Last night we saw Inception. Readers of this blog will know that I occasionally review movies but that when I do it’s usually an Australian one. After all, this blog’s prime focus is Australian (particularly Australian literature). However, my fingers regularly tap their way onto other turf, and on this occasion I’ve decided to write about this American movie, given all the hype that’s been surrounding it.
Am I being churlish to say that we were not overwhelmed? That’s not to say that we didn’t enjoy it, because we did, but it didn’t have quite the wow factor we were expecting. Is this due to a “high expectations” jinx or would we have felt that anyhow? It’s an intelligent and clever film: the plot develops from an intriguing premise that plays with the intersection between dreams and reality. DiCaprio does a good job; Ellen Page is as gorgeous and watchable as ever; the whole cast in fact is fine. There’s a neat little in-joke for movie fans: the song, Non, je ne regrette rien, plays a significant role in the plot which also features Marion Cotillard who played Piaf in the 2007 biopic, La vie en rose. The story’s complex multiple layers are developed logically and so can be pretty easily followed once you realise what’s going on. Hans Zimmer’s music is powerful – almost, but not quite, too so at times. I say “not quite” because that sort of powerful music suits the genre. The resolution has a little bite to it, and the ending leaves a door slightly open… So what’s the problem?
The problem is that it is an intelligent action-adventure movie but lacks, for us, a real emotional heart. We understood Cobb’s (the Di Caprio character) dilemma, intellectually, but we weren’t really given an opportunity to believe, or feel, it. We were told there was a great love story there but it was not set up well enough to convince us of it – and so the “journey” he takes through the film lacks the psychological intensity that we would have liked. And this gap is not filled by any of the other stories. The dying tycoon’s son’s story, for example, is pretty sentimentally stereotypical (or is that vice versa!), and the relationships between the other characters are superficial though there is an attempt to develop some level of emotional intelligence in Ariadne (the Ellen Page character). The result is that I never felt concerned for the characters. I was intellectually interested in what was going on but I wasn’t fully invested in what would happen. It’ll probably work out ok, I thought, so why worry. Did others feel this?
And so my recommendation? Do go see it. It’s an artful and rather original movie that demands some thought and concentration from the audience, and its action-adventure nature makes for a fun ride. Just don’t expect emotional engagement or psychological complexity because I don’t believe you’ll find it – and that, for me anyhow, stops a good film from being a great one.
Whispering Gums 
I had very low expectations for this film and I still ended up not liking it. There were too many leaps in logic (even after accepting the premise of the film’s reality) for me to suspend my disbelief to the degree necessary for me to like this film.
And how did Michael Kaine go from being very guarded with Leo to suddenly offering up his best student? Not to mention Ellen Page not even blinking an eye when Leo told her what he was proposing was illegal.
Sorry, this really isn’t my kind of film in the first place so I guess I shouldn’t be the one to judge.
Thanks for dropping by, Thomas. Fair points. It’s not a genre I gravitate too so maybe there are conventions I’m not familiar with. I did like it more, though, than the last “blockbuster” I saw, Avatar. Avatar was probably more beautiful to watch but I found its story way too predictable and its message too unsubtle to make it interesting to me.
I’ve heard mixed things so far–someone who loved it and somehow who lost the thread 40 mins in. I’ll wait for the DVD as usual. I mainly boycott cinemas these days due to the way they refuse to enforce the no cell phone policy.
I wondered if you’d seen it. I’d love to hear what you think when you do see it. That’s pretty sad about mobile (as we call cell) phones and theatres. How do they not enforce it? I’m not sure that I’ve seen it enforced here but I can’t remember the last time I heard one go off – and when it did there was such an embarrassed scuffle to turn it off from the owner.
I haven’t seen this film, but that “real emotional heart” problem is one that I’ve had with the three Nolans I have seen: Memento, The Dark Knight, and The Prestige. His characters might fall in love and feel anguish, but the emotional range of the direction — of the world around them — is narrower than that: it’s grey and mean. Nolan has one pinched insight into human behaviour and it could have been borrowed from a mafia textbook. “Someone has wounded me? I must launch a vendetta.” Vindictive rage is the starting point for all three of those movies. As long as he can manoeuvre a male character into a grudge, he’s got himself a story. It’s like watching a rat go through a maze, only the rat’s name is Ebenezer Scrooge, and the treat, when he receives it at the end, is a pickled lemon.
LOL DKS – as usual you express yourself beautifully. I’ve seen those three too. I don’t recollect the emotional heart issue so much though I do recollect disliking the strong revenge aspect of The prestige. This one is not so much about vindictive rage – and in fact is in a way about redemption for the Cobb character – but it still lacks, to me, any real call to empathy.
It was only after I’d seen the Prestige that the idea really hit me. “I’ve watched three Nolans now. Why, when I think back on them, do they seem so dark and bitter? Well, the characters are spiteful, and the director seem to have no interest in any part of them that falls outside that small zone of spitefulness.” If they love someone (wife, parents) then the loved person will be killed in order to power the vendetta. In the case of Batman this bit of the storyline was canon before Nolan got to it, but his sensibility matched it, they meshed. I don’t think he would have dealt so well with the origin stories of Superman (a sweet clean hero, whose reaction to the destruction of his home planet was, “I’m going to do good,” not, “I’m going to brood in a cave under my vast inherited mansion”) or Iron Man (garrulous playboy having a good time) or Spider Man (goofy kid).
And the idea of characters who react to violent misfortune by becoming — well, a vengeful killer, or a tormented hero, or something — has been done — it’s been done and done and done. It’s the Ground Zero of pop psychology. A couple of years ago I was cruising the NaNoWriMo boards and noticed that the backstories for half the main characters were something like this: “My character is a young woman who was raped when she was sixteen and it traumatised her so much that she has become a ninja assassin with wizard powers.” The Nolan I saw in those three films was like that, but grumpier.
Yes, well that certainly describes The prestige – and of course, as you say, it’s part of Batman. Like you it seems, I’m not particularly enamoured of the revenge motif (and have had interesting discussions with my son on this over the years). That’s not to say I don’t appreciate a film that does it well or interestingly but on the whole I find it tedious (and often gratuitous).