If you know me or read my blog or have had one conversation with me, you probably know that I have a considerable large boner for Christopher Nolan. Something you may not know is that I also have a considerable large fascination with dreams and dreaming. I have since I was a little kid. I don’t buy into what certain “things” or “events” mean in your dreams; I just love the concept of dreaming. Despite the fact that it’s in YOUR brain, you have no real control over it. Your subconscious takes things from your memory, from your day, from 3 days ago, and constructs this mini-movie and you can live it out. Sometimes you can vividly remember dreams for years and other times, well most of the time, *poof*, they’re are gone an hour after you wake up. Kenneth Turan from the LA Times referred to dreaming as “life’s great solitary adventure”, but in Christopher Nolan’s “Inception”, your dreams are not only no longer solitary, but they are no longer safe.
I suppose the best way I can begin, is to tell you that Inception is, in fact, easier to follow than to explain. That may seem backwards, but it isn’t really. Nolan has this uncanny ability to build a world that doesn’t exist anywhere in our reality, but builds it so that you trust every aspect of it. And it’s because he trusts the intelligence of his audience, so he never over-explains anything, but never over-simplifies it either. He gives the exact amount of information and exposition to just sit back and enjoy the ride, without being confused or thinking too much. He never loses himself, so he never loses his audience.
I’ve been reading/hearing that people seem to think this movie is “too smart” for “regular” audiences to get. Listen, it’s not too smart; it’s just smart, which is something we need a lot more of in cinema these days. All you have to do is pay attention. So yeah if you like to go to the movies and text the whole time, this probably isn’t for you.
Yes, most of the acting didn’t “stand out”, but so what? So what if there wasn’t one stellar performance? Maybe it’s not entirely about that. A movie is made up of a lot of different parts; acting isn’t the most important thing of all time. And stop comparing it to other movies! I guess it’s kind of like The Matrix, in that it’s “mind-bending”, but I really think that’s where the comparisons stop. Inception is somehow more multi-faceted and complex, but easier to follow and understand. And WAY more interesting.
Alright, onto the things that were AMAZING!
1)This fight sequence: One of the best I’ve ever seen in cinema. Not only because it wasn’t CGI’d, but because Joseph Gordon-Levitt is fighting people that don’t actually exist in a place that only exists in someone else’s mind! He is a totally badass (a departure from the last movie I saw him in, (500) Days of Summer) and it was mesmerizing to watch.
2) The “dream stuff”: This was easily my favorite part of the movie. When we dream it’s always different for every person, but there things that we have all experienced that connects our dreaming together. “The kick” or that feeling of falling that jolts you awake suddenly. “Dream time” or the concept that time doesn’t really pass in a normal way in a dream and it never really has a beginning or an end. How things from reality pass over into our dreams, like music or an ambulance passing by on the street. All of these things we’ve experienced once or twice or a hundred times, so it anchors the world of Inception to our reality. It makes all of it more real, even though the idea of it feels unrealistic. It’s just another way Nolan never makes you question the ride he is taking you on.
3) The ending: One of the best endings I have ever seen. Because how was he going to do it? I was sitting in the theater before the movie started already wondering how he would end it, because I knew the cliche’d thought would come up. How would he avoid everyone just thinking “well, what if it was all a dream? How can we know?” He did it. He doesn’t tell you if it was or wasn’t; he lets the audience decide for themselves if they think the top kept spinning or toppled over. Just another way Nolan shows that he trusts the intelligence of his audience.
Inception bends your mind, sure, but it never breaks it. You can’t compare it to other movies because it is incomparable. It’s a sci-fi, a drama, it’s existential, it’s a neo-noir (with the femme fatale and a loner protagonist having to take on “one last job) and it’s a thriller. And it’s one of the scariest thrillers because it all takes place in the last truly scared place we all have: the mind, the brain, the subconscious.
Thank you, Christopher Nolan, for bringing back creativity and intelligence to Hollywood. I hope this film has done some “incepting” of it’s own and planted ideas in filmmakers heads that creativity needs to come back…with a vengeance
