Review: Inception
By Rob Christopher in Arts & Entertainment on Jul 19, 2010 5:40PM
It is an oft neglected truism that although Hollywood consistently overestimates the intelligence of the moviegoing audience, Hollywood also occasionally underestimates it as well. Before its release there was much hand-wringing about whether people could handle such a "complicated" movie. We saw Inception in a packed theatre on Saturday afternoon, and it seemed to us that every person in the room was completely in thrall to the twisty puzzle unfolding in front of us.
We don't need to give you a plot summary. As Michael Phillips astutely points out, Inception is really just a variation of the classic heist movie, no matter how many additional layers have been added. Propose a job, assemble the team, plan the caper, execute the plan. Inevitably "things go wrong," requiring split-second adjustments. And, as in many classics of the genre, even the apparent success of the heist doesn't mean it's over. That the heist itself occurs in someone's mind is filmmaker Christopher Nolan's most brilliant stratagem, because it means he can conjure up completely self-contained environments where normal story elements like character development, plot, and logic are irrelevant. Those things don't matter. For 148 minutes, we're given the pleasure of living inside a wholly developed world where anything can happen.
Some aspects of that world are more interesting than others. Rainy car chases, and a snowy lair straight out of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, are distressingly ordinary. More eyepopping are the moments Nolan plays with the laws of physics, folding a Parisian street in on itself or scrambling a hotel corridor into gravity's funhouse. You can really sense that, unshackled from the demands of a franchise movie like The Dark Knight, Nolan has finally been allowed to follow his imagination to its own ends.
Is Nolan this generation's Stanley Kubrick? No, absolutely not. He's missing that master filmmaker's quiet but firm control, opting instead for sensory overload. Inception also lacks the wit of the "dreams-within-dreams" conceit of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, and the genuine humanity of Solaris. But you know what? It's still a hell of a movie. And in our books it's also a damn sight better than The Matrix. Not only does it eschew that movie's spiritual mumbo jumbo, but blessedly Keanu Reeves is nowhere in sight. Surely the audience in that packed theater were all thankful for that.