Thus, after a long and wearily grey Spring, Summer has finally arrived in Portland, and with it, the season of the blockbuster. There was, admittedly, very little to cheer about thus far, I had very little desire to see nearly all of the big-budget productions that clamored onto the screen these past months (the exceptions being Kick-Ass and Iron Man 2). I saw The Wolfman, was that technically Summer? That movie was awful. And shit like Jonah Hex just doesn't do it for me, since Megan Fox just ruins life.
I'd rather shoot vomit out of my eyes.
Yet I was practically hopping with anticipation at the arrival of Inception. It goes without saying that Christopher Nolan is a skilled director (not the best in the business by far, but still, he ain't no Michael Bay), and that he assembled a cast and crew that would produce a brilliantly performed and shot film even if it was, say, a biopic of the Michelin Man. So as I pedaled myself down to CineMagic to watch Inception with the rest of the hipsters of Portland (honestly, there was no bike parking at ALL), I knew that I was in for a satisfying romp through the unconscious.
Two and a half hours later, I left with a less than satisfied feeling. I was more or less furious, actually, since it was such a letdown. I was mad and then I busted up my knee. Inception has caused me pain.
True story.
How could it have gone wrong, I thought to myself, what was missing? In most ways, the story had exactly what I wanted in a movie. It dealt with topics I could appreciate. Everyone said they loved it. It had Ellen Page in it!
Seriously!
So I thought about it. I thought for a while about it. I practically worked up a froth of thought, and it was like French Onion Soup, because I'm that awesome.
Pictured: Thought-froth.
Truthfully, it wasn't a bad film by any stretch. Like I said before, the ingredients for a delicious movie were all in place, but there was still something off about it. It's like chocolate chip cookies: they're all basically the same thing, but sometimes there's just not enough shortening, and you end up with dry, crackly cookies.
My point, excusing the food references, is that Inception just dropped the ball--or at least fumbled the ball--in too many places. You know I have a list of them.
The Seven Things Inception Could Have Done Better
There it is!
Oh, by the way, if you're one of those people who uses the word "spoilers," you might want to stop reading. Also, you might want to find a better word for "spoilers," because it annoys me to no end.
Spoiler alert! Also, Meg-is-a nerd alert. I'm embarrassed by this.
The Release Date
To a snob like me, Summer Blockbusters usually mean three things: Big and Loud and Dumb. Because this is, after all, the season of light entertainment, of suspending one's disbelief, of just having something pretty to look at for two and a half hours whilst the sun chars everything in sight. It's escapism. I get it. So I think that we prepare ourselves for not using our brains, and thus are able to accept with clapping joy robots that turn into cars and ghost whatever pirates without questioning the logic of it, which is probably why Iron Man is regarded as one of the more intelligent summer movies.
So much depth.
I, however, am one of the few who doesn't do so well with the suspending of the disbelief. I'm happy to raise any sort of concerns about films that I've seen, regardless of how fluffy and explodey they are. And when I get out of the theater, I am chided by fellow movie goers, kindly patting me on the head and telling me not to look into it too much, it's just a movie. It's only entertainment. And I reply with a gruff "boulder-dash and phooey!", which is what Scrooge McDuck said on my favorite episode of Duck Tales. Such is summer.
But then Christmas rolls around, and it gets into Awards season, and suddenly there is a slough of new and exciting films for the intelligent movie-goer. Films are darker, more nuanced. The chill around us gives us time to mull over plot, dialogue, and symbolism. We anticipate thoughtful movies in the winter with the same unconscious understanding that leads us to accept stupid movies in the warmer months. Take, for example, last winter's Sherlock Holmes, a film that would have fared well in the summer, but was outstanding at Christmas. Summer movie-goers would have seen mostly fight scenes and be disappointed by the film's slowly-paced third act.
Of course, this is merely a theory of mine. The question remains, however: what on earth was Inception doing in July? Yes, it was loud and big, but it had little or no errant stupidity, there was barely any comic relief, nobody blew up an airplane. True, a couple summers ago we had Nolan's The Dark Knight, which was no less uplifting or carefree. But that movie had two things Inception was lacking: a superhero and a villain. Superhero movies, no matter how downhearted they might be, are practically a blockbuster season staple, and The Dark Knight's inclusion of the best on-screen villain of the past twenty years made the film so utterly enjoyable that you didn't have to think about it. Heath Ledger's Joker did the thinking for you.
And he used a pencil to put the thoughts in your brain.
