And all that could have been

Inception Review

After all the hype, Nolan's latest picture has finally arrived, but what has me scratching my head is as to what it actually is. Speaking from a pure technical view it is more or less perfect. It has been gorgeously shot by Nolan Regular Wally Pfister who once again proves he is an excellent craftsman by giving the most intense scenes space to breath and framing the shots in cool poster ways. The special effects are nothing short of a triumph, proving beyond any doubt that less cgi is more. In choosing to make the most of the special effects mechanical i.e putting something physical in front of the actual camera and shooting it, Nolan shows us that cgi will probably never look; or feel as real as something that is actually real. Sure towards the end there is a fair bit of cgi but it is never there just for the sake of it or because they have an awesome special effect that can do this or that. From an objective view, the worst thing about the movie is the soundtrack. I honestly found that it was outright pretty bad and very uninspired and that Hans Zimmer could very well have fundamentally been the wrong choice. This critique is grounded in the fact that the soundtrack is just too common and lacks any distinct or specific ideas. For me there are two important things to say about this. First of all i come from the view point of David Lynch in this regard, this is not meant in a stuck up way, but i will let him speak for himself; for what he said was this: ''Cinema is sound and picture moving in time''. What he is saying here is that sound is a very important and an integrated part of a film. Now considering this is true, what happens when the soundtrack is truly subpar? It effects the movie greatly and that becomes a quite important problem of Inception for it is scored in such a way that you would be hard pressed to find a single second without something in the music department going on and it is truly suffocating.

In the acting department Nolan has once again brought together a great ensemble of actors (see, i avoided the word characters because this movie is seriously lacking in that department, but more on that later) with Leonardo Di Caprio, Ellen Page, Ket Watanabe, Michael Caine, Tom Hardy Joseph-Levitt Gordon, Marion Cotillard and the wonderful Tom Berenger.

Di Caprio is for me not the prominent actor he has been made out to be and here it becomes fairly obvious when he (despite being the lead and so called emotional core of the story) is the least interesting character in the movie. Ken Watanabe basically does what he can with the little he has and so does the rest of the cast. This is where the movie stopped working for me, we have no characters. I didn't feel like i truly got to know anyone which becomes a problem when the movie is drowned in action sequences. In all the great action movies you've had great characters, that is what makes them work. In The Rock we had Cage and Connery, Die Hard has Bruce Willis and so on... What a great character gives you is sympathy, whatever they do you care and you want to be in their company. Mind you, these could be anti heroes or villains that you are fascinated by, but at the end of th day they are great characters. In Inception all the characters are more or less only the sum of their parts, which in the Joseph-Levitt character means he protects other people, and that's it.

What is faultless however (i believe) is Christopher Nolans direction. He takes us into this world and shows us this world of ideas and makes us believe that the impossible is possible. He directs the action sequences very well and truly makes us feel the large set pieces. Also, despite the script being fairly complex, for example when they start being in a dream within a dream etc..., Nolans direction makes it crystal what is going on and where we are so that we never become lost. The big issue with the movie however is that sort of classic parental mood. ''Chris, i'm not angry at you, i'm disappointed''. What Nolan has set out to do is a massive intelligent action blockbuster, in which regard he succeeds. This is where my disappointment originates from. Inception has been made out to be more than just a very well made action picture and it was certainly time for Nolan to show us that he could combine the cinematic and expansive vision of Dark Knight with the substance of Memento or Insomnia. In other words the movies faults doesn't lie in the execution but rather in what is actually executed. Inception is full of wonderful sequences, but these are only sequences and scenes that are awesome in their own right, but they don't really add anything to the whole.

I had personally hoped for a more provocative and mysterious experience but Nolan's dream world is anything but.

As a popcorn flick it is about as good as it gets this summer and it beats its contenders to dust. Only problem is that the movie it rivals are Prince of Persia, Twilight, Predators... while i was hoping for something along the lines of a new Blade Runner.