Why Inception is not worth a 9

Rating: 5/10 (27 December 2010)

Films are fictions of a director, based on a story. The story may be an existing story (a book, a true story) or pure fantasy; a film should always have a meaning, worth watching and must relate to the logic, to the reasoning of the viewers. To make films more interesting and challenging for the experienced viewer, directors may use different techniques like reversing or mixing the chronological sequence of scenes and temporarily confusing the viewer with dream scenes. These techniques should not be used just to make the movie more 'difficult' or more 'intellectual'; they should add an artistic value to the story. If you'd take away these 'tricks', you should still have left a solid story. 'Inception' is a bit different in the sense that the dream technique is maybe more important than the story. Maybe it is the story. Here the dreams are deliberately directionally started by an obscure apparatus in a suitcase and some wires, dreams that function on different levels or layers, each with some logical, preponderant illogical characteristics, but all very realistic, confusing dreams and reality; not only for the viewer, but also for the characters. That's the good part. The bad part is that the logic of the story is completely lost. We are watching a pudding of in itself highly attractive action scenes on different dream levels, in strange ways interacting with themselves. The actions are the results of what the principle characters dream up, we guess. Then why so much fuzz, so much bustle, and why not dream up a less complicated and less violent way to find your wife and children, which are dead, alive or only exist in you dreams? Dreams are uncontrollable, you might say. That is true, but the essence of this movie is, that the dreams in this movie are controllable. That is why this movie is not honest and does not touch your feelings. It is just a sequence of impressive actions, served with an intellectual intended sauce of dream states which after some researching do not make a lot of sense. My idea is that the high reviews on the IMDb-site have to do with viewers that are accustomed to video games, which use these concepts of complicated means of finding the solution or goal. For them it is all about the game, not about logic, reasoning and films that move you.