Inception wasn't about Batman. It was about some guy named Dom Cobb, there was no name recognition that would draw folks in spite of the actual film. And it had no single standout performance that would root the audience to the film. Think about it: if The Dark Knight hadn't had Ledger, or if Johnny Depp wasn't Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean, there would be no reason for those movies to be as memorable as they are. So, despite the fact that I still don't think Inception is as great as it could have been, it would have set itself up to be better appreciated, at least by yours truly, with a November or Christmas release date. It's like wearing a beautiful overcoat at the beach: yes it's pretty, and serves a function, but it's not really the right place or time.
The Shooting Locations
"What are you doing in Mombasa?" Cobb asks Ken Watanabe's Saito. Watanabe says something about protecting his investments, but he should have simply replied that Christopher Nolan got a nice budget, so he moved around the production. Whether or not that is the case, it doesn't change the fact that the shooting locations are either sadly underused or nonsensical through most of the film. Not only is one person Cobb needs in Mombasa, but a second is revealed only minutes later. Cobb hangs out in Paris a lot, which just so happens to be the home of his father, played by Michael Caine, as well as Ariadne, Cobb's student. Not only that, but Paris is a pretty good looking city for burritoing in on itself in a dream sequence. And for Leo's contribution to the "Cool Guy's Don't Look At Explosions" cliché.
This actually happens daily, the French are just champs at being indifferent.
Later in the film, Cillian Murphy laments: "Why couldn't he dream up a damn beach?" Why indeed, whatever-your-character's-name-was (more on that later). Though the expensive hotel makes sense as a dream setting (I know, I've had dreams in such places), and it fits into the whole labyrinthine idea of dream architecture, and works with the whole fight scene, and yadda yadda yadda everyone's wearing snappy vests, the winter fortress after the hotel dream is a bit more puzzling: if you were creating a dream world in which you needed to implant an idea in someone's head, and you knew that failing to do so might land you in subconscious purgatory, and that you had very little time and no backup plan, why would you set the most important part of the mission in the most difficult physical location imaginable despite the fact that you have complete control over the entire situation?
"We just got tired of all that time in Paris."
And I feel like I shouldn't even bother mentioning that, when they were in Saito's dream world, they set the damn thing in a Japanese temple. Because Saito is Japanese, get it? And while we're talking about choice of setting.....
The Limbo MacGuffin
Okay, so I'm misusing the term here. A MacGuffin is, usually, a device which drives the plot, though it in itself has little or no meaning. Limbo is not a MacGuffin per se since the characters are not at all trying to go there, however, the arrival of Limbo into the plot's dialogue certainly becomes a sort of motivation that is similar to the MacGuffin in its effect on the plot. It's also sort of a deus ex machina, in the sheer improbability of it. Maybe it's not altogether improbable from the get-go, however, it's introduced in a way that's so sloppy that it feels awfully forced and unsightly. "He's not going to die!" Cobb exclaims, "He goes into Limbo!" "Limbo?" Ariadne unwittingly replies, "What's that?"
It's probably not that bad of a place, if you think about it.
Limbo is the world of the subconscious, where you can live and create and experience life however you choose to, at the sacrifice of your body and mind decomposing while you're in it. It's a bit like the afterlife, but you're not really dead. So it's this awesome afterlife combined with a neverending amount of guilt about your decomposing real life, more or less. Cobb goes there with his then-not-crazy wife Mal, and they build and create for a lifetime. Except that they create the most boring place in existence.
"I think this gray block will really compliment this gray block."
Of course, Cobb doesn't explain this until about 2/3 of the way into the plot, and Limbo plays a serious role for the remainder of the film. Some might call this a plot twist, but I would rather describe it as shoddy writing. There's nothing terrible about Limbo, if you excuse the external damage to the body (sure you'll die, but if you have to spend an eternity playing God in a world with no rules, that's not really the worst sort of afterlife), except for Cobb's incessant whining about it. Maybe it was because he realized how un-creative he was.
The Limbo that Nolan creates also hints at just how male-centric Inception is. I don't mean to say that it's a chauvinistic or particularly anti-feminist film (though I will go into the use of female characters in a bit), but that most of its images, especially those within Limbo (the remnants of Cobb's psychological creation), seem to stem from a grand, cold, unemotional place. Not that a woman would create a world full of flowers, but it should be noted that Limbo is devoid of any sort of significant flora, simply made up of water and concrete. Water, of course, is a well-beaten motif in Inception. This makes sense, water is a symbol of the unconscious, but it also symbolizes the female element; the primordial soup from which we are born, the wetness of motherhood, even the tears of emotion, a female trait.
Ladyness.
Why, then, is the world of Limbo so intentionally devoid of emotion? Even the montages of Cobb and Mal walking hand-in-hand through their created world have no life in them, as though they are taking a nice stroll through some sort of banking plaza. Even with an eternity of creating the world around you, you didn't even want a freaking rose shrub, guys? You didn't want to paint something yellow or blue instead of that eternal gray? What's the deal?
