Mainstream Hollywood has taken it on the chin quite a lot over the past few years. The beatings have been justifiable: un-original movies supported by poor writing and even worse directing. With the arrival of INCEPTION, the answer to Hollywood’s problems is revealed in two simple steps: (1) Fire everybody. And (2), Let Christopher Nolan write and direct everything.
Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his partner Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) are professional thieves specializing in stealing people’s ideas/and or information. They do so by entering people’s dreams (while asleep or sedated), and stealing from their subconscious. They are blackmailed by Saito (Ken Watanabe), a zealous zillionaire-business man looking to mess with the dreams of a rival zillionaire (Cillian Murphy). They recruit Ariadne (Ellen Page), and embark on several levels of subconscious peril while avoiding the inner demons of Cobb and his wife (Marion Cotillard).
INCEPTION’s storyline banks on the adventures undertaken in the dream-world, where the physical plane can be bent to the dreamer’s needs. Just when things seem a little too MATRIX-like, things take a deeper turn when the players must dream within a dream, and then dream within that dream, and then dream within that one. What really makes INCEPTION shine is that just because the narrative switches to Level 3 and 4, it doesn’t mean attention is still not paid to Level 2. There are nearly several movies going on at once, and it requires a mental bookmark to keep track of. This is not a film for the weak-minded. There are several stories and action sequences, sprinkled with twists and turns, that are executed brilliantly and co-exist perfectly. This was a film intended to blow minds, and it does that every 5 minutes.
If the several layers weren’t enough, Nolan adds on a sub-plot with Cobb that is the true heart and soul of the film. DiCaprio and Cotillard are great together, and they make the characters come to life with their deep and convincing performances. The sub-plot is never intrusive or distracting, and actually supports the overall scheme of things throughout. For all the different things going on here, it is blended perfectly like a recipe with a thousand ingredients.
Visual effects are awesome; using very little CGI and lots of eye-popping practical effects. There are several sequences in a hotel that just have to be seen to believed. Not even Shakespeare could pen the right words to describe it. Nolan’s cinematography is an eyeball-fuck in nearly every frame; there is a lot to take in, a lot of which has never been seen before.
The score is fucking awesome and will blow your head off.
Nolan gets the absolute best out of all his actors. The aforementioned DiCaprio shines as usual, and even little Juno is convincing and at home amongst the hugeness of everything. The few cameos are welcome surprises.
Nolan has weaved and put together a tale of action, suspense, love, and psychological-assbanging that will stay in your system and be replayed. INCEPTION is original, groundbreaking and edge-of-the-seat awesomeness with intelligence and thought. Just as he did in his last feature film, Nolan will have you staggering out of the theatre.
BOTTOM LINE: See it.
For a film dealing with dreams and dreams within dreams and the confusion between what is real and what is not, this is ironically one of the easier Nolan films to follow.
ReplyDeleteInception is good. Not great. Most definitely not a masterpiece. There has only been one of those in 2010 and it's called Toy Story 3. And even if TS3 isn't a masterpiece, it's leaps and bounds and even more leaps ahead of Inception in terms of raw cinematic competence.
I liked the cinematography. I loved the score and the cast. The absence of CB (Cinema's Bane, AKA Christian Bale) made the overall experience tenfold more enjoyable.
However, there were several parts that did not sit well with me and immediately took me out of the story because I couldn't help but question the incongruity of the action taking place in relation to the logic of the world of the film.
First of all, the film is 2.5 hours long, yet feels like 5.2, and there are a few reasons for this. One of which is the fact that a preponderance of the first act is amateurish, conflict-free exposition, which does not bode well for entertaining repeat viewings.
Inception is very much like The Matrix, and suffers from the same problem that the superior 1999 film did - in setting up the world of the film and all the rules and necessary information that the audience needs to know, we get the big "learning" scene: Morpheus teaching Neo/Leo teaching Ellen Page. This is flat-out boring a second time around, and practically a chore any time after that.
The Matrix did it right by making the hero an outsider. With Inception, the hero is the teacher. He knows all this stuff that we don't, so it's nothing new to him. No conflict. He is not the one going through the learning experience, and by proxy, we don't feel the experience as the student. It's 100% intellectual, like a math test, only prettier. At least The Matrix had that cool fight in the dojo, and the jump from building to building where the hero actually fails. Inception is just two talking heads in that section of the story. It's visually interesting, but that's the extent of the experience for the viewer.
Another problem with this part of the story is that it tells us too much. Let me rephrase that...the rest of the film fails to exploit the concept by capitalizing on everything that we're told. What is the point of telling us that everyone needs their own totem and going into the details explaining why and even showing Page making hers...what's the point if this never comes into play later on? They could have got by with only explaining the purpose of the totem instead of wasting valuable minutes during the most boring section of the film going into details that we literally have no reason to know. There is never an instance in the film where a totem matters for any character except for Leo. What's the point of the Page and Levitt totem scene? We already know what they are and what they are used for, so cut that scene entirely. It's wasting time.
