Despite the novelty, 'Inception' gets lost in its own labyrinthine plot

Rating: 7/10 (5 September 2010)

In this new film directed by Christopher Nolan (Memento, Dark Knight), Leonardo Di Caprio stars as Dom Cobb, a skilled thief in a world where people can steal secrets from other people's subconscious by entering their dreams by using a machine—this process is called "extraction." Cobb, an international fugitive for being a master of "extraction," is offered a chance to get his life back if he does one last job for a company, where instead of stealing ideas, he is sent to plant an idea—this process is called "inception." Working with a team of extractors to infiltrate a corporate boss's heir, Dom finds this process difficult, as he has to deal with own personal dark memories as well.
When I first heard Christopher Nolan was directing a new, original movie, I was very excited. He directed Memento, starring Guy Pierce, one of my favorite and the most mind-boggling cerebral thrillers ever made. He also made that good ol' film called Dark Knight, which broke box office records. His films, often written with his brother, Jonathon Nolan, tend to be multi-layered, challenging, and many times, thought-provoking. He is also a great, visual stylist, as can be seen in the movie. Having seen the movie, and given that this is one of the films where Christopher Nolan wrote without his brother, I think it could've helped with an extra edit to clear up and tighten things up.
This film is a visual spectacle, and the special effects are nothing short of breathtaking. Buildings fold on each other like Dark City, characters are tumbling and jumping off walls, and stairs sometimes go on forever not unlike something from M.C. Escher. Many things go on in this film. The fuzziness of reality and memory recalls writings of Phillip K. Dick. There are lots of action scenes. The plot gets convoluted. I felt a slight numbness in my brain keeping track of everything in this movie, as many things are happening simultaneously.
One of my favorite parts in the film, and an important subplot, was when Cobb's memory of his wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard), interferes with his job during a dream sequence, where we get to know more about Cobb's psychology and his darker secrets. Leonardo Di Caprio gives his usual best as the mentally complex Cobb. Marion Corillard is memorable as the figment of his memory of his wife. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is in physical good form as Arthur, who has the world turned upside down on him (literally). The rest of the cast is competent, but we don't really get to know them in a deep level.
The problem with the plot for me was the fuzzy nature of the dream-world itself—one can ask many questions that could go on forever. Having been familiar with films like Dreamscape and Nightmare on Elm Street, I have always assumed pretty much everything was possible in a dream world. The dream world in this film is much closer to reality, but I couldn't exactly understand the established limits of possibility within that reality. For example, why can't someone be bulletproof if you know it's a dream? Things get stranger when people enter a dream within that dream using the device--this was the part where the plot got a bit too convoluted for me. In my logic, if a dream is an illusion, an illusion within an illusion is basically the same illusion except it's only making us think it's a different kind of illusion—but, I won't expand on that. Simply put, I think the script should've cleared up better on how dreams operated in this particular world.
I might have appreciated this film more on a smaller budget. It could've been a more cerebral film that explored the concepts more deeply than have it covered with action scenes with everything happening in elaborate ways. Similar to how I felt about Steven Spielberg's A.I., the budget appeared to exceed the need of the film's concept, even if the effects were cool. It also reminded me of Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York, a similarly cerebral, yet equally plot-heavy film, about a theater director who creates a life-size replica of New York inside a big warehouse and within that warehouse is another smaller warehouse with a smaller replica, and on, and so forth. Like that film, this film seems to get lost in its excess of plot ideas it wants to explore. Perhaps it might've worked better as a mini-series.
Overall, I felt the film could've been tighter and trimmed. There are many action scenes that didn't really contribute to the plot and occasionally seemed to slow down the film, such as the James Bond-influenced gunfight in the mountains. One of the problems about films about dreams is that one assumes a character is never in any real trouble and no action seems extraordinary (while it may be surprising in real life), thrilling, or risky, because it's all "illusion," if you will. When the plot had the character go within a dream within a dream within a dream, it was just a bit too much for me. The concept is interesting, and there are certainly no movies like it, but there appears to be an overload of too many things going on.
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