I saw Inception last night despite the hype. Straight afterwards, I discussed it with some cats whom I admire for their selective taste. I gave it a 7, and I'm a movie snob as you're about to learn, so that's not half bad.
Some 'user review' opinions had suffused into my mind, some snippets of people's impressions, wherein I had heard some say that you had to sleep on it, said they awoke and saw the whole thing differently. They awoke and supposedly were blown away (perhaps because they had been romping with DiCaprio for a decade, building sandcastles?).
I must admit I had a similar experience. I woke up and things had changed. I realised that the picture was more average than I had imagined. Maybe it had to do with a night of dreaming … dreams not confined to bland hotels and Bondesquecapades around bunkers in the Alps, in waist-coats and Dapper Dan.
Luckily this isn't nursery-school and I'm not scrawling this review in crayons so you might disagree but you can't just tear it up and break my lego. And just so you know, there are spoilers from here on, so if you care that he dies in the end (yes dies! Like all the people he's killed) then you might want to look away.
Here's the essential question with a film like Inception: Do I need to watch it again? I might want to, you know, like Die Hard 4, because those 'plosions were awesome. Or like Ocean's 11-21 because … never mind. Oh yes, I just remembered, because I'm sometimes bored and like the moving pictures.
Here's the answer: No.
My expectations were high but not unreasonable. That's the thing with an informed audience; I'm going to suspend my disbelief but you still got to swirl your lure like a fly-fisherman, plop it in the water and hook me in the throat.
Shutter Island did that, Fight Club and even the Matrix did that. I consider the former an exemplar in the 'meta-psychological' cum extensional realism/sci-fi mind-fuck genre, because Scorsese knew his audience would be sceptical. He also knew that they were an audience, hence had to sit and watch and cogitate the string of scenes on the screen. So what did he do? He used the medium of film and people's tendency to haplessly follow a coercive story, our tendency to go to great lengths to create a coherence that isn't necessarily there, he used our cinematic disillusion and fatigue and the fact that he had ~120 minutes to his advantage - to shock us.
He subtly, scene by scene, drew you, like the protagonist, into a state of incredulity and confusion. And in this way he led you along, entertained, all the while insidiously affecting that great disconnect, the discord that really had you questioning the truth of what you had seen. The unreliable narrator. Audience manipulation. So that as sceptical as you might have been, you still wound up giving a shit about the truth – found that you really did not know, and here's the great thing, suspected that there were clues along the way that might reveal how you were led so astray, that there might be a truth that mattered. Hence, watch it again.
It's the 'show, don't tell' principle. At the end of Inception I spent a full millisecond caring if the top fell or kept spinning. Because the revelation was hollow. It might have been a dream or it might not have, but Nolan doesn't know and Nolan doesn't care either, because it's really unimportant. What more do we know about Cobb that makes us care? How would knowing change the story? It wouldn't, because Nolan's (yes, he wrote it too) dreams are as bland as life. Leo felt and was rational and could hurt and could die in his dreams, so what's the big deal? - (And he didn't even fuck Juno! Shame on him.). Honestly, are you going to hijack the potential of dream fiction for something so mundane as a few gun-battles and bombs exploding? Everyone has seen this before (barring the humvee on tracks – keuuu).
And when I think of films I have needed to see again, Memento is certainly up there. I believe that Nolan's been going backwards ever since. Think of Memento. You're confused from the beginning. Time is going backwards. You wonder, what in sweet Jesus's name is going on? And how magical is the moment of epiphany, with a brilliant story laced into the session of discovery, when you figure it out yourself? Fight Club too.
Batman rebooted was great … but Batman is the average Joe (yankee) superhero. In Gotham there is no supernatural and the audience just wants clever, entertaining, real. Nolan's going to be working on Superman, where the universe is defined and what's far worse, so is the namesake. So it's cut and dry big-budget Hollywood. Not much space for wild innovation like in that rough-edged gem with Guy Pearce.
