Inception (2010)

My feelings toward Inception are not unlike a teacher’s toward the student who sets the curve for the class. Sort of a “hooray, you were totally the best out of the group” attitude balanced with a good dose of “you (and everyone else) really could be doing a lot better.”

That being said, I think the movie had a ton of really impressive aspects to it. The intensity was staggering—I was unable to break concentration for a second, because I felt compelled to fully invest in its details and all the questions it was asking. At the same time, such concentration and investigation was almost immediately rendered irrelevant because we were encouraged to keep diving further and further into the maze without trying to remember the way out. Just as for the main characters, the best way out of the welter was to plunge further in, forgoing any attempt at leaving a trail of breadcrumbs.

I also found that the story felt very personal, but sort of effortlessly so. I wasn’t drawn into it by knowing all the details of the time period it was supposed to be set in, or by knowing each character’s back story. Rather, I suspect that my willingness to go along with the emotions and interests of the characters is the result of a well written screenplay combined with some seriously great acting. I can’t even pick out one performance that I thought was particularly well done—every single actor in the movie delivered on his or her role completely and fully.

And lest you begin to suspect that this is just a fan-girl, stars in her eyes over JGL/Leo workin’ together like some kind of fantasy designed just for me moment, let me point out that my favorite scene of the movie had nothing to do with the attractiveness of anyone, and more to do with the level of thought put into both the dialogue and the acting. The hands down best moment of Inception, for me, was when Cobb takes the dying Mal in his arms and explains to her that she’s not his real wife. He says something to the effect of “you’re not half of what my real wife was, because you’re just my own memory/interpretation/reproduction of a sad shadow of the real her.” Hello awesome metaphor for a lot of stuff! (Film/acting/artistic representation/memory/relationships/etc)

Yes indeed, through and through Inception was a really smart, thoughtful, and creative film on questions that the noir genre has been working through since it first reared its difficult to define head way back in the ‘40s.

Why, then, did I start out this review by saying that it sets the curve but doesn’t go far enough? I don’t really know and it’s hard to explain. I’d definitely give Inception an A when compared to the movies that have been coming out so far this year. However, I’d probably assign it a solid B when compared to my favorites picked from cinema from all over the world since the beginning.

Maybe it was because the dreams weren’t weird enough to suit my fancy. Nolan did an excellent job re-creating the feeling of the dream—the disorientation combined with total normalcy, the changes in perspective, the emotions that were made metaphors of. But I’m the kind of person who has bizarro epic nightmares about being Johnny Depp and a vampire in a movie that I’m also watching. So for me, these ‘dreamscapes’ were surprisingly mundane, in a way.

I’m also not a huge fan of spending gag-inducing amounts of cash on movies for no discernible reason. Yeah, I know that to complain about the industry spending money is dumb. That’s like complaining about concepts with capital letters at the beginning: Capitalism, Sexism, Poverty, Ignorance! Pointless, passé, and actually hugely distracting from fresher, more pressing and nuanced debates. But I watched crews laboriously construct a set (the rooftop set that Mal, Cobb and Arthur appear on in the opening sequence for, say, five minutes total in the beginning of the movie) down the street from my house for approximately three months only to tear it down after one night of filming. The whole thing felt a smidge wasteful.

Anyway, neither of those complaints is really a solid reason for me not giving Inception a wildly enthusiastic review. But I’ll give it a solid one without any debate, because it is definitely a good example of creativity in filmmaking, pretty cool special effects, and really excellent acting. I just wasn’t hugely crazy about it, for whatever reason. Definitely worth watching though, and in theaters too.

But people, I know we can do better. Whether or not we will is a different question altogether. I’ll totally look forward to watching filmmakers try.