Mal
Ok, first off, let me just point out that the word mal, in french, literally translates to "bad." And that Mal is a french character. Really, her name was "Bad," and her husband was calling her that the whole time. Just let that sink in.
"No! Bad! Bad ex-wife! No! Drop it! Sit!"
And second: way to remember your wife, man.
You're welcome to make the argument that Mal is a projection of Cobb's unconscious, so her being crazy is just an extension of him being crazy. Whatever, I say. That's a great way to explain a horrendously one-note character. I know that it's going to seem old hat of me to rant about the careless and almost cruel portrayal of Mal as a woman in this film, since feminism blah blah blah but honestly, people, there's some madwoman in the attic shit going on here that I'm really not that comfortable with.
More like madwoman in the basement, actually.
And I'm not saying that every woman should be portrayed in a film in a way that makes them well-rounded and kind and heroic, but in a film where all of the men are portrayed as calm, collected individuals, portraying one of the only two women in the film as a sniveling and weak and suicidal sends up sort of a red flag, you know? Never do you see Mal as the brilliant dream-thief or the loving mother or the devoted wife. The only time you see any memory of her in the real world, she's crazy or falling off of a ledge.
"I'm only doing this because you need character motivation!"
And there's poor, sad Cobb, taking care of the kids, talking her off the ledge, getting over his loss, and so on. Cobb is the hero, taking the burden of his family's loss, and Mal is nothing but the memory of someone insane, begging to drag him back into Limbo.
And while we're on the subject of badly portrayed women, let's talk about...
Ariadne
I should be fair, Nolan doesn't really present too many deep male characters, either. Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Tom Hardy both played slight variations of the same stoic sidekick. Michael Caine played, well, Michael Caine. But at least those guys had a consistent lack of depth. Cobb brings in Ariadne, who will be the "architect" of his dream world (her name is Ariadne and she creates labyrinths! Get it?). She's a smart kid, clever as all hell, and shows an immediate knack for creating within Cobb's subconscious. The scene of Page being led through the process of dream creation is one of the film's most enjoyable. Ariadne becomes our everyman, the character the audience can focus themselves through in order to better understand the action taking place, and the protagonist's motivation.
And she wears scarves, like, every day.
And then, like one of those stupid gray walls in stupid limbo, it all comes crashing down. Where once was a young woman who stood to be Cobb's protège, the heir to his dream-theif kingdom (is that what it's called? Why doesn't Cobb's job have a title? I was a little bugged by this. I kept wanting to call them "Inceptionators"), suddenly there was a scared little girl, whose only strength was her ability to realize that Cobb had some serious mental issues. This didn't really show that she was super-intelligent, rather it just proved how idiotic the other team members were. I mean, Mal shows up in the first fucking dream sequence. She shoots Arthur in the fucking leg. That should signal to him that maybe, just maybe, she's a problem that needs to be confronted. But he drops it.
Obviously there are more important things at hand.
It's too easy for me to get back into gender roles, but here I go: Arthur, Eames, and Cobb Sr. are all dudes. Men, traditionally, choose not to reveal their emotional shortcomings, placing stoicism over honesty. They don't go into Cobb's issues because they assume he's got it under control, getting angry when he loses control, but still managing to maintain relatively cool heads. After the projection of Mal kills Ariadne while she wanders through Cobb's unconscious, Arthur coyly remarks "so you met Mrs. Cobb," as though it was some gum that Ariadne stepped in.
Ariadne, on the other hand, is a lady. Thus she is the first person to approach Cobb and ask him to talk about what's going on. She goes into Cobb's dreams to find out what's really bothering him. She's the only one to point out that Mal might be a problem, even though Cobb continuously refuses to admit it and tell everyone else that maybe, just maybe, the spectre of his ex-wife will kill everybody.
But this doesn't make Ariadne a strong character. She never takes control during the mission and call Cobb on his bullshit in front of everyone. She's nothing more than a little Jiminy Crickett, the angel on Cobb's shoulder counteracting the devil that Mal represents.
"So I was thinking, maybe you need to get over yourself?"
Ariadne's development as a character (and, truthfully, she's a pretty decent one), grinds to a halt. Never again do we get to see her dream creation, her growing into the team. We see her totem only once, a gold chess piece, which seems to be more symbolically fitting than Nolan might have intended: despite her value, Ariadne is still just a pawn in the plot. I wouldn't be surprised if the guys sent her to go get coffee while they discussed "grown up things." If nothing else, this may have been the most obvious dropping of the ball that Nolan commits.