My point is that Nolan is no longer an auteur. That Inception, unfortunately, had to lie within this stable, sure-bet period of his cannon. Perhaps that is why the characters had to tell you what was happening at every turn, as if they might cover over the incalculable plot-holes and continuity errors that are so wonderfully intractable from a film like this. As I said, I suspended my disbelief – why make me second-guess myself by harping on about all the reasons it could actually be real? That dreams have defined layers. I can buy it, but Nolan did protest too much. The environment had so much possibility, and then you apply all the rules of real life to it so it makes perfect sense?
This brings me to Leo, and his performance, which was a sure-fire indicator that the script was inadequate. Leo is a damned good actor. After I stopped hating him for making me question my sexuality in my early teens, see R&J and Titanic, (and for turning the 21st century paragon of manhood into an androgynous man-boy who likes to cry when he gets the opportunity – which actually suits me quite well, to be honest) I began, as all of you must have done by now, if this global consciousness thing is working, to appreciate his talents.
He has always been good, since Gilbert Grape, Basketball Diaries, Marvin's Room; and the refreshing thing about him is that he was, after the 'Heart will go on' hysteria, the paradigmatic type-cast. And he turned away from it. I truly believe that he is an actor who does not take the profession for granted, who knows he has talents, knows that he was born with a golden ticket, but who spends hours honing his skills and maximising his capabilities. As opposed to, say, Matthew McConaughey (do I seriously have to capitilise that name; 3 times!) or Tom Cruise who is a psychotic twat.
Leo's never been afraid to stretch his face, get some wrinkles, to be multiple characters convincingly. There have been a few duds (literally a few; in one of them were two Leos), but if you consider the range of himself he has exposed in The Aviator, Blood Diamond, Gangs of New York (I love this film if you're looking for a reason to disagree with me), Revolutionary Road, Shutter Island and his best, my favourite, The Departed, you can see that all he needs is a well-rounded character and some good lines to bring a film to life. Even Body of Lies was palatable.
Nicholas Cage could have been Cobb. I've pretty much said it all in that sentence. Nicholas Cage could have been the main character.
His lines were all cheap exposition. He spoke like Nicholas Cage. Here is some dialogue I remember: “This is what is happening, this is why it is happening, this is what is going to happen. Don't forget I could be dreaming, and some love-interest is coming at me, like the chick from the ring, because I didn't want to settle down and spend eternity with her. Don't forget that. Don't think too hard. Could be a twist. Don't think. Don't – zip it – exzippitA - Don't think.” Cagey lines. The dreams are as clinical and predictable as Lethal Weapon (Gibson, another hack), and Cage is going to make sure you know the rules.
The guy from 10 Things I Hate and (500) Days of Summer, who has clearly modelled his acting technique around Keanu Reeves's Wooden Period (ie: everything he has ever done, including smile), hasn't proven to me that I should remember his name, but he worked well in the role. Ken Watanabe was great if somewhat flat.
It was like Mission Impossible in three universes that were all the same! I got excited when produce market-carts and postboxes were exploding around Juno, but where did that all go? A train coming down the centre of the road? It's called a tram. Some dilapidated high-rises in a scene I could have created the CGI for, using Paint and the rectangle tool.
There is an immense and fathomless beauty to dreams. They are not, for one, fucking boring. The possibility is endless, twisted and glorious. I'm not necessarily talking Crouching Tiger aerobatics, nor Sin City dark. But imagine making a film about shared dreams, dreams within dreams, and then reducing all the rules so that the dreams are just like common everyday life. Where the 'sub-conscious sentries' come at you on motorbikes with shotguns. Seriously? That's hardly a dream I'd remember after playing GTA. All so that Nolan can show his mother's van falling off a bridge in super super slow motion.
