First, Christopher Nolan is a film maker focused on memories and guilt. Memento is a film about a man who has no long term memory and with the aid of clues searches for the man that killed his wife. His remake of Insomnia is about a detective who accidentally shoots his partner and is haunted by those memories. In the first Batman, Nolan explores Bruce Wayne's inability to cope with his parents murder and how his memories of his parents influence his decision to become Batman.
Inception is about a top notch group of thieves that enter your dreams while you sleep and steal secrets. Their job is basically super sophisticated corporate espionage. The leader of this team is Leonardo DiCaprio as Mr. Cobb. Mr. Cobb is a wanted criminal in the US and struggles to efficiently perform his job without memories of his dead wife interrupting his dream state. Mr. Cobb and their team typically do extraction jobs until a new employer, Saito (Ken Watanabe) offers Mr. Cobb a proposition to plant an idea into the mind of one of his business competitors. Placing an idea in another person's mind is called inception.
Upon being approached with this idea of inception Cobb and his business partner Arthur (Joseph Gorden-Levitt) immediately reject the idea and tell Saito that inception is impossible. The reasons why inception cannot be done are not very convincing. Immediately after the proposal is dismissed Saito offers Mr. Cobb a chance to see his children again. Cobb takes the job explaining without reason that inception can be done. While everyone doubts whether or not inception can be done, Cobb is holding something back from his team. His secret is that he has done inception to his dead wife. This plot twist is meant to be a surprise but it isn't as Cobb keeps it a secret from his team.
So the chase is on. Cobb and Arthur assemble their crack team of mind thieves which include Ariadne (Ellen Page), Eames (Tom Hardy) and Yusuf (Dileep Rao). It's seem hard to believe that all of these characters are needed and it does not help that their job description and training are roughly explained. Ariadne as the architect of the dreams, Eames as the forager, Yusuf as the chemist, Arthur as the team lead and Cobb as the principle thief that really doesn't do anything, not even come up with the plan. By the way, the plan to insert an idea in the target Robert Fischer Jr. (Cillian Murphy) seems really easy.
So the chase is on. Cobb and Arthur assemble their crack team of mind thieves which include Ariadne (Ellen Page), Eames (Tom Hardy) and Yusuf (Dileep Rao). It's seem hard to believe that all of these characters are needed and it does not help that their job description and training are roughly explained. Ariadne as the architect of the dreams, Eames as the forager, Yusuf as the chemist, Arthur as the team lead and Cobb as the principle thief that really doesn't do anything, not even come up with the plan. By the way, the plan to insert an idea in the target Robert Fischer Jr. (Cillian Murphy) seems really easy.
So the plan goes like this... the team plus Saito plan to invade Mr. Fischer's dreams while on a 10 hour flight from Sydney to LA. The 10 hour flight is important because an hour of dreaming translates to a week in the dream and the plan needs months of dreaming to develop, hence the 10 hours needed. It seems reasonable but the film follows this principle very, very loosely. On the plane the team will take some heavy sedatives so nothing will disturb their sleep because they will be exploring multiple levels of dreams, a dream within a dream to plant the idea. Before entering this set of dreams, the viewer has already seen a dream or two and is somewhat familiar with the rules of what should be done and can be done in dreams. Somethings go wrong in the first layer of dreams and the rules change. Things going wrong in all the levels of dreams and frequently so the team improvises with a new plan seemingly contradictory of what was thought capable, but it all works out anyway.
One of the major obstacles is the target Robert Fisher Jr. has been trained to handle mind espionage and his mind sets out traps to capture those attacking it. Fisher's mind defense is something not shocking since the idea had been introduced early in the film. Each dream encounters a problem that seemingly comes from nowhere but is resolved with ease because after all the characters are in a dream and in a dream you can do whatever the fuck you want. Yes, in a dream you can do whatever you want. No need for rules or previous notions of what can, cannot, should or should not be done in the dream because Nolan was going to throw them out the window.
The team gets the job done and Cobb again get his man. By completing the job, Cobb is freed of his criminal charges and gets to see his children again. He also deals with the memory of his dead wife who has been plaguing his dreams and making the jobs much more difficult. The memories of his wife Mal (Marion Cotillard) continue to interrupt each mission Cobb goes on, at the point that it puts his team in significant danger. In the end, all is resolved or is it?
