Inception: A Smart Movie For Ignorant People

Rating: 7/10 (26 July 2010)

I'm afraid I'm a bit confused. I saw "Inception" last night. I had high expectations based on miles of positive ink from reviewers and professional critics, all tripping over themselves to bestow demigod status upon Christopher Nolan. These expectations were dashed to bits within the first thirty minutes of the film, and turned to a kind of dread as I realized what folks these days will accept as "depth" in their entertainment. I wish I'd never seen those gushing reviews, I would've enjoyed the film much more.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of Christopher Nolan's Batman reboots "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight." For my money, those were without a doubt the second and third most effective superhero movies to date (sorry, Raimi wins.) The man certainly knows how to keep a story moving along, and he knows how to film action. In the case of The Dark Knight, Heath Ledger provided an emotional lynchpin non-pareil in his Joker portrait, and Nolan milked it for all it was worth. There was real pathos and genuine mortal horror built into the foundation of the film's impressive structure. Also, the fact that it was based on a comic book lowered the bar and allowed the audience to suspend just enough disbelief to allow most of the dorky plot elements to slip through and do their work.
Now let's discuss obvious comparisons to an earlier effort in this vein—that is, an action movie dolled up to the nines as philosophical treatise. I'll admit that I was never a fan of The Matrix. I thought it was asinine in conception and brutish in execution, even as I admired some of the visual effects and spectacular stunt work. Comparing The Matrix's ridiculous endless "stream-of-consciousness" gibberish about free will with, say, Roy Batty's laconic final soliloquy in Blade Runner, is like comparing the Twilight series' moronic teen romantic angst with David Foster Wallace. Unfortunately, Inception had precisely the same effect on me, which is to say very little.
Here we find the great and terrible Nolan exploring the tired territory already plundered in countless films of yore, including Hitchcock's Spellbound and 1980's genre pics such as Brain Storm, The Dead Zone, and Dreamscape. The basic premise reads like a dime store sci-fi novel's back cover: "In the future, we can enter into each other's dreams! Feel the magic of dreams, within dreams, within dreams! Experience the thrill and wonder of miraculous "Dream Time." Oh Boy!" Within twenty minutes of the film's somewhat intriguing intro, I knew not only how it would end—I also pretty much knew how we were getting there. Nolan plays primarily to the back row, and—no offense, America—but we've been slightly dumbed down over the past few decades, and we're much easier as a whole to entertain than we used to be. Look back at a few films of the past with vast, labyrinthine plot structures like Hawk and Faulkner's "The Big Sleep", or practically anything by the Coen Brothers. What's defines their deep-impact gravitas, as opposed to the flat and diffuse emotional landscape of Inception? It's character development, pure and simple. In this case, Nolan didn't have a single character —especially the one played with typically earnest gusto by Leo Dicaprio—with a plausibly human fatal flaw, foible, or reason for doing uh, whatever it was he was doing. We're simply dropped into an alternate universe with rules seemingly invented to favor nerds of any stripe —almost impossibly similar to the one in The Matrix—and told to hold onto our hats, because here we go! Except we're not actually GOING anywhere, or at least not anywhere we haven't been a thousand times before.
Sorry to rain on the parade of everyone that's ready to lionize C. Nolan as the great white hope of modern blockbuster cinema, but from my vantage, there is no there there. If you want a lesson in basic existential philosophy, take a class at your local community college. You'll get more out of it, and you can keep your textbook as a souvenir. If it's great car chases you're after, rent "The French Connection," or "Ronin." In other words, keep your high-octane action movie out of my high-concept art film. These are two tastes that do not go great together. Meanwhile, if Inception somehow does "become a religion" in another five years, than I'm reconsidering my continued faith in Hollywood as some kind of egalitarian oracle, where the huddled masses can go to get their myths, and feel the true power of redemption. If this is the kind of movie that will be worshipped from now on, than the god of blockbuster cinema may truly be dead.