A Scientist at the Movies Reviews by Greg Paris

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Title: Inception

Date Viewed: 7/22/10

Details:

Leonardo DiCaprio (Cobb)

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Ellen Page (Ariadne)

Tom Hardy

Ken Watanabe

Dileep Rao

Cillian Murphy

Tom Berenger

Marion Cotillard

Michael Cain (short cameo)

Written & directed by: Christopher Nolan

Score: ++

The Review: Inception will either be the most fascinating movie you've seen in a long time, or the most confusing waste of time imaginable. I lean toward the former; here's why.

It's a science-fiction view of the future -- Vaguely related to Nolan's earlierMemento,the landscape here being one of dreams (as opposed to memory). Posit that simple, portable technology exists to allow shared dreaming; and like all technology, it can be hijacked for criminal activities.

It's a caper -- The most common crime is extraction, stealing ideas from someone else's consciousness, perhaps tricking them by engineering a dream to reveal a secret. The reverse is called inception -- placing novel memes into someone's mind without them tumbling to the fact it's a foreign thought -- but it's widely believed to be impossible. There's a mark (Murphy) who needs to have his mind changed, and a banker / contractor (Watanabe) what wants it changed.

It's a character study -- Any caper involves a team, and with new technology, new skills are needed. The mastermind is Cobb (DiCaprio), and he has to recruit a curious collection of misfits -- the architect, Ariadne (Page); the chemist (Rao); the thief (Hardy); the majordomo (Gordon-Levitt); among others. Cobb is a mess -- his dead wife Mal (Cotillard) keeps cropping up in his dreams, and since this is "work," she's screwing up whatever is going on. Ariadne is new to the business; although she may be skilled, she's a naif and a potential danger.

And it's a mystery -- Cobb is on the run from some mysterious international mega-corporation, but we're not sure why; and for come reason, he is not allowed back in the US. Mal's persistent interference is threatening the caper, but we have no idea why she's still hanging around. But most of all, in the opening sequence we're dropped into a very weird situation with no clues what's going on, or who's who -- unless you've read a review or seen pieces of the trailer, you will have no clue what's happening and may be very confused.

Sci-fi, caper, character study, mystery -- it's four, count them, four mints in one. And very good, for all that.

It's the movie's structure that is most challenging -- partly an editing choice, partly a storytelling choice, but primarily an artifact of recursive dreamscapes -- at least as they are imagined here. I don't remember my dreams being anywhere near this complex, but then my memory is notoriously poor, and I don't have an architect or thief mucking around in them. There are some interesting guidelines about the passage of time in dream levels, and this takes a bit of getting used to. The structure requires that you actually commit a significant bit of brainpower to your entertainment -- something I rather enjoy, but a commitment that others may be reluctant to grant. If you always turn off your cortex upon entering the theatre, this movie is definitely not for you.

Suspension of disbelief? Well, the dream-sharing technology itself requires it -- the only connections that we see between dream-sharing people are thin cables or tubes that seem to enter via catheters or needles, definitely placing a stress on the peripheral nervous system and exercising a substantial bandwidth. Yes, it all comes back to bandwidth, my favorite complaint of disbelief in movies of this type.

Intense, in-your-face soundtrack from Hans Zimmer -- less music than textured sound design. And it is loud!

Recommended.

(14-Aug-10)

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