene that would have made it fun the first time, the intricacy of the various plot threads become more apparent on an educated viewing. It’s a film that demands picking apart to enjoy; I think I might have had more fun arguing about it than I did watching it, but I’m not sure that a pleasant aftertaste is enough.

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