Inception
A review…
I am not known to write my opinions on films. I am more known for stating them in a public place.
With the huge fanfare that has surrounded this particular film I thought it was necessary to explain why I didn’t enjoy it.
Spoilers follow….
To start, I am a fan of Chris Nolan’s and Lee Smith’s (editor) works. I enjoyed Memento, The Prestige and The Dark Knight. All great stories made better with interesting editing and great acting/directing.
Inception fell short for me in three main areas:
Creating complicated time compression and time expansion.
This is an age-old editing technique that is used in countless films. Creating a series of cuts that expand or compress the perceived time that events take place in. When done well the viewer doesn’t notice and it helps in creating tension. In this film the need to create several layers of perceived time expansion/compression started to work against itself. Half way through the film I could no longer stay compelled into the story as I was paying more attention to the time that events were supposed to be taking place relative to each other in the separate time lines.
Around the moment of the van almost falling into the water I lost interest and started to second guess if they had gotten the pace right. This need to create relativistic edits between “levels” started to make the pace for each of the main events to slow down too much. It took far too long for Arthur to tie up the other characters and get them into the elevator.
The battle outside the winter compound started to verge on the farcical with the slow progression of Eames and his killing of the imagined defenders. It was like watching someone play Call of Duty of super easy. Can anyone remember how many soldiers there were? How was he able to drive behind them for, what felt like, ten minutes of screen time? Picking off one at a time?
Liberal use of video game terminology.
Everything about this story made me feel like I was watching a game unfold. From level design to how the created people acted in the mind space. Every few minutes there was dialogue to remind us of this fact. As well as reminders that the story is supposed to be deep and about what is consciousness. It started to verge on preaching.
Buying into the world the filmmakers created.
The first third of the film had me in its grip. The progression into the mind and what can happen if you mess with it too much was very compelling. The “walkthrough” between Ariadne and Cobb was great. The world can be hugely messed with if your mind is strong enough but be careful, the more you do it the more the mind will rebel. My issue after this scene is the almost completely ignore the peril or at best barely acknowledge it is happening. When they go into “level 2” they start to bring this piece of potential tension back in but then only for a select few of the-what I will call-“Bots”.
My last bone of contention is the constant referral and complete miss-use of Catharism.
This was also the basis for the Matrix.
Not to be completely negative, there were moments where I was sucked in and enjoyed myself. How they did the no gravity was cool.
The theme had a lot of potential. At first it felt like a Philip K Dick novel. Sadly Mr. Dick was far better at creating this type of story.
Martian Time Slip Among others.
I wish Mr. Nolan the best with his next film and I hope to enjoy it as much as some of his earlier work.
Feel free to completely disagree with some or all of what I have posted. But back it up with an argument:
a reason or set of reasons given with the aim of persuading others that an action or idea is right or wrong : there is a strong argument for submitting a formal appeal | [with clause ] he rejected the argument that keeping the facility would be costly.
