- This film is giving me intense mixed feelings, so much so that instead of writing this when I got home last night I went straight to bed. Then instead of waking up and writing it I spent a couple of hours doing other things instead. I have mixed feelings because there are so many great things about this movie and yet there are lots of little things that are severely impacting that greatness for me. Those irritating little things are also things that I haven’t yet decided whether or not they’re narrative conceits included to push you towards a certain interpretation or if they’re just bad story telling.
For example, the ending is apparently open to interpretation as to whether or not Cobb went three levels deep into Fischer’s mind or if we’re actually four levels deep in Cobb’s. Which you choose as your interpretation doesn’t really fix the problems I have with the implications of both of those options.
- If he’s three levels deep and the ending is not Cobb still being trapped in a dream, then we’re left with Saito’s unbearably undiabolical plan to get Fischer to split up his dad’s company as the primary plot serving Cobb’s attempts to get back to his kids. Perhaps it’s just me, but the goings on of businessmen is not that engaging to me; adding a line about how Fischer is close to having a monopoly on eco-energy (I think?) doesn’t whip my green concerns into a large enough frenzy to care about Saito’s business plight.
- If Cobb is four levels deep, then I can acknowledge that Saito’s espionage is banal and simple enough to definitely be a thought planted in Cobb’s brain, but then that necessitates me caring about Cobb’s relationship with his wife… which I don’t. I don’t know anything about her beyond her alleged enslavement to her own subconscious. Cobb’s guilt about her descent into mental gymnastics is one of his primary motivators but I feel like I need to care about their relationship beyond that and I’m not given any tools to do that. We get a tiny glimpse into Cobb’s and Mal’s joint thought experiments but I would have loved to know a lot more about that.
So, either way… I don’t care enough. I’m of the impression that it’s still a dream at the end, which also pissed me off slightly because when all the pre-buzz about this movie was like “It takes place in a dream!” I thought “Thank god, this means that the twist at the end won’t be ‘It was all a dream!’” Wrong. I feel like I did at the end of The Happening. (That’s an exaggeration, since this movie is leaps and bounds better than that one, in case that wasn’t completely obvious.)
- I can’t take alpine skiing action sequences seriously. I wanted Eames to take off his goggles and reveal himself to be Roger Moore.
- There was way too much exposition in the first forty minutes or so. I understand that in order to do what they do in the rest of the film, you need to establish some ground rules as to what the internal logic is of how this mind-diving works, it just seemed very drawn out. It also seemed to serve as a spring board to do Cool Shit that does not impact the rest of the movie in any way. Ellen Page’s character Ariadne is responsible for creating the landscape of the dreams and when Cobb takes her on a hands-on job interview, she’s like “I CAN BEND THE SKY!” Does this look phenomenally cool? Absolutely. But since she learns to control herself to only create mazes that can be perceived as reality, the scenes where she’s bending visual perception seem more like exercises to play with cool special effects than to do anything that moves the story forwarded.
- Speaking of which, what is Michael Caine a professor of, exactly? When you sign up for his architecture class, are you disappointed when you realise you’re not studying Frank Lloyd Wright?
- I think they could have spent a bit more of the prop budget on making the device used to connect everyone to each other’s dreams a little bit more impressive. I don’t really buy that you can tap into someone’s dreamscape by tying a piece of cord around your wrist and then pressing a big button on piece of molded plastic inside a suitcase. Is there a big market for merchandise tie-ins for this movie? Because I think Fisher-Price manufactured this thing.
- Tom Berenger looks really rough. I couldn’t place his face until I read the credits.
- The score was really excellent and definitely made me glad that I saw the movie in IMAX. (The other thing that made me glad that I saw it in IMAX was the guy who, after the laser light show and the trailers, yelled out “BRING BACK THE LASERS!”)
- I’m going to start using a tag called “crying leonardo dicaprio”. Also, his theme of 2010 is Men Who Must Work Out Their Grief Through Increasingly Elaborate Mind Exercises. Also, LEO PLUS KIDS. I’m loving how on the few occasions he plays a father (this, plus his previous two outings), he barely interacts with them. Also, how does this guy still have 21 in production titles on IMDB?
- Joseph Gordon-Levitt was pretty wonderful and definitely needs to be in more stuff. His anti-gravity scene was pretty fabulous and although it’s perhaps not that technically amazing given how long it’s been since The Matrix came out, it reminded me that we still don’t get to see cool stuff like that all that often even if the technique seems way more ubiquitous than it actually is.
- It was way too obvious from the start that the person who Cobb tried and succeeded with inception was Mal.
- I did like how the timelines within the timelines magnified time, and I liked how this was plotted on screen. I think the van going over the bridge for half the movie will probably be something that gets parodied over the years, but I liked it. The slow-motion wasn’t slow-mo for the sake of heightening drama, it was part of the internal logic of the movie.
- I think there could have been more counter-inception on behalf of the minds of the invaded, if only because I liked the element of chaos it introduced. The rules that Cobb and Arthur explain to Ariadne in the first part of the movie make sense from the perspective of creating believable dream worlds so as to remain undetected, but it’s the capacity for dreams to include totally random things that put you off-kilter that makes them so fascinating for people. (If they were carbon copies of reality, no one would bother studying dreams or the subconscious.) Fischer sending in a random train to derail (har har har) everything was a welcome surprise.
