One interesting aspect of waiting to see certain Hollywood blockbusters on DVD is that you hear a lot in advance from the people who plunk down the big bucks to go to the multiplex and have their eardrums shattered.
The reaction to this much-ballyhooed film was unusually polarized, from my perspective: people were either rapturous, referring to it as this century's answer to Fritz Lang's Metropolis, or they were simply baffled by it.
I sat down to watch Inception on blu-ray last month, knowing the plot was involved, and positively willing myself to get it. I've watched a lot of esoteric, demanding movies in my time, and I pride myself on usually being able to work through what the writer and director are getting at.
Nearly three hours later, the sad truth emerged that I only sort of got it (in broad terms), but did not much care for what I got, and wish I'd gotten more!
Knowing full well I'm in a distinct minority here (the film was a huge success, commercially and critically), let me explain my reaction.
Inception clearly derived from an intriguing and wildly inventive notion -- that of entering other people's dreams to change the way they think. Given that writer/director Christopher Nolan operates in an industry which gives its consumers less and less credit for brains, he earns significant points simply for having come up with this idea, and even more for being daring enough to see it through to a completed film.
But bold, lofty aims don't guarantee an effective and memorable result.
So -- why didn't it work for me?
I think Nolan's key challenge was to make a highly intricate idea coherent and accessible on screen, and for this viewer at least, he fell short. The whole enterprise feels convoluted almost from the get-go, and the resulting confusion kept me at a distance from the movie. While I was dazzled by the breathtaking visual effects that punctuate the film, I was never truly gripped by all the various twists and turns, or even the action sequences, because for the most part, I was simply trying to keep up with, or figure out, what was going on.
Compounding this problem, the movie takes itself so very seriously that it often comes off as laughably pretentious. It's never a good sign when you find yourself snickering at dialogue that's supposed to be life-or-death information, delivered in deadly earnest, but which to your clueless ear, sounds like so much new-age gobbledygook.
I suppose it's no surprise that the human elements of the film fell flat for me as well. The whole subplot of Cobb's tragic marriage and exile should have touched me a bit, right? Instead, the beautiful French actress Marion Cotillard felt completely wasted here, and that ending, as traditionally heart-warming as you can get, also left me unmoved. You can argue that the film is not intended to register strongly on an emotional level, but that seems to be what Nolan is striving for.
Maybe he's striving to make too many elements work, all in one picture. While his Memento(2000) seemed just right to me, I felt that with all its strengths, The Dark Knight (2008) was ultimately over-stuffed and simply too long. Every time I thought it would end, it just kept on going, like the Energizer bunny.
To be fair, it's evident that Inception scores higher among left-brain thinkers, as well as people who love and understand video games. Personally I fall in neither of these camps. I know a young man in his early twenties who loved the film and was able to explain to me -- clearly and concisely -- the picture's central conceit of what I'll call "the dream chain": how time progressively slows down as one goes further into the subconscious (wait -- have I got this right?).
Also the very idea of stages and layers sounds distinctly like a classic video game set-up (I have three sons), as does the feature of all those artificial worlds popping up indiscriminately. In fact, during the alpine sequences I literally thought I was watching a video game... so much aiming and shooting, and so few people actually getting hit!
All of which leads to the possibility that the disconnect may be generational, but this seems too pat an explanation. After all, I've met several younger people who shared my own reaction to "Inception".
One final note on casting: I felt Ellen Page was totally wrong for this film. Intelligent as she is, she is also too waif-like and projects a quality I can only describe as petulant -- I think the role called for a more robust, womanly presence, with brains.
Though time and the weight of public opinion may prove me wrong, for me Inception stands as an extremely cool idea that gets executed with a surfeit of style and visual effects, but lacks the necessary coherence, empathy, and restraint that might have elevated it to the ranks of an enduring classic.
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As a science fiction movie, it has to hold up against at least two others that deal with realities and the perception of it, and that would be "Blade Runner" and "Matrix". Both tackle the topic as to "who are you? What are you?" much better than Nolan's movie, and I can tell you why.
Both of those movies first establish a reality that is known to both the protagonist and the audience, then begin to deconstruct it. They first establish a common ground, from where the audience is willing to go along. The detective. The bored cubicle monkey/hacker.
"Inception", on the other hand, is more like a sophomore thesis on what reality is, or rather of that one question "can I die in a dream"?
I was dreadfully bored throughout the movie, because there were no characters, only plot points, and even those were so dull that you could have easily taken out half an hour out of the movie and not have lost anything, only expository talk.
I don't consider it to be a milestone.
It was not an awful movie, just a lazy script (IMO). And for the money it costs, THAT really ticks me off. I actually liked Shutter Island which many did not so I don't blame Leonardo at all. Nope SCRIPT (um, I think I said that already).
HE HE...have to admit I DID get a kick out of renting Machete. So B-FILM and proud of it.
I think The Lost Weekend (Ray Milland?) was much scarier taking us to another "world" of nightmares.
Cheers and I await Biutiful with baited breath. see..off topic :-)
The Academy Awards will disagree with you on that one!
overrated, are you smoking something? other than weed?....or maybe you should be smoking something and then re-watch it.....because it get's better after the second viewing and it makes more sense....trust me, the hype, i thought would ruin the movive, but it lived up to it and then some..
Btw, the comment on casting (Ellen Page) was spot on!
It's one of the BEST films I saw last year.
I saw it twice in IMAX.
I consider it a "Thinking Man's Action film".
That's not to put people down who either didn't understand it, or found it too dense.
It's just the only way I could describe it.
And I know there's been tons of criticism in regards to Ellen Page's role. I had issues with her character the first time I saw it. After my second viewing, I came to the conclusion that Page was OUR way in this "puzzle" as the audience. The male characters already had the multi-level mental experiences. She (like the audience) had not as of yet.
To me, the movie is brilliant as it pertains to the character Cobb's point of view. Admittedly, there's a lot of stuff going on in this movie, so it's easy to get lost. As much fun as I had getting lost the first time, I had an even more rewarding experience watching the film a second time as I began to see that the film was really focusing on Cobb. A case can be made...and has been...that this is really his story. But that's another interesting (perhaps pretentious...but still fun) discussion.
I love a good challenge from a movie...which is, frankly, a rare occurrence. So I love this movie.
I hate video games, by the way.
I think you give a very sensible appraisal of the movie.
Guess what. You can't go into people's brains. And anyway, the inside of people's brains doesn't look like a movie. (You actually don't wanna go there.)
But filmmakers who went to film school don't care about anything involving thinking. Especiallly about reality. They care about, and are taught to care about, "visuals." And so they build entire movies around awesome "visuals," instead of plots that make sense or have some basis in what actually happens out there in what is still (unaccountably, even though it is more and more populated with willing hallucinators) denominated "the real world."
What if they made a movie about actual people trying to get along in the actual world? . . . Nobody would come. An entire society ineluctably lost in mad fantasy worlds bodes well for our future, n'est pas?
And, as for John Farr, reviewing a movie on DVD is the same as critiquing a painting from a picture book. Not how it was intended to be experienced. You start out removed from the actual theatrical experience that comprises the medium, and after assimilating enough hype that no event could live up to, you choose to pass judgement on something which you admit you do not understand, but which others did.
I am not defending Inception or big budget movies. I do reject the intellectually empty exercise of reviewing what the producers of the film presented as the cinematic equivalent of a roller coaster ride (and nothing more) as a potential classic because of a few hyperbolic comments you encountered.
gee- given the fact that more and more people are watching movies at home, this does not bode well for the medium.