Review of Inception (2010) by Meritcoba — 11 Aug 2015

Inception is a movie that collapsed under its own weight. Not only because it is unnecessary complicated to begin with, but ultimately because the spectacular action scenes ride roughshod over any deeper concepts.

The idea that one can enter another's dream and manipulate it is not new. Nor is the confused blending of what is 'real' or 'unreal'. Nor is the choice for living in a make belief paradise, however fake this paradise is. It is not whether you belief it that matters, but how much you belief in it.

This what the movie is about. The idea that one can implant an idea in someone's consciousness that is so strong that it steers him(or her) towards a desired behavior. In this case to prevent a company from gaining total control over the world's energy sources. It has to be big of course, we want nothing less.

The hero, Cobb, is thus hired by by the business suit Saito to implant an idea into the head of the son of his big competitor, the latter who is a dying man. Cobb has his own reasons for taking the job and so a deal is made.

Now that must have sounded a bit too straight forward.

So to make it more complex, we are served a superfluous first part, that has nothing to do with the main story, other in that it introduces Cobb and Saito to us and some concepts. It is a waste of time which should have gone to the main story.

The center story requires that Cobb kidnap his target and induces him to sleep, and also to enter his dream and then a dream in that dream and then a dream in that dream and even a dream in that dream to pull of the job. Cobb needs a team to do that job as he can't do it all on his own. And that team swells from an original four to six people in all. Not counting the captured son.

Why?

It isn't that, amidst the explosions and the gunfights, there is enough time for some meaningful personal interactions to develop. Indeed, whatever interaction there is, is between Cobb and his wife Mal, yet another figure introduced into the movie, and between Cobb and Ariadne, the other woman in the movie, who, of course, tries to unearth what Cobb is struggling with because the story wants her to(And because she is that other woman?).

Cobb gets cleansed in the end by facing his deeper inner demon Mal on dream layer 4, prodded by necessity and Ariadne. It sounds cool, but it is mostly confusing.

And as if reaching dream layer 4 wasn't deemed to be unbelievably dangerous and impossible to do, -level 3 required a special medicine -, Cobb simply goes into dream layer 5 on a whim. By now the movie has been completely uprooted.

We have been told before that time slows down with each subsequent layer. Hence, at dream level 1 every 5 real time minutes are an hour, at level 2 it is a week, and at level three it is 10 years or something like that. So what is it at level 5? It must be a 1000 years. And to get out of the dream, one needs a kick. So what kick is there at level 5? And if the team can conjure up weapons as happens in one scene, why do they not conjure up a robot army to help them out? And then apparently the team has superhuman fighting skills, for they fight off waves of attackers who are luckily so inadequate that they even miss their targets from ten feet away firing automatic rifles, while getting shot by mere handguns.

Perhaps though, the most disappointing were the mundane dreams. It immediately qualifies the director. Instead of capturing the surrealism and strangeness of dreams, he prefers to deal in explosions.

In the end the movie is dominated by the word too. Too much complexity, too much people, too much explosions. With a smaller cast, a simpler story that centers around the tragedy in Cobb's life it would have been a stronger movie altogether. Now it is just hubris.

A final note: Thumbs up for Ellen Page and Ken Watanabe. Both of them fine actors.