Dull after first viewing, good after second

Rating: 6/10 (21 August 2010)

There are so many reviews on this movie but I think that most of the reviews do not do the movie justice. Most of the insane "best movie of the century" reviews are misleading since they do not explain what makes this movie so great. The negative reviews are mostly well written and explain what is "wrong" with the movie: unimaginative dream scenes, to many dream layers, no character development, weird and emotionless relation to dead wife, no suspense, everybody over-serious all the time, too many and too fast cuts and who did approve THIS soundtrack?
Inception is not an action movie, it pretends to be one and in this aspect it doesn't succeed very well in my opinion. This movie is a trip into loosing one's sense of reality and in this aspect this movie does an incredible job. Why? There are so many open possibilities to interpret this movie. The director gives you enough clues to help you on the way revealing just as much you need to understand the plot AND the underlying struggle. One viewing won't be enough though to get all it has to offer.
**********Spoilers ahead**************
Here is my interpretation of the movie. In the second viewing everything I disliked the first time makes sense. Why is there no character development? Oh, there is great development, but there really is only one character. Cobb, Saito, Ariadne, Fischer, Mal and even the children are all projections of the same mind (let's call it Leonardo :) ). Every character in the movie is only a small part of the whole. You'll notice many lines spoken between the characters indicating this. Leonardo is in reality a bitter, lonely old man regretting his life (Saitos old character) maybe a war criminal with a very difficult childhood. Fischer's father issue is Leonardo's, the Michael Caine incarnation is his prettified dream-projection. Leonardo creates a dream-reality to flee from his haunting past (and his present loneliness), in it a "lovely" wife and children he wants to return to. For 50 years it did work out in limbo with Mal and the children, they even grew old together there, but Leonardo didn't find peace. He really wants to return to his own childhood. Another reviewer here gave me the clue: the totems. Young Saito, Cobb, Fischer, Arthur and Ariadne are incarnations of the old Saito, physically getting younger advancing toward childhood, the totems being symbols of his progress (roundabout->dice->bishop). Mal, the vision of his wife, wants to stop this. She is killing Fischer, she is killing Ariadne because they progress toward childhood taking Cobb away from her.
Edith Piafs (Casting Marion Cotillard for Mal really is a nice touch) 'Je ne regrette rien' is kinda the soundtrack of Leonardos dreaming. Seemingly it is a kick bringing him closer to reality (salvation), whereas it truly pushes him deeper into agony. It's the path of denial.Leonardos voyage is one through many layers and many tries (labyrinth). Ariadne is the latest incarnation of the architect of his dream, she is the one who will lead him out of there. How? The third labyrinth she draws is the solution: it's a circle labyrinth. She leads Leonardo from the top through three dream-layers down to limbo and back to the top. During this voyage he confronts all of his daemons from the past: his father, his wife and finally himself again (old Saito's second appearance), making peace with all of them and in the end forgiving himself also. After reaching this point Leonardo get's his long searched for peace: the reunion with his children and his loving father, the idea he had incepted in his own mind a very long time ago. 6 out of 10
-------Edit: The more I think about this movie, the more meaningles it gets to me. It is a nice logical puzzle, but nothing more tan that. And I honestly do not see where the 160 Million (or so) USD went. Let's bee honest, nobody would have cared about this movie hadn't it been directed by Christopher Nolan. PS: all you people not liking this movie, do not give it one-star ratings in order to bring the total ranking down. IMDb gives a lesser weight to ratings the more they are different from the average rating.