Photos Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.
Review by Ryan Wilson
One basic rule in storytelling of any kind is never to tell an elaborate tale full of various twists and turns, only to end the narrative with these four words: it was only a dream. It's a sure way to make your audience feel cheated.
What to do then with Christopher Nolan’s latest opus Inception, where the majority of time is spent in various characters' dreams? In a way the entire premise feels cheap, but in another way, critiquing the film for its main device spoils all of the fun.
Nolan's not really interested in dreams so much as the dream world. But he's no Fellini, Gilliam, or David Lynch, who play abstract painters or surrealists with the mind. Nolan's dream world is as linear as an episode of 24, with just as much gunplay.
At its core, Inception is really just a heist film, only instead of stealing something, the thieves plant the world's most powerful weapon: an idea. They do this by infiltrating a subject's mind while he's asleep. Once inside the brain, things get rather Matrix-y, as they either avoid or combat the subject's subconscious in order to convince the subject that he has a "new idea."
The thieves are lead by a smooth Leonardo DiCaprio and his dapper associate Joseph Gordon-Levitt. They're experts inside the dream, but the builder, the architect, is played by Ellen Page, aptly cast as a college girl genius. Their employer is Ken Watanabe, who wants them to infiltrate the heir of the world's energy monopoly, to plant the idea that he should break apart his dying father's business empire.
Nolan leads us through the how-to of the dream process so well it's almost a shame when the heist actually begins. As DiCaprio's character teaches Page's the ropes of designing and constructing a dream, one gets the impression that Nolan's two main pursuits with the film are architecture and psychology, which are probably the two major obsessions of most ambitious filmmakers.
With psychology, of course, comes conflict, and in this case it belongs to DiCaprio's character. He brings his own baggage, in the form of his disturbed spouse, into his missions with him. She's played by the devilish Marion Cotillard, and we spend most of the film worrying when she'll appear next.
Needless to say, the dream world moves quickly and unexpectedly. Since the film's release, I've heard many critics and viewers complain that the film becomes confusing. That's because DiCaprio’s "dream team" needs to weave multiple dreams inside a dream in order to fool the subject into compliance. So we get multiple realities spiraling down into limbo, a truly bleak place where you can get stuck and never wake up.
We shouldn't be surprised by such trickery and layering on Nolan's part. When he's not making Batman films, he dedicates himself to making these cinematic puzzles. Remember, Momento, Nolan's breakthrough film, where the amnesiac needs to work backwards to solve his identity? And how about The Prestige, where dueling magicians used their slight of hand to confuse each other as well as the audience? We’re lucky to have these mind-games in modern films, especially during the summer.
My main issue with Inception doesn't include its disorientation, but with its culmination. This began for me with the mission, the mark. Why all this trouble over a business heir with daddy issues? And what the team plants, the idea to decentralize a power company, could just have easily been planted at an effective board meeting. It also kept reminding me that our protagonists are highly unethical, with little conscience about assaulting an innocent person's mind, though we're made to empathize with their job.
Also, midway through the multiple dreams, the film slows to a crawl, as we check in on all the parties of the "dream team" in their various predicaments. We simultaneously have a van collapsing on a bridge, a member climbing the walls of a hotel, and a chase down a snowy mountain. It's as if Nolan suddenly got insecure about his threads and wanted to let his audience catch its breath. But the result feels like getting stuck halfway up a roller coaster; the rest of the climax just isn't as thrilling.
This doesn't mean I didn't enjoy Nolan's latest epic, or that I won't want to see it again. Like Shutter Island, another mind-bender starring DiCaprio, the movie demands multiple viewings, even if the end result is somewhat flawed. It's simply too interesting to dismiss, almost as if M.C. Escher painted a story by Phillip K. Dick.
Nolan may have broken some rules with Inception, but a good teller can sometimes bend the tale if the rules are in his way.
Take 5 on Film is a production of Delta College's WUCX Q 90.1, airing every Saturday at 8:35 a.m. and again at 9:35 a.m. and produced by Jennifer Vande Zande. For more information, visit deltabroadcasting.org.
© Ryan Wilson, 2010