- Also, I appreciate that this is Rene Magritte style surrealism and not Salvador Dali style surrealism. Not that painting has much of anything to do with this movie, I just appreciate that if you’re trying to give me a mind fuck, you’re not resorting to melting clock techniques.
- It looked like Fisher was on a holodeck on the Enterprise when he finally got into his dad’s safe.
- I felt like Ariadne didn’t have a lot to do once they were actually inside the dreams, given that her role is essentially moot at that point.
- Contrary to what the credits indicate, Cobb’s kids did not appear to age.
- I will probably see this again at some point because I think it definitely warrants multiple viewings, I just wish my first time through had been a little more resonant. Maybe this will be like with the recent Harry Potter movies where I’m underwhelmed on first viewing and then grow to love it on subsequent viewings. One can only hope.
Inception
I want to like this way more than I actually do.
IMDB Plot Synopsis In a world where technology exists to enter the human mind through dream invasion, a single idea within one's mind can be the most dangerous weapon or the most valuable asset.
I’m with you on a lot of those points. I liked it, but I didn’t love it, which is a shame because I was as excited as everyone else about seeing it. The whole Cobb/Mal story was unspeakably dreary, and I wanted to see more of Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Tom Hardy, who both made every minute of their screen time count.
I’d like to see it again too, but while you’re hoping to love it more second time round, I’m fearful of finding even more flaws on a repeated viewing as I did with The Dark Knight.
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Hey Elizabeth,
I like your reviews, even when I disagree with them. I think you make a lot of good points about Inception, though. I really enjoyed the film but that just might be the enjoyment I felt discovering that world for the first time. I’m planning on seeing it again tonight and I hope to be more objective about it.
One more comment, though. In your 12th point you say that Fischer sent a random train into his subconcious to battle the invading Cobb and his team. I believe that the train was supposed to be from Cobb’s subconcious as it is revealed near the end of the film that is how he and Mal woke up.
Anyways thatnks for putting up this review and I really enjoyed the cast of this movie and the entire last third is fantastic.
Oh I think you’re right, that makes sense about the train. Still, more surrealism needed!
was it worth the $20 to see it in IMAX? Or would just a giant screen suffice?
(why yes, I want to you to decide what theatre I see it in ;p)
I liked the IMAX for the sound quality and some of the action scenes might be super cool on a super huge screen, but I’m not sure I would have liked it less on a regular screen.
This is one of those movies that I will appreciate even more on further viewing. I enjoyed it the first time around but then I really feel that we’re four layers deep into Cobb’s mind. But what made this movie for me was Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Tom Hardy.
Though, was I the only one didn’t understand what Ken Watanabe was saying half the time?
This review is so spot-on. I literally just saw the film, and I’m with you on every point, especially about the excessive exposition and the lack of emotional connection. I’m still confused about what I’m supposed to walk away with here: guilt is powerful? Our minds/ideas are complex? Any suggestions?
If “guilt is powerful” is it, then I think Martin Scorsese’s back catalogue would suit us better.
“I can’t take alpine skiing action sequences seriously. I wanted Eames to take off his goggles and reveal himself to be Roger Moore.”
You have to remember, the snow ski scene was a dream! It was not meant to be realistic.
There wasn’t really anything in that scene to suggest that the skiing was meant to be interpreted as being humourous.
I laughed a bit, only because it *does* seem like the kind of action sequence that a wannabe-Bond British con man would think up.
Oh definitely! I just don’t think they actually wanted us to laugh there.
http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l697rq8Jz21qce55fo1_500.png
lol
Contrary to what the credits indicate, Cobb’s kids did not appear to age.
When he speaks to his kids on the phone, they sound older. I think that’s what really convinced me that the whole thing was Cobb’s dream.
I agree with you on every point you made, especially about not caring enough. I kept thinking, “What’s at stake here? What happens if they fail?” And the answer was, not much.
“What’s at stake here? What happens if they fail?” And the answer was, not much.
Seriously. A lot of the reaction I’ve read subsequently has been of the “If he’s still in the dream, whose dream is it?! Who is the architect?! And why?!” and I’m like “Add this to the list of things I don’t ultimately care about.
Oh, weird, I don’t know what’s going on with that. I have the feed in my own Google reader (just to make sure it’s working) and I’m getting updates, yet when I load the feed directly I get the error message. Hmm.
Freakin amazing!! I loved almost every single second of this!! Nolan is going to be considered as one of the best directors of all-time now, and I will stand by and say, yes, I have to also agree. Check out my review here: http://dtmmr.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/inception-2010/
Nice review! And while I think it’s just a matter of bad story telling, I couldn’t agree more with your comment about not caring enough to give it much more thought. And as for the skiing sequences, they were neither interesting or amusing – but rather, downright dull.
I’m sure you’ve read about this by now, but that scene with Arthur in the hallway and the zero gravity stuff wasn’t done using CGI, which makes is much more impressive than it already was, at least for me.
And I think the reason Ariadne didn’t have much to do once they were inside the dream was because generally the Architect *doesn’t* participate in the job. She insisted on going in order to keep Cobb in check should Mal appear because she was the only one who knew how bad Cobb’s situation had gotten.
I think many people are confusing complex narrative with emotional depth. Inception was a solid summer blockbuster but it seriously lacked on the latter and simply was a collection of thrills with little substance to back it.