07/16/10 - Inception

Inception (2010, 148 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1375666/

Inception is probably the second most anticipated movie of the summer behind what I would say was only Iron Man 2. However, the trailers and teasers and everything else just wasn't selling me on this movie so I was entering my viewing with caution. I also selected to see the IMAX screening for the added bonus of seeing everything even larger. Okay, truthfully, my roommate selected IMAX and I didn't care that much.

The movie has an incredibly complicated plot so, instead of just glazing over it like I usually do, I'm going to try and delve into it in a little more detail. The film follows Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) who works by taking secrets from people's minds (for business reasons). However, desiring to be able to freely enter his home again, he agrees to take on a job of installing an idea into a person's mind (called "inception" as opposed to taking which is called "extraction"). For this he assembles a top-notch team: Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who is kind of like the second leader and point man; Eames (Tom Hardy), who works as a "forger" which means he manipulates his appearance as necessary to get information; Ariadne (Ellen Page), a new recruit who takes the job of "architect" which means she constructs the levels of the dreams; and Yusuf (Dileep Rao), who provides the group with sleeping "potion" necessary for the complicated procedure. Anyway, this whole inception thing is orchestrated by Saito (Ken Watanabe) for business reasons. He basically wants Robert Fischer, Jr. (Cillian Murphy) to break up his father's empire after he inherits it. If Cobb can accomplish this then Saito will grant him freedom to enter the country. Finally, one of the biggest problems in this whole ordeal is that Cobb's (now deceased) wife Mal (Marion Cotilliard) has killed herself after being unable to deal with the real world and Cobb blames himself for this. This is the basic outline of the plot and I'll give more as necessary as the comments continue. I will mention though that minor roles go to: Miles (Michael Caine), former teacher of Cobb; Maurice Fischer (Pete Postlethwaite), Fischer's father; and Browning (Tom Berenger), a friend of Fischer's father and later a disguise used by Eames.

My main problem with Inception lies in what I had to do for the above. To understand this movie you have to give way too much information. I can quickly describe the last two movies I saw: in Forrest Gump we have a guy that goes through an incredibly adventurous life and then goes to see his childhood sweetheart, and in Memento we have a guy that suffers from memory loss that is trying to piece together clues to hunt his wife's killer (or so we are led to believe). Anyway, I can't really do that here. I mean, I guess "a guy tries to create an idea in a businessman's mind so that he will be able to return home" somewhat works but it misses so much of what the movie is while my above comments for Forrest Gump and Memento pretty much capture the essence of the plot. This is actually both good and bad. I mean, it's good because Inception is incredibly complicated and it is mostly interesting. It's definitely unique - it is impossible to argue it is not a highly original movie - but it's also almost needlessly complicated. Here's a bit more plot: to do inception the group must "go deep" in the mind of the individual. Thus this is what they do: put Fischer to sleep, encounter him in his dream, kidnap him, and begin to convince him that his father had a secret second will, but then they enter a second dream, and here they attempt to convince Fischer that his father's friend is plotting against him, and after convincing him of this they go to a further dream to extract the second will and so that Fischer can see his father, but here Fischer dies and so Cobb must go to "limbo" to rescue him. I'm pretty sure that sentence doesn't work grammatically, but it conveys what I'm wanting. We have this layered system of dreams like so: real life, dream #1, dream #2, dream #3, limbo. Time compounds slowly in dreams so five minutes in real life is about an hour in the first dream but about ten hours in the second dream. This gives the group which has about ten hours real life time an incredibly long time to complete their job. Again, this whole plot aspect is both good and bad. It's good because it introduces some cool things like limbo and the time aspect of the dreams. But it's stupid because there's no need for stuff to be this complicated. I was (shockingly) reminded of Episode I when I watched this because there was so much going on at one time. Because someone must stay behind in each dream step (except the first) we have to constantly cut back to these spots. So we have all of the following going on at once: dream #1, dream #2, group #1 in dream #3, group #2 in dream #3, limbo. The movie just becomes too bloated when we have to be caring or noting what's going on in five different scenes (though admittedly, some of these like dream #1 aren't that complicated after a while). Still, the fact remains that there is just way too much stuff going on at any time. And this isn't to say that it makes Inception too complicated too understand or watch. I mean, in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End there were about five plots going on at once and it became impossible to even follow. Inception is easy to follow and recall what's happening where and why and all that. But I still believe that after a while it almost becomes a gimmick where extra layers and complexities were added for no real reason except to keep the audience thinking (it's possible to have a great thriller without a needlessly complicated plot). I mean, recall Joker's plan in The Dark Knight: it was the single most convoluted plan in the history of cinema. A similar thing is going on here. It's easy enough piece by piece when watching The Dark Knight or Inception but when you step back and look at the whole you realize how needlessly complicated it all becomes. I honestly think this will lead many to praise Inception unnecessarily with the though process being "Wow! That movie was deep and complicated and I was able to follow it. Pretty cool!" almost liking it because it made them seem smart or something.

