What Dreams May Come

This afternoon, I went to see the latest from writer-director Christopher Nolan, Inception. After a long string of movies by him that I have loved (though none as much as the first of his I saw, Memento), I would show up for basically anything he made. Knowing I'd be going, I avoided any contact I could with any promotion of the film -- even ambiguous and teasing as I understand it was. Going into the film with little knowledge of its real content was a lot of the fun for me, and if it would be for you too, skip the next paragraph.

Inception is the story of a thief who invades people's dreams to steal their secrets straight from their minds. He's gone down this road because of a dark secret in his own past that he keeps buried from the people he works with. Now he's agreed to pull off one last job of great difficulty so he can buy a clear name and reconnect with his former life.

As you would expect from the man who brought us Memento and The Prestige, this is a twisty, labyrinthine movie of many layers. But while I've seen a fair number of critics talk about how "it begs to be watched again," I'm not sure I felt that immediate pull. The intricate construction of Inception just requires you to pay close attention to what's going on; I didn't really feel the movie was trying to deceive or conceal like those earlier Nolan films, nor did I feel that any grand revelation at the end of the film would lead to a different interpretation of it, were you to watch it again. It's just as complex a film as those others (maybe even more so), but it isn't as deep.

What it is is stuffed full of action-packed, whiz-bang theatrics, of the sort that viewers more familiar with Nolan's work on the Batman films would expect. It's built better than the fullest James Bond film, with car chases, ski chases, fist fights, gun fights, heist planning, impersonations, double-deceptions, and more. It takes perhaps an uncomfortably long time to get to that, what with a slow but necessary first act that lays out all the "rules" for the impossible craziness we'll witness later. But when all hell does start to break loose, it's pretty damn entertaining.

Though the ride is fun, I'm also not sure how I feel about the ending. I'm going to try to be vague here, but if you want to see the movie completely unspoiled, you should probably skip the rest of this paragraph too. I felt the ending was exactly what I was expecting, and was somehow simultaneously "correct" and a bit of a cop-out. I also felt it was basically the most directly stated thing in the film. And yet afterward, I find that a lot of people are debating interpretations of the ending, which I found to be completely unambiguous. Perhaps it's a better ending than I gave it credit for? Did I sour to it just because I "saw it coming?"

The cast is very good. It's a mixture of Christopher Nolan veterans (Ken Watanabe, Cillian Murphy, and Michael Caine) and Nolan newbies (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, and Marion Cotillard), all strong and well cast. If anything, lead Leonardo DiCaprio is the weakest among them; I feel a sort of sameness (minus the Boston accent) to the roles he's played in other recent films, such as Shutter Island. I think it would have bumped the movie up another notch to bring in one more Nolan regular and have Christian Bale in the lead part, though DiCaprio doesn't really "hurt" the movie either.

All told, I'd call Inception a good, but not great movie. It might actually be Nolan's weakest, but that's more a testament to his skill than a flaw in this one. I rate it a B.