The drama of what happens within the dreams seems very over blown. Earlier in the film, if you died in your dream you woke up but in this new set of dreams with the many levels of dreams and the heavy dose of sedatives, if you die you might be in a coma or some type of mental limbo when you wake up. Such threats of a coma or mental limbo at some point seem weak since the rules of the dreams continue to change. For example Saito is shot in the first level of dreams but must complete the mission and awake as according to plan or else mental limbo. Later on Fisher is shot but is somehow found in Cobb's dream and comes back to life. What? There is an explanation given on why this works and with this explanation you easily just want to toss your hands up in the air and wonder why they don't use super powers to fend off their attackers, fly or call upon giant mythological monsters to play a game of dodge ball.
There is a moment in the first layer of Fisher's dream sharing in which Arthur is in the middle of a shoot out, using a large rifle and having little success. Eames comes to help by simply saying, "you must not be afraid to dream a bit bigger" or something of that sort and in his hands magically (seemingly so) a hand cannon appears which quickly relieves them of their pursuers. Why isn't this method of dreaming bigger explored more often? I do not know. Maybe because it would easily squash any of the drama in the film. In some aspects one has to admire Nolan for wanting to keep the violence so grounded, making it concrete and realistic but in the end the drama rises and falls without any reason. Something bad happens, a plan to resolve quickly arises and then resolution. Is it because they are in a dream and within a dream anything can be done? If that is true then doesn't that kill any of the drama? I think so.
Their are several twists in the plot that might require debate or a second viewing. I am not opposed to see anything twice but it seems that much of the film requires a second viewing for cheap purposes. The end is a twist that anyone should see coming. The plot twists seem intentionally confusing rather than profound in which the sole purpose is to mask a lame duck plot with self absorbed characters.
Mr. Cobb is an incredibly selfish hero. He is hard to like as he continually puts the plan and his team in danger. Ariadne is meant to be our moral center but consistently forgives Cobb and allows him to continue his selfish ways. DiCaprio as Cobb plays the role in a straight manner and is solid but not exceptional. He doesn't play Cobb as an obsessive or a guilt stricken man which are both reasonable and might have made the character more interesting. There is no humor or sadness which leaves the performance kind of flat. You have to wonder if the choice to play this role in that particular fashion was his or Nolan's. DiCaprio does deserve some kudos for his recent string of playing characters struggling with identity. Page as Ariadne is mediocre as she seems type cast to play a snotty youth who consistently gives her characters an attitude that embodies a self righteous teen. Joseph Gorden-Levitt is an interesting cast as the team manager Arthur. He doesn't really have the persona or body type for the role nor does he use those distinctions to build upon the role in a new way. His rigid portrayal just comes off as flat. Ken Watanabe as Saito, Tom Hardy as Eames and Cotillard as Mal are probably the most efficient and entertaining performances. It is nice to see Nolan having a group of actors that routinely appear in his films such as Watanabe, Cillian Murphy and Michael Caine (as Cobb's step father?)
Inception is not an inventive film. It is a charade. It doesn't really explain how dreams work, how time works within the dreams, what can be done and what cannot be done. It's very confusing for the sake of being confusing. It doesn't try to explore the philosophy of dreams. The film slogan, "your mind is the scene of the crime" is misleading and odd since we follow the criminals. Plot twist after plot twist don't reveal anything new about the characters or the plot. Everything in the film seems underdeveloped. The cast seems all wrong despite my admiration for much of the players. The sub plots are weak while the issues about mothers and parenting within the film are unclear. It is also a shame that Nolan, his cinematographer and editor must rely on flashbacks in a film about memory. They are either unable to recreate film shots and use montage editing to build upon the themes of the film or they don't think the average audience is able to understand those techniques. After all Inception is not Hiroshima Mon Amour.
Much is made about this film and it's approach on dreams. Nolan is not a surrealist and that doesn't hurt this film but at times the film seems to be lacking imagination. If he were a surrealist would that make Nolan more creative? I doubt it. Nolan is very grounded. His action sequences are classic in many ways with chase sequences, subtle gun play, a timely explosions and clever fist on fist fights. He doesn't rely on special effects and films in a grand epic scale that David Lean would admire. He shoots on location and there is much about this film that seems like it could have been done with old school movie tricks according to new school rules. When cities fold it almost looks like two overlapping rolls of film but better. When the zero gravity sequence occurs in a fun over overdrawn action sequence, it is nothing more than a room that twirls like on a rotisserie causing the appearance of walking on walls. All of these old school tricks might be done with new school technology but if anything Nolan should be saluted for doing what has been done before in better ways. Nolan should also be given props for making challenging large scale films, even if, at least according to this review are not fully developed.
In the end, Inception is a great idea crudely done, questionably performed with a lack luster script and an ending encouraging debate over good film making.
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