Inception is the latest blockbuster and mega hyped juggernaut to hit cinema screens, with a budget so big and a cast so stellar that it probably deserves to be lauded with the tag of ‘Cinematic Event of 2010’. It also has Christopher Nolan in the Director’s chair, and after the overwhelming success of his Batman ventures, audiences will expect in their millions. Upping the ante of his explosive bombast from the Dark Knight even more, I’m sure many of those millions will be appeased in their droves. However, don’t let this big budget veneer fool you. Inception is inherently flawed, and an overblown web of complex indulgence.
Leonardo DiCaprio is Dom Cobb, a former architect who now it seems, specialises in some form of corporate espionage, where he raids people’s dreams to steal their ideas and thoughts. He is the best in the business, and has a trusty intellectual, yet action sequence friendly sidekick in the form of Joseph Gordon Levitt. However, with his dead wife Mal (Marion Cotillard)haunting him and interfering in his dreams, Dom is troubled. Mega tycoon Saito (Ken Watanabe) presents Dom with an apparently impossible challenge, to commit ‘Inception’, and enter the dreams of his biggest rival (Cillian Murphy) and plant a thought that will prove advantageous to Saito’s business interests. Dom had already spent years in a limbo dream world with Mal forging dreams together, but after waking from this dream life, she thought that she was still in a dream and committed suicide, making Dom join her by incriminating him in her death. Dom had to flee the US and his children as a result, but Saito promises exoneration if he completes the mission. Confused? This is merely the beginning.
Priding itself as an intellectual take on challenging how the mind works, and a probing insight into the world of dreams, Inception allows itself to be a sprawling mess in terms of its own story and understanding. Comparisons with the Matrix have been overflowing, and are obviously inevitable given their similar sci-fi/action/mind bending template. However, the reason the Matrix was so successful was that its core concept was quite basic and quick to grasp, allowing the rest of the film to race away with ease into its spectacular sequences, with the viewer acutely aware of what was going on. Inception’s own complexity and dare I say it, pretentiousness, bogs it down from the off. The first half an hour moves at a frenetic pace, seeming as though it skips out every second scene in order to spew out the explanatory jargon to get the films premise off the ground.
Of course, this approach to dialogue sets a precedent for each individual in the film. It seems Nolan gave the same directions out to every member of the cast. Look cool, collected and tense, with little expression, as you deliver your sci fi jargon in a brisk tone. With this, there is a formulaic feel to every individual. There are no characters in this film, and no performances. Everybody is woefully underused. Gordon Levitt and Tom Hardy’s consistent face off’s to see who can outdo each other with the sharper line becomes particularly cringe inducing. DiCaprio doesn’t seem to offer any performance in general anymore, and it seems it utilised his big budget flick template, competent and standard, but without offering anything out of the ordinary. There is also little room for his emotional family sub plot to develop and be felt. Murphy, a fine actor as we know, has little to no dialogue to work with, and is left to rub his furrowed brow from time to time. You constantly wonder what Ellen Page is doing there too. I wanted to encourage her to go home and study for her Junior Cert, but she seems to be such an intellectual tyro that she grasps every single complex concept immediately. Honours Maths student obviously. How convenient.
If all of this is too terce, nervy and unnatural, perhaps the 200 million budget will provide a plethora of mindblowing action sequences? Well it does, but nothing we haven’t seen before. Given the incessant stream, I felt like I was watching one long slow motion ad for Sky Movies HD, rather than actually being immersed in a single film myself. Others were like a direct replica of those Matrix-esque human contortions(there’s the comparisons again) Weak, considering that’s from 12 years ago. It also seems as though the location scout won the lottery, and given the landscape of the dreams, we go from a monsoon ridden metropolis, to be suddenly catapulted to the snowy environs of ‘Where Eagles Dare’ without little explanation. It doesn’t really matter though, as the whole jumping of dream to dream is pinned together by the crew being sprayed at, but never hit, by a car chasing, machine gun toting crew of never ending muscle.
With the pace too frenetic, and the concept too complex and overblown, Inception just fails to work. Yes, some of the sequences are very visually impressive, but this isn’t enough to masquerade the fundamental flaws. No themes or insights emerge from this web. Credit to Nolan for the audacity in completing this project, but his brilliance before has been where he has worked with a cast iron template in Batman, which allowed the visual effects to be so much more striking. If he wants to recreate his complex and mind testing format, he needs to revisit his roots and strip back the big budget. If you compare his brilliant ‘Memento’ to ‘Inception’, there really is no comparison. Emerging from Inception, I was relieved have it all behind me. With Memento, I was mulling it over constantly, and implored to watch it all over again. Says it all really. Back to basics please Christopher.