The Inception Plot
Ok, this isn't about the plot of the movie. Rather, it's about the plot within the film that deals with Inception: the planning and executing of Saito's assignment for the team. At first, Arthur declares inception impossible. How do you plant an idea in someone's head so that they feel that they are its originator? To dive into the deepest fathoms of someone's unconscious, to dig into their Ego and re-fashion it to fit an alien idea, and to do it with such deftness that it becomes a part of their identity, as clear to them as their own name?
And if they are super-creepy looking? What then?
After presenting such a daunting task, one that, if undertaken correctly, would change the audience's idea of the subconscious, Nolan's solution?
Daddy issues!
No, really. After traveling all over the earth and hunting for just the right team, and setting up the heist like Danny Ocean on a good day, Cobb and co. hit upon the brilliant notion that maybe, just maybe, Fisher might have some sort of complicated relationship with his father.
"I just need love, same as anyone else."
Again, Nolan, this is lazy storytelling, and more than that, lazy psychology. It's something that a college kid who's read an annotated Freud essay would come up with, before moving on to sexual repression. Instead of displaying Fisher's subconscious as conflicted or angsty or even remotely complex, he's just a guy who wasn't hugged enough. I'm not even going into the fact that the "father-son relationship is the deepest part of the mind" is yet another example of how fucking masculine this movie is. I mean, of course Fisher's mother is dead. Christopher Nolan would hate to find a third actress for the movie.
Okay, that was mean, but this post is getting long, and the more I write, the more it just feels like venting. The point is that, after spending so much time on the whole planning nonsense, the execution seemed almost too simplistic; like when you find out how David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear. I didn't understand the whole "for this we need THREE levels of dreams!", unless that's just another example of Nolan's need for more shooting locations. True, the deeper you go into someone's subconscious, the more it makes sense that an idea would hold, but at the same time one would expect it to get more and more bizzare, in a "down the rabbit hole" kind of way.
Then again: snow hummers.
But it just got more boring and less entertaining. Hey, you know what a safe looks like way down in the depths of someone's subconscious? A bigger safe! You know what the deep-seated source of daddy issues is? More daddy issues!
Anyway, moving on to other issues with the plot:
Chekov's gun: the spinning top
So Cobb is showing Ariadne his totem. It's a top that his wife used. He explains that in dreams the top never falls over, and thus she would know that the world wasn't real, that she was dreaming. He spins the top. It falls over. Thus, he has proved that he is in the real world.
I'm sitting in my seat in the theater, watching this. "That is such a fucking Chekov's gun." I think to myself. "They should just stop the movie now, because it's gonna end with that goddamn top spinning because it's all a dream."
And how does it end?
Whoop, there it is.
Lo and be-fucking-hold, people. Lo and behold. Not only did the movie end with Cobb getting everything that he wanted (and, as we are made to believe, deserved), but it decided to pull a fast one on him, further burying the hero in his own guilt-laden dream world. Whatever, I say. It was a cheap trick, which may have worked on a lot of people in the audience, but not on me. And not, I hope, on anyone slightly intellectual. Of course the film would end with some variation of the dream vs reality motif. And of course there would be some sort of trick to it, I just didn't expect such a cheap shot.
The so-called "Chekov's gun" device has been mused on since, well, Chekov. It's a simple enough plot device: introduce a plot element early on, don't say what it'll end up doing, and then do something with it later. Foreshadowing in its simplest form, you could say. It got the name from Anton Chekov himself, who commanded that "One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it." Thus it's easy to point out the various Chekov's guns in theater, film, or literature. Simple example: in Men in Black, Tommy Lee Jones instructs Will Smith to never push a certain red button. Towards the end of the film, you'd better believe he pushes it. Critics use the Chekov's gun theory to point out plot holes, obviously foreshadowing devices that never pan into anything. Every element of the plot, every prop and character and setting, needs to be there for a reason. As someone familiar with ideas like this, or foreshadowing in general, I look for those specific elements. So when Cobb spent a few minutes commenting on the spinning/not spinning of the top and connecting it to Mal, I sure as hell logged it away, knowing that it would play a key part in the finale. If other people don't see this, it probably helps them enjoy the movie more. But it's still a cheap trick, even if it can fool enough people to excuse itself.
Pictured: disappointment.
In Conclusion
I was just annoyed, to sum it all up. To sum up the film, I was bugged. Especially when I've heard an almost 100% positive response to it from most of my acquaintances, which just makes me feel like a dick for pointing out the flaws that I found. It was like that part in the movie where Cobb explains that too much unnatural dream manipulation results in the unconscious turning on the architect, preventing the dream-thief people from achieving their goal. So, yeah, in short, the Marillon Cotillard in my head just shot Inception down. I knew what it was up to. And it'll take more than Leonardo DiCaprio convincing me to open up a giant vault hidden away in some snowy valley where I will find the idea that I can be satisfied with this movie to be satisfied with this movie.
