It would seem that the easiest way to lose friends and make enemies this summer is to voice a negative opinion of Inception. The movie is enjoying nearly universal acclaim and it’s little wonder why - it’s a cocktail of blockbuster money makers. It has the hottest director in Hollywood coming off of his biggest success to date in Christopher Nolan, young actors known for their hip and comedic timing in Ellen Page and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, a veteran heartthrob in Leo Dicaprio and the best special effects money can buy outside of 3D glasses all wrapped in a plot that’s hook is intriguing the moment you hear it: what if you could enter the human mind and learn about the dreamer through someone’s dreams? It has the director, the cast, the money and the hook. So why does Inception feel, at best, like watching someone else play a kind of cool video game?
I should place a warning: the rest of this editorial will probably contain spoilers for the movie Inception.
At a narrative level, Inception hits you with its theme upfront. Early on, the character Cobb (played by Leonardo Dicaprio) suggests, “The most persistent parasite is an idea. Once it takes root in the brain, it’s almost impossible to eradicate.” Cobb’s suggestion is that an idea, no matter how simple, can take a hold of the mind, seize it, and occupy its entirety. This is a suitable metaphor for the the movie as a whole. An intriguing concept is given upfront and then it’s all action. The movie starts off with a bang: within the first 10 to 15 minutes there’s high tension gunplay, cutthroat negotiation, and a heist, complete with a getaway scene fleeing a crumbling building. And it doesn’t end there: minutes later this is revealed to be a dream within a dream; the trick that every viewer assumes must being coming at some point is thrown up right at the beginning, almost as if to get it out of the way. At first it would seem that Inception has so many tricks up its sleeve that they can pull layered stunts like this within the first 10 minutes of the movie and still have plenty of creativity to spare.
But really, that’s all the movie’s got. Other than that early action scene, the first third of the film is spent with the requisite exposition. Vague particulars of the technology that allows for this dream and mind infiltration is explained in a kind of newspeak: “kick”, “totem”, “limbo”, the movie throws out a lot of fictional terminology that gives the plot the illusion of depth but really it’s all self-justifying and self-referencing gibberish. Really these terms and this exposition is the planting of a seed. Entering a person’s mind through their dreams, it’s quite a concept. Inception hopes that it is interesting enough to occupy your mind for the rest of its story.
I say this because outside of this initial concept there’s very little plot to speak of. After the exposition, the bulk of the rest of the movie involves a single sort of reverse heist (or “inception”) where a crack team of dream-walkers attempt to do the (apparently) impossible task of planting an idea in a sleeping person’s head by, you guessed it, going into a dream within a dream within a dream. If that sounds silly, it’s because it is. The internet has reliably provided a .jpg that re-enforces this absurdity much better than I ever could:
As for character development, well, there isn’t much of that going on either. Cobb is the only character that is fleshed out and given a backstory and, as a result, I found the sub-plot involving his wife to be the most compelling aspect of the movie. It was the only element to get any kind of reaction out of me. Of the entire crack team of inceptors that Cobb manages to put together we learn nothing about them. No motivations, no pasts, and virtually no personalities. It is suggested that certain characters don’t get along and that they have feuded in the past but nothing is ever explained. Occasionally hints of romance show up but with no development. The only difference between Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character and that of, say, Tom Hardy’s is that Hardy’s character has an accent!
Most disappointing of all though, is the squandered opportunities that the movie’s hook provides. One would think that a movie that takes place mostly within someone’s imagination would allow for some interesting tricks in setting. It would have been interesting if the geography of the dreamland was determined by the personality or subconscious of the dreamer. This isn’t the case. After all, such a thing would require a certain amount of depth and personality in the dreamer, and as I’ve just mentioned, the characters of Inception are certainly missing that. Instead each dream is built, designed, and laid out by “the architect”, another member of Cobb’s super-team. Really this is just an excuse for each dream within a dream to be completely different in setting, tone, and pacing. It’s an excuse for the movie to more or less reset itself every 20 minutes and play out like a different level of a video game. Dream one is a car chase scene, dream two hand to hand combat and simple puzzles, and dream three is where they can squeeze in the gunplay.
There’s more to complain about - Nolan’s shaky, disorienting camera work during fight scene for instance - but complaining about the technical side of things is less interesting and kind of beside the point. Inception both succeeds and fails on the fact that it is an entire movie that is content in offering up an interesting idea, a gimmick really, and then creating a world that takes advantage of those upfront conceits in the laziest way possible. Much like many video game, the actual plot or narrative is simply a means for putting that gimmick into action. Games can get away with this because their fun and their immersion often comes in their interactivity. I’m still not quite sure where we’re supposed to get that satisfaction in Inception.