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Christ, Leo didn't even know what the hell was going on with Cillian and never even knew of the outcome until after the fact. The hero is separated from the physical representation of his goal for a majority of the film, and that felt very wrong to me. I ended up not giving a shit. If it was all somehow tied together, the audience would be able to experience that great emotional catharsis that everyone was talking about...but that didn't happen. I watched Cillian and Berenger at the end like strangers on the other side of the world - zero emotional investment, since my emotion was already invested in what was going on with the hero, which was something entirely different.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, Leo, the hero of the story, has almost no involvement with the actual physical goal of the film - to plant the idea in Cillian's head, which is what needs to be done in order for Leo to get home to see his kid's faces. He does a little bit at first, but then runs off to do his own thing that has nothing to do with Cillian at all while the rest of the crew does all the hard work. You can literally put Levitt in Leo's place for that little bit and not even need the hero in the main action of the story at all! Hell, you can even put Page there, since all she does after designing the dream worlds is hang out with the guys and tell Leo he's crazy. I really wish she had something else to do besides play the part of the fifth wheel.
Leo's lack of involvement in the main action of the story creates a 'so what?' moment when the problem is solved for him, and I can think of absolutely no reason why the hero should not be the one to conquer the main conflict. Brody kills the shark in Jaws. He doesn't send Hooper and Quint out to do his dirty work while he stays behind to deal with his fear of water. It's integrated. The hero is forced into dealing with the physical, and in turn, but learn to conquer his internal fears before he can conquer his external opponent. This is Screenwriting 101, Lesson 1, and Nolan got that dead wrong. Infuckingexcusable. That's why I tend to disbelieve the reports that he spent 10 years writing the script since it only took me 148 minutes to figure out exactly what was wrong with it.
Pretty much everything this film does wrong, The Matrix does right. They are very similar films in concept, and I believe it's worth comparing and contrasting the achievements of The Matrix to the pitfalls of Inception. I'm just thankful that this film is salvageable, and perhaps two rewrites away from being great...unlike another Nolan film which will remain unnamed.
PS: The 'taking a scene from the middle and putting it at the beginning' gag reached it's peak effectiveness in 2002 and has absolutely no place in modern films. It's getting as bad as that tired old 'It's all a dream' scenario. Oh, wait...
The same goes for the whole section of bending the landscape where Leo explains the negative aspects of altering the dream world. I was stoked when I saw this scene because I couldn't wait to see a point in Act II where a character was backed into a proverbial corner and forced to alter the landscape in order to survive, thus creating even more conflict, which leads to a greater interest and investment in the film. Low and behold, no such scene exists in Inception. The closest we got was Leo becoming Mr. Charlie to help persuade Cillian into believing that he was dreaming, yet the most that happens then is a bunch of extras turn and look at Leo. Big deal. That's not nearly enough. The idea was not exploited. You literally have to go out of your way to miss that opportunity. Hell, that Mr. Charles scene is shorter than the scene that explains why altering the dream world is bad!
ReplyDeleteGoing back to the pacing of the film, which I will refer to as 'plate tectonics' so you all have an accurate idea of the agonizing slowness of which I'm referring to, the biggest culprit in my mind (haha, get it?) is the concurrency of the storylines in Act II. I don't have a problem with what happens in each story any more than the fact that each one is happening at the same time as the others. I don't want to see a van falling off a bridge for 45 minutes. Nobody does.
A van falls for an endless amount of time. Joseph Gordon-Levitt has a cool fight scene and then floats bodies down a hallway for half an hour, real-time. The guy from Bronson does his thing for a while with Watanabe, who obliterates Tim Roth's Reservoir Dogs record of longest time spent bleeding to death by orders of magnitude. There are not complex tasks or events, but rather straight-forward in nature. Dragging them out for a solid chunk of the film is what creates that glacial pace and makes a long film seem even longer.
And for a heist film, there was very little (ie. none) threat of being caught while pulling off the caper. The threat was focused more on guys fighting and shooting other guys instead. I don't know why, but if you want to call this a caper, you have to acknowledge the lack of a key requirement...the threat of being caught.
Inception has no real villain. You can make a case for the stunning Cotillard, but she is an internal enemy. She never takes a "physical" presence and never threatens anyone except Leo. Everyone else is dealing with faceless assassins. I really liked how Cotillard was constantly threatening Leo mentally and their "relationship" was interesting, but it feels distant from the rest of the action. It doesn't even have anything to do, emotionally, with Leo's goal of getting home to see his kids. None of this is tied together.
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