Another thing I realized when I stepped away from Inception and looked at the whole product concerned the antagonist of the film: there wasn't one. There is no single entity that consistently steps up to thwart plans or that. Fischer is a quasi-antagonist but they quickly arrange it so that he's on the same side as everyone else. The only character that stands out is Mal because she conflicts fundamentally with Cobb and sometimes hampers the group. But can I honestly say that she is the antagonist? No, I can't. And this leads me to another point for the film: what was the overall point here? Was I supposed to be rooting for the group as a whole or mainly Cobb as an individual to conquer his inner demons? It never really became clear and almost became two separate plots that never really gave way to one another. I guess in both cases I'm hoping Cobb succeeds but there's still a fundamental difference here. Also, the twist at the end where Cobb admits to doing inception on Mal earlier came as neither a real important surprise nor a great revelation nor a story altering point. Was I supposed to care here or what? I just somewhat shrugged my shoulders and moved along with the final couple minutes. Back to my main antagonist point, I guess "time" and "limbo" end up being the biggest factors here. Things have to be solved in a time limit but really the film eventually falls victim to making time limits extremely flexible - I mean the "few minutes" that Arthur has in dream #2 turns into probably thirty minutes. Similarly the threat of limbo never really seems all that bad but I can't really place why this is the case.

All this isn't to say that Inception is 100% bad because for the most part, it's a good movie. First and foremost we have great acting talents. DiCaprio is arguably the best actor of this generation and he can pull off any emotion. But my favorite actor is actually Gordon-Levitt who excels at being incredibly likable and incredibly realistic. Sadly, none of the characters have much personality besides DiCaprio's Cobb, but I liked Gordon-Levitt a little bit more than the others. Probably my second favorite was Eames who is also quite likable and has some good witty lines of dialogue. Further, both Arthur and Eames developed a little rivalry that was handled in a fun way but this is pretty much the extent of the character development sans Cobb. The other characters like Ariadne or Saito or Fischer weren't fleshed out enough for me to really care about them. Okay, so I prefaced this paragraph with "not everything is bad" and then proceeded to mention some more bad. But what I'd really like to highlight here is the quality acting. Every single actor does a great job even if their character isn't that developed and that which is pretty cool.

Next, Inception is one of the best visually stimulating movies I've seen in quite recent times (up there with Avatar). The low gravity and spinning camera are just amazing. Arthur jumping and gliding around the room and handling himself with no gravity is just a joy to watch. As an aside though, Eames once complained that Arthur had no imagination but I think he handled the situation in dream #2 with great poise as he came up with a pretty (perhaps unsurprisingly) complicated solution. Anyway, these moments were probably the best in the entire film and pretty jaw-dropping in their technique and successful demonstration.

The music in Inception also deserves some mention. I will say that composer Hans Zimmer did a fantastic job with director Christopher Nolan's previous project The Dark Knight. Here, however, it just didn't work as well. I frequently found the score taking me out of the film as it just seemed incessant and constantly pounding in the background. Maybe this was supposed to put me in a certain mood but it just didn't work. Constantly reminding me I'm watching a movie would be an interesting technique since it would juxtapose the dream aspect in a cool way, but I don't think this is the case. It didn't really intrude on the characters talking or anything but it just seemed to be too "there" in the normal scenes. Maybe this isn't so much Zimmer's score as the way it was selected to be in the film. Whatever the case, the overall music just didn't jive that well with me.

Finally, the ending of the film is worthy of some talk. At the end we are left wondering if the entire ending sequence was actually a dream of Cobb or not. However, I don't understand how it could be anything but reality. Maybe I haven't analyzed and looked at it from every angle (I really haven't gotten around to reading much discussion on the film). I think it was thrown in pretty much only as a debate point and that was it so that people will continue talking about the film.

Overall, I gave this film a 6/10. Inception is without question worthy of a watch. A watch though - not multiple. It's complicated for all the wrong reasons in my opinion and this produces a bad plot but fantastic acting and simply stunning visuals save it from the 5/10 average.