"Non, je ne regrette rien"

Rating: 8/10 (8 February 2011)

Great Cinematography ! Captivating story, thought provoking, great visuals ! ... too much shooting and hunting ... Why not 10 stars ?
"Inception" is interesting, quite original, an attempt to explore the world of dreams. The exploration is a combination of known things about dreams (e.g. outside stimuli influence dreams), and less know things (questions), such as "What happens when we die in a dream ?", "How is a dream within a dream ?", "What happens if two or more people could share a dream ?" The answers Chris Nolan (both British and American by birth) offers, may be viewed as speculations, of course, but, nonetheless are interesting. Not seldom he gets the Physics right - Gravity (= acceleration, as Einstein points out): loss of it; creation of temporal artificial gravity. Chris Nolan suggest that Gravity effects propagate to dreams - true or not, but interesting. He even suggests that in a dream world, Gravitation my pull in multiple directions !
I have my own questions: - Will understanding dreams help us further uncover the mysteries of the mind ? - Will we ever be able to design dreams - ours and others ? - Will we ever be able to share dreams ? Will this be useful ? - Will we be able to visualize dreams, say on a TV scream dreams ? - ours and others ? - Will this help treat currently incurable and most destructive mind (brain) diseases such as Schizophrenia, Bipolar Syndrome, Alzheimer, Parkinson ? - Will we ever be able to do "Extraction" and "Inception" ? - for non- harmful, maybe good purposes ...
So, while we may not fully agree with the story proposed to us, the film is thought provoking, but, because of the nested layered dreams (dreams within a dream within a dream ...), hard to follow for many viewers. That is where the DVD/Blu-ray comes to the rescue - Rewind (many times) ! Not possible in the theatre, but easily done at home.
Next, please, pay attention: at the end of the film, the top is still spinning, which allows us, the viewer, to formulate two possible interpretations: 1) It is, finally reality; 2) It is (still) a dream - maybe, everything was a dream from the very beginning ... A fantasy ? A good work of art (visual or written) should be susceptible to multiple interpretations, right ? Hamlet: he is tormented - maybe he really saw (the ghost of) his father, maybe not, maybe his uncle murdered his father, maybe not ... should I take punitive action or not (" ... to be or not to be ... ") . The Penrose Steps (nice drawings by Max Escher !) - an optical illusion: are we going up or down ? Maybe both at the same time.
I like Leonardo di Caprio and Marion Cotillard a lot. The personal story of the characters they play (story which causes trouble to all) brings humanity and depth to this film, and the two actors are very convincing in their roles. By the way, "Mal" means "bad" in French.
My only real criticism is this (therefore 4.5/5 stars): too much shooting, too many people chasing each other, and too often - it makes it more attractive to some viewers, but ***lowers*** the overall value of the film ! It makes it look "less deep" than Chris Nolan would have liked. Notice this: The Academy nominated this film in several categories, among others: "Best Film" (which refers to the producers, one being Chris Nolan), "Best Original Story" (Chris Nolan), but not "Best Director" (who is also Chris Nolan). Maybe this is due exactly to the fact others noticed the same thing: long and frequent chases, lots of shooting ...
The thrilling should come more from the tension between characters, from the collision between their minds and souls, their problems, worries, and less from fast paced and sustained action sequences.
Last but not least I like the use of one of my longtime favorite songs: "Non, je ne regrette rien" sung by Edith Piaf. It is used in the film as a signal to wake-up the dreamers in a synchronized fashion (it even propagates from one dream level to the next), but, perhaps it also means this: no matter what happens, or happened, whether this is reality or it was just a dream, I do not take anything back (I regret nothing).