How to Avoid "Inception" (Find a Mirror Instead)

Rating: 5/10 (17 July 2010)

Imagine a world where dreams could be tamed, where they could shared ... where they could be tapped into by others with ulterior motives. Imagine being unable to tell whether you were indeed dreaming or not, being unable to tell if those you were interacting with were merely projections of your subconscious, or enemies from the outside trying to discover your inner-most secrets ... or trying to implant ideas into that subconscious ...
Feeling a little warped? Well, that's how I felt about five minutes into this mind-bender starring Leonardo DiCaprio, a movie described by The Rolling Stone as "James Bond Meets 'The Matrix,'" and after watching the highly-stylized trailers for this movie by Christopher Nolan ("The Dark Knight"), that's exactly what I expected. And while I'm not one of those idiotic fans who actually believe that actors invent the movie, I was encouraged by Leo's earlier venture this year into movies with more existential themes, "Shutter Island," - an interesting, mildly surprising movie whose twist borrowed heavily from Alejandro AmenÃ¡bar's "The Others." Existential movies, along with the upcoming "The Adjustment Team" starring Matt Damon, have piqued my interest with the notion that Hollywood is once again revisiting a genre seemingly forgotten since the turn of the Millennium. "The Matrix," "Fight Club," "Waking Life," "eXistenZ," "The Thirteenth Floor," "Sixth Sense," "Abre los Ojos / Vanilla Sky" and "The Truman Show" seemed to be an artistic query from the creative world about the nature of our existence in a new era where concepts of religion, nationhood, and individual were starting to lose their original definitions.
This year, there seemed to be a re-awakening of this collective self-examination through cinema, and while "Shutter" was a nice (but borrowed) first start ... "Inception" is a pompous goose-chase. It's premise is as mind-bending as Neo's dialed-in world, but you soon sigh with disappointment as the characters are forced to narrate its many complexities: a maze that is so convoluted, it nearly drowns in its own philosophical holes.
At the final scene, you're wondering what you might have missed; the last scene mocking the mental notecard you've been keeping to keep up with the "dreams-within-a-dream." Its eXistenZ's-inspired plot is suddenly destroyed by a Bobby Ewing-esquire shower, and you wonder - suddenly - how long you've been duped.
Existential movies are by their very nature puzzles. "Inception" is a very extraordinary attempt by Christopher Nolan to match the mastery of the Wachowski's brothers' masterpiece ... and it is very noble failure. While the backdrops and CGI is all at-the-ready, what lacks is a consistent vision, metaphorical references, and momentum. It pretends to be a clever ride on the roller-coaster of reality, at a pace so fast that one would almost assume that Nolan is smarter than his viewers. The end is neither satisfying nor clever, and the spinning attempt to keep the viewer pondering ... to me ... is the resignation of Nolan that his story simply ran out of steam.
Here's a better idea for your fifteen dollars: put it in a garbage disposal.