So, before you remind me that I missed the point and it was such a novel concept and wow, like this is almost like when Lucas thought of space, let me tell you that you are a liar (and a grotesquely ugly freak). The dreamscape has been done, and done ridiculously well. The Eternal Sunshine ... Mulholland Drive, Dark City. Other, perhaps not as accomplished forays include What Dreams May Come and the one where Wolverine is hurtling through space in a sphere with a tree.
It's a simple case of show vs tell. The novelty of Inception was taking a 'fringe' idea and making a mildly entertaining action film out of it, ie: making it mainstream, ie: neutering it. You can still have balls and make billions. Ask the Wachowski brothers. Ask Chuck Palahnuik; Irvine Welsh.
Don't get me wrong, I didn't want another David Lynch film. But seriously. I've just let off a more creative fart. But of course it wasn't that bad! You can normally tell by the soundtrack. Judging by this one, the film was epically profound, stirring, intense at times, but overall poignant and sadly beautiful, like the transience of a snowflake (or a dream for that matter). Again, same problem with the soundtrack. Show, don't tell! Don't get your orchestra to tell me what to feel! That's why I really loved No Country For Old Men, for the soundtrack.
But, just so you don't think I'm a Maddoxx or a Yahtzee, intent on trolling everything you've ever loved, let me tell you how I was struck, in a good way, by the film.
The opening scene, when Leo encounters Watanabe, which is echoed in the closing minutes of the film, had a lot of potential. Watanabe is now an old and dying man, filled with regret, waiting for this shadowy deja-vu figure from a distant dream to come and save him from his misery. He can barely remember anything – an age has lapsed – but he knows something is not right, something is strange, a pact. This is something the audience can identify with. Those serendipitous shades from dreams that somehow unravel in life, like if you've dreamt of someone you never think about, and then see them the next day. Or feelings of love at first sight, of kindred spirits. This poor old man has been waiting for this outside persona to change his fate and somehow feels he's in a kind of Truman Show. Now, in this sort of setup, you can really exemplify the type of emotive potential of dream fiction. Why not have Leo stalking through the 3rd tier dream, discovering uncanny connections, meeting an age-old friend from some inexplicable yet real realm, and gently show us why this meant so much ... why the man is so old and full of regret. Make it seem important by making it important. The movie thought it could induce profundity just by talking about. Show the liftime in a dream. If you tell me it's a ten minute dream, and then show highlights from that dream in 10 minutes, I'm not sold by the authenticity. Again, failing to care.
This string sums up what I mean:
Mal: You keep telling yourself what you know, but what do you believe? What do you feel?
Cobb: Guilt.
Now that's some bollox writing. Go and watch a film called I've Loved You So Long (Il y a longtemps que je t'aime) with Kristin Scott Thomas, and you'll understand what it means to show guilt instead of announce it. I want to know he is plagued by guilt before he tells me he is! If his dialogue, interactions, behaviour, can't demonstration the entire fulcrum of a 4 dream-deep adventure into his own subconscious, then why do I care? Because you'll telling me he is guilty? That he was in love? That his kids really have faces? Telling me how profound the movie is? How affected I should be? It doesn't work like that, I'm afraid.
The weak script threatens to make the film sound like Johnny Mnemonic does now, 15 years after it was hip and punky. Lines like:
“Dreams within dreams is too unstable!”
“The seed that we planted in this man's mind may change everything.”
“With the slightest disturbance, the dream's going to collapse.”
So the 7 is now a 6.2 – not too bad, as you'll find out with more reviews. This is why: how sacred, how private a place is the rollicking mind in darkness. How limitless and cruel and desperate. If my dreams were so mundanely generic as Inception, I'd kill myself, hoping I wouldn't wake up either.
Final Insult:
If Inception were a love poem, this is how it would read:
“This is a love poem/ It's about love/ Love is pretty alright/ Therefore, give a shit.”
Everybody knows something about love's enigma, it's the same with dreams. Why reduce them to normalcy?
