Inception (2010)

Warning: Mild Spoilers

I had to think about this one for awhile before I wrote about it.

Say what you want about Christopher Nolan's new epic Inception. Bloated, sure. Confusing, absolutely. Overcooked, probably. Does it all work? No.

But you can't deny the ambition behind it. It's a film that was clearly made by an intellectually curious mind genuinely trying to discover something new. For a Hollywood summer blockbuster with a budget topping out at $160 million in this age of megastupid crap like G.I. Joe and Transformers, that's damn near miraculous.

I'm not even going to try to sum up the plot, because to do so would be an act of pure futility. Most of you, if you haven't seen it, probably already know the basics: Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a Man With A Past who makes a dubious living hacking into the dreams of corporate scions and stealing information. This heist-of-the-subconscious is called "extraction." But then he's made an Offer He Can't Refuse by a Japanese energy tycoon (Ken Watanabe) and assembles a team to do the seeming impossible: hack into the dreams of the heir (Cillian Murphy) to a rival corporation and plant an idea rather than to take one. This is called, predictably enough, "inception." So Cobb hires an architect (Ellen Page) to design the dream, and a bunch of other dudes to do some other stuff. And we're off to the races.

Nifty idea, right? And kind of unworkable, when you get right down to it. In the hands of a lesser talent (say, oh, I don't know, Michael Bay), it would have been a big steaming mess. But going in I knew that if anyone could make sense of this, it would be Christopher Nolan.

Rather than try to dissect what this movie's doing or make sense of it (which, until I see it about eight more times, would be pretty much impossible), I'm just going to list what I thought worked and didn't work.

1. Dream Reality

Some critics are knocking this movie for not really pulling off the "dream logic." I think this is kind of a bullshit criticism, to be honest. Dreams are inherently impossible to capture within a narrative, filmic context. As soon as the imagery is made literal by a camera, the whole thing falls apart. The only two films I can really think of that come close to capturing the sheer insanity of what a dream actually is are Adrian Lyne's Jacob's Ladder and David Lynch's Lost Highway. All the other attempts I can think of have always felt overly schematic to me.

Nolan -- as schematic a filmmaker as has ever existed -- knows this, I think she he's not really going to try. Inception doesn't attempt to capture the chaos, absurdity, surrealism, and naked emotional force of our most powerful dreams. Rather, he presents an off-kilter constructed reality more similar to what we get in The Matrix. And this is the point. These aren't "dreams" as we're accustomed to thinking of them. They are created, by the characters and for a very specific purpose. We are given levels within levels within levels of reality, one inside the other like those Russian nesting dolls, as we descend deeper into Murphy's (and, simultaneously, DiCaprio's) subconscious.

It's no accident that the whole concept of "architecture" plays a major thematic and narrative role here, and the constant imagery of stairs and elevators reinforces this. It's not about experiencing a dream-state, but rather deconstructing the very idea of reality, time and perception, and in an analytical way. This has been Nolan's obsession (even in the Batman films) since he began making movies. Go back and rewatch Following if you disagree.

2. Story Structure

This is where Nolan really lives and breath, and in that sense the screenplay to Inception is meticulously crafted. It's not really a puzzle movie the way Memento is, but it's incredibly dense and has about a million moving parts to keep track of. It's pretty amazing how clear Nolan is able to keep everything. Unfortunately, the only way he seems to be able to do this is to resort to a nearly constant stream of exposition. But whatever. Like he himself said recently in an interview, heist films are the only types of movies where the excitement itself comes from the exposition. It's about knowing the details of how everything's supposed to work, and then seeing it all fall apart. And at it's heart, Inception really is a heist movie.

3. Character Development

I -- and many others -- have always said that this is Nolan's weakness. A Christopher Nolan film is all about the ideas, and the characters sort of exist to further those ideas. As such, they are often only half-alive. In Inception DiCaprio's main personal motivation mirrors that of Leonard (Guy Pierce) in Memento. Each man is trying to deal with the grief and the guilt of losing his wife (Jorja Fox in Memento, Marion Cotillard here). In both films, the emotional resonance of the personal tragedy is subsumed by the need to use the tragedy to propel the plot.

Personally, I'm okay with that. I give Nolan a bit of a pass here. I don't go to one of his films expecting to have my heart strings plucked. His movies are about the head and not so much about the heart.

What saves him is his ability to attract top-notch actors who manage to pull what heart they can out of the thin writing. Pierce managed to turn in a pretty devastating performance in Memento that builds slowly over the course of the film. I'm always surprised every time I watch it how affecting it actually is.

The same is true here. DiCaprio doesn't have the light touch Pierce did. He broods, Christian Bale-style, pretty much from the first frame, whereas Pierce made the more interesting choice to play laconically against Leonard's inner turmoil, thereby making the moments of intensit, where the turmoil manifests itself pop that much more. But DiCaprio brings an intensity to his best work that can be utterly gripping (see The Departed and Blood Diamond), if a little one-note. I would have preferred something a little less scowly -- less Marlon Brando and more Robert Mitchum -- but overall I'd say it mostly works.

Cotillard, in the thankless role of the dead wife who exists only in Cobb's mind, manages to be incandescent in every scene, and with very little to do. I have to admit I fell in love with her a bit myself here. It's because of her that this movie is as powerful as it is.

I also have to give a shout-out to the future Mrs. Scotty Milder, i.e. Ellen Page. I've pined for her pretty much since Juno (I know, I know. At least I didn't say Hard Candy). Her character here is pure plot, but she still provides that light touch that is so sorely missing from DiCaprio's performance. Long story short, I love her. The end.

Everyone else is uniformly strong, particularly Tom Hardy (Bronson) as the most roguishly charming of DiCaprio's fellow dream hackers. The only disappointment for me was Joseph Gordon-Levitt. He's okay, but I've become so accustomed to him being great in things like Brick and The Lookout that he underwhelmed me.

4. The Special Effects

What can I say? The Dark Knight really established Nolan as a A-list action director, and it did so with a refreshing dirth of "look at me Ma!" CGI. There's more in Inception, but Nolan wisely keeps it to a minimum. Many of the most impressive set pieces -- the fight in the rotating hallway, the van plunging into the water, the avalanche -- were done practically.

When Nolan does go for the big CGI sequence, he goes all out. We've all seen that shot of Paris folding up on itself in the trailer (which is too bad, really, because it kind of takes away from the "wow" factor when you actually see the movie). The ruined city-scape toward the end is truly mind blowing. And there's one shot involving a train (if you've seen it you know what I'm talking about) that actually made me recoil in my seat. But he uses this stuff only when he has to. Nolan has proven himself to be a real visual stylist, and he knows how to use his big bag of tools effectively and sparingly, to propel his ideas rather than simply show off.

5. The Music

I'm usually not a fan of huge crashing soundtracks. I may be the only person on earth who kind of can't stand John Williams' score for Star Wars. So I was surprised by how effective I found James Horner's work here. Once the movie really gets going the music never lets up, which normally would drive me batshit, but for some reason it actually added to the experience here. I can't really say why. I have a feeling, though, that it might irritate me on repeat viewings.

So that's my very broad take on Inception. I don't think it's the ground-breaking, awe-inspiring masterpiece that so many people claim it is. I also don't take the contrarian view that it's an overblown piece of shit (sorry Dusty). In the end, if I was to grade it, I guess I'd give it an A-, with several points added for the sheer balls it took to get it made in this environment. This is a huge summer movie that you can actually talk about once it's over. I'll give my kudos for that every time.