Chris Nolan used to make great movies – when he had no money. Memento — shot with a couple of cameras, no special sets, costumes, or visual effects — was captivating because Nolan’s only tool was his script, so it had to be damn good.
Inception (which I, like everyone else, was dying to see) is as far from Memento as possible. The visuals are so stunning that you can actually forget, for a while, how poor the script — and editing — are. But they are painfully poor.
WARNING: All kinds of spoilers ahead…
The first scenes of Inception should instead be about 20-30 minutes into the movie. We are immediately told that the characters are in a dream, trying to steal their prey’s precious memories. (In fact, that’s all over the trailer we’ve been seeing for months.)
Apparently there is a whole industry of dream-stealing companies, as well as others that train people in countermeasures to resist the REM spies. So much for suspense, mystery or discovery. Or explanation.
How long has this been going on, anyway? And how did it come about?
The notion of sneaking into someone’s dreams — though done in many other films, such as Dreamscape — is still wildly enticing. Why toss out all the build-up and “ah-ha!” in the first three minutes?
What if, instead, we found ourselves in an otherwordly, somehow-familiar-but- somehow-really-wrong setting? And we would be challenged to figure out what exactly was going on. At some point into the weird narrative, Nolan would finally take the blinders off and shock us with the real truth.
(For a good example of how to do this right, see the red-pill/blue-pill revelation scene in The Matrix.)
There are some efforts at mystery and revelation during Inception. For example, we don’t immediately know that there are, in fact, dreams inside of dreams. That part is cool, but loses its punch because Nolan has already blurted out the biggest surprise of the movie.
Inception has an even bigger problem, however: It lacks a comprehensible narrative. The first half of the movie is so rushed, the viewers can’t keep up, nor can they really sink into the story.
In addition to casually dropping the notion of a dream-stealing industry, Nolan also tosses out, like an apple core, the concept of shared dreaming, which involves some budget-sci-fi-looking machine-in-a-box with wires that connect to the subjects’ wrists. Huh? Come on, give me a little more build-up and intrigue about what this wild tech is about, and how it works.
In other words, don’t be too lazy to develop a backstory.
Speaking of which, what’s up with Ellen Page’s character Ariadne? She’s a student in Paris (of something, maybe architecture) recruited by DeCaprio’s father (or is it father-in law?) to design dreamscapes in which to ensnare the minds of the prey. She decides she wants the job before she even knows what it is. The protagonist Cobb, played by Leonardo DeCaprio, decides she’s “the one” for it after she draws a simple maze on a sheet of graph paper. Um, OK.
Along the way we also pick up — in Mombassa for some reason — some kind of spy guy (it’s never made clear what he does) and a doctor who makes industrial-strength drugs that push people down several levels of dreams. He uses this stuff in a drug den for dozens of dream junkies who spend hours there every day. (Is this stuff legal, BTW, and is this drug czar a good guy or an evil pusher? His portrayal by Dileep Rao seems so adorable.)
Also, while Ellen page is a great actress, what is the girl from Juno doing with this gang of crusty middle-aged men? And why is she, a newcomer with no clue about this business, able to figure — in about two scenes — out all of Cobb’s weaknesses and secrets that his long-time co-conspirators have only the foggiest about?
Those issues are also a bit baffling. Cobb and his wife Mal, played by Marion Cotillard, had once gone so many levels down in a dream that they lived the equivalent of 50 years within just a few hours of sleep in the real world.
Cobb and Mal finally decide to leave this world by committing suicide. Which is curious because later on we find out that dying when so deep in a dream doesn’t return you to real life but instead plunges you into a lifelong coma.
Mal later kills herself, for real, but her memory haunts DeCaprio’s dreams and tries to sabotage his work. What drove Mal crazy? DeCaprio planted in her mind a fatal idea, but apparently it was to help her, since she had some other dark, debilitating idea buried deep inside her mind.
What was that terrible idea? Um, they never tell us. And why would planting a notion guaranteed to drive her insane be seen as a means of heling her?
Anyhow, after all that setup, we finally get to the meat of the movie. Our hero’s (or villan’s?) gig is to convince the heir to a global energy company to break up his empire so that a rival, headed by Saito (Ken Watanabe), can take over the market.
DeCaprio does it because of a promissed favor from Watanbe that will exempt him from being charged with Moll’s murder and allow him to return to the states. (All he has to do is make “one phone call.” To whom? Obama?) DeCaprio even uses the deathly cliche line “just one more job” when explaining his motives to his father/father in law, played by dusty old Michael Cane — a once-great actor who is now dragged out for bit parts that lend gravity to otherwise vapid flicks.
Anyway, after all this flawed setup, we finally reach the part where the visuals get so fantastic that script doesn’t matter anymore. In fact, you could slip in a pair of earbuds and blast whatever music you prefer during the scenes and not miss much of the fun.
Yes, this includes the rotating hallway, as well as the fantastical city that crumbles into the ocean, and the mind-warping concept of a 20-minute adventure in one nested dream that fits within two seconds of of dream two levels up.
With all its flaws, Inception can be a “miss” for your movie-going plans, right? Nope. No matter how pained the dialog and narrative, the visuals alone are worth seeing — on the big screen. And since everyone else you know will be going to this flick, you’ll be woefully left out if you skip it.
So don’t expect too much, and just enjoy the bumpy ride.
