Well...Hardly creative...

Rating: 8/10 (9 October 2010)

I completely understand those who gave a perfect 10. But I am not necessarily one of them, am I? One simple question: well, what does Nolan exactly want to say? It is not so much related to "dreams", seemed to me, rather, it is about our natural ability to embrace or evade the good, the bad, and the ultimate void of our existence.
Through dreams, it just became easier to explain. However, when you cool down the mind blown by the imaginative scenes and cuts and lines, you shall ask yourself, "do I have to have a three-level dream to confront and finally evade the haunting late wife?" The answer might be yes, so you will give a 10. And the answer could be no, so the score will be 8, like what I gave.
In one word, the movie is just too complicated for a purpose that easy.
Maybe because I have seen "Paprika", a Japanese animated feature directed by Satoshi, Kon, the late famous Japanese animation director. He created a story that, seen by now, is a perfect basis on which Nolan drafted his. I am not saying who is stealing whose ideas of what, but I am implying (very clearly) that technically, Nolan is being derivative.
One "problem", I might call it that way, is the deliberately prolonged fighting scene before the vehicle touched the water. Yes, I understand that makes sense of the relativity theory, yet, it is just too long for a movie.
If you have a critic's eyes, you shall admit that the art direction, the cinematography, the original score, the sound and visual effects and the editing are just wonderful, if not state-of-the art. Yet, these cannot defy the facts that once again, it is just a movie about a troubled man with a troubling wife whose troubles will not be solved if one or both of them choose to disappear or stay far away from each other...If you replace the word "wife" with the words that I mentioned in the second paragraph, especially the negative ones, you will get what this movie is actually talking about...
Take or leave it.