Your mind is the scene of the crime.
Some controversy about this film, some saying it's brilliant, others that the plot is too confusing or the overall emotional impact is lacking, that it's emotionally cold.
I would say it's very good in the SF action/thriller genre, like Total Recall (1990) or The Matrix (1999): a lot of action, chase scenes, fight scenes and special effects, structured with a clever dream-within-dream story-line, nicely written, including some great action scenes, especially the brilliant fight scenes with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, which I've heard were done pretty much "in camera". Other special effects were good, but not that mind-blowing, given the precedence of The Matrix, etc. Michael Bonner remarks on: "zero gravity fights in a hotel corridor, an assault on an artic fortress and a car chase through a dreamed city".
I was apprehensive about Inception because of the director's previous film, The Dark Knight (2008), which I took a real dislike to: a film with lots of cool machines, speed, action, but without heart, a perfect film for Top Gear-loving lads. I would say that Inception is an emotionally cold film: plot, not character-driven. The stakes, as others have pointed out, are not very personal: corporate espionage, for God's sake!
For all the hype about Inception being an intelligent blockbuster that doesn't dumb down a challenging plot to accommodate lazy audiences, in the end, for science fiction fans, it wasn't that challenging at all. The tropes were fairly standard in the genre of science fiction; I didn't have trouble following the plot, and I saw the final end twist coming a long way off. In toto, although it's true that the film does feel fresh, in reality, it follows the standard action thriller template, with quieter scenes alternating with noisy kick-ass action sequences.
The characters were pretty standard too: fine, but not very memorable. De Caprio was good, as was Cillian Murphy and Ken Watanabe (the latter superb in Letters from Iwo Jima, 2006). Not quite sure why Ellen Page was used, she was fantastic in Juno (2007), but seemed a bit out of place here. Shame Lukas Haas, very effective in Brick (2005), was not used more.
- Rating: Full price
- When seen: 8 Aug 2010
- Where seen: Cinema
- More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia
Posted using Blogo from my MacBook Pro
Amendments: Added label for actor Lukas Haas. Removed link to Wikipedia-sourced image. Added ranking image.
Not gonna lie, it frustrated me a little to read your review. It felt overtly biased in a way. It also felt like you didn't actually watch the movie. "Emotionally cold"? I honestly could not tell if you were being serious... The movie's premise forces it to be anything but "plot, not character driven." The literal "settings" in the movie were the dreams of the characters, meaning the settings were direct representations and reflections of the characters having the dream. This forces a lot of character development and opens up many interpretations. And come on, not character driven? Cobb and Mal? That entire portion of the plot played a huge role in the movie. Cobb's inability to make peace with his past was a huge driving point of the plot, his character flaws literally drove the plot. It was without a doubt character driven as the plot grew away from the "dream within a dream" idea and more towards the "inception" idea (as in the definition of inception: the start of something) that caused Cobb's internal suffering (Mal's suicide and his need to be reunited with his kids). And lastly, the damned philosophical twist: Cobb always spins his top to check if he's dreaming, because whether it was real or not mattered. But in the end when he's with his kids, he spins it but does not check... because he no longer cares if it's real, he understand that as long as he's happy it doesn't matter. And that's the final question imposed on the viewer: do we care if the top fell? does it matter? The same way Cobb obsessed over the top we as viewers obsess over the ending. Cobb's character arc has come full-circle and the final scene is a question about what we care about. So many people argue over the ending and thus, have missed the point.
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ReplyDeleteThank you for taking the time to read this review and to leave a comment.
You are right to say I was biased. I know this is not fair to the filmmakers, and I try to see films with an open mind, but because of my dislike of Nolan's The Dark Knight, it's true that I entered the cinema with a pessimistic eye. Fair or not, the filmmakers would have to work extra hard to get me on board.
As I watched the film, I was forcefully reminded that, of course, Inception was a science fiction story, and a very well realised, clever and exciting science fiction story. I love science fiction as genre and am happy to evangelise all good science fiction. So, I was obliged to write what I thought of as a generally very positive review.
However, as the film went on, I realised too that whatever it was on the surface, underneath, in structure, it was really just a James Bond movie. I have no problem with James Bond movies, per se. I have enjoyed many James Bond movies, on various levels, but this film, Inception, was being massively hyped as so much more than that, a difficult-to-follow, extremely cerebral, novel science fiction thriller. But that wasn't my experience.
I like your arguments about character driving this story. But I didn't feel that to be true when I was watching. You talk about obsessing over the ending, but I didn't. I didn't really care about Cobb enough, and the ending was cute but too schematic for me, too "plot-driven". I like a film with real heart, that will touch me emotionally. None of Nolan's films have achieved that.
I know most people loved Inception and critics including Mark Kermode rate it very highly. I want to try it again and maybe I'll see what I was missing and come round to your point of view.