A Bloated Feast for the Eyes and an Hors D'uvre for the Mind

Rating: 9/10 (15 April 2011)

It takes its own sweet time setting up the intricate (absurd) plot and detailing much of the back story, spending an awful lot of time explaining itself as people go on and on reciting the rules and logic and pitfalls of dream invasion. I often found myself murmuring "Yes, yes, I get it." So many words - so many ideas - unnecessarily spoken. But this slightly overlong odyssey is charged with scenes of superior creativity. Sprawling between the static, verbose moments are genuinely spectacular episodes of stunning hyper-surreal imagination. The grand visual effects are so fluid and organic. The real world is entirely subsumed in this fantastical universe of spellbinding vistas and jaw dropping action, all marvelously animated by some deeply disorienting physics.
I was often impatient with the movie, cursing the intermittent scenes of tedious exposition, but what stays with me, however, hauntingly, is a genuine sense of awe. I feel like I've been through a harrowing experience, much more challenging and treacherous than the all the media hype had prepared me for. I had watched its TV commercials convinced that it would be relying entirely on computer generated effects for all its allure. But it turns out the clever concepts that drive the action are captivating as well. I've spent quite a few idle moments reflecting on the perplexing notion of multiple layered dreams, pondering the interplay of the relative time-space of each layer. The old tired cliché of a dream within a dream is here entirely deconstructed and exploded into a bewildering symphony of synchronized chaos.
Chaos is an ingredient, for sure, and for so many viewers, the defining one. They have found the story to be too randomly illogical and ponderously convoluted. What's so funny about this reaction is that it's possible ONLY if you expected this farcical tale to to be anything else but purely ridiculous. For me the only way to receive the crass, dreary product that Hollywood regularly excretes on us is to accept it ironically, sarcastically. It's just as much fun to not only laugh along with the somewhat humorous shenanigans, but to also laugh AT the contrived crap - a full throated, hearty roar of mocking contempt. I take my yucks wherever I can get 'em. So, armed with this snide attitude, a movie just isn't able to "let me down." I always find something to enjoy, even if it means taking pleasure in despising it. Got that? Good. I didn't expect Inception to change my world, or even worse, to support my pitifully puny version of life's meaning. That seems to be most people's expectation of movies, to have their own major and minor delusions validated. Go figure...
Leonardo is riveting, as always, and does his utmost best with the often cumbersome script. As tortuously explicit as the dialog gets, Leo manages to sustain a convincing and compelling character. Ellen Page strikes a nice balance of innocent wonder and precocious arrogance. She reminds me a lot of Jeneane Garofalo, but cuter and not as smug. Joseph Gordon-Levitt has the look and composure of a classic Hollywood star, but the talent of a veteran character actor; a real pleasure to watch him work. And there are a few heavyweights filling out the cast including a barely recognizable, substantial Tom Berenger, and also the usually sublime Ken Watanabe, who is partially wasted here in a minimal role. Michael Caine's elegant appearances bookend the film, anchoring the whole fanciful, capricious event. His regal presence lends gravitas to any production.
As obtuse and self satisfied as Inception is I have found that there are few films that have taken such complete advantage of the film medium. I can only think of three or four other movies that have stunned me more. One of them, of course, is Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A space Odyssey from 1968, and another is David Lynch's Inland Empire from 2006, which has taken the art of cinema to an unprecedented level, employing absolutely no computer generated effects but achieving what is, for me, one of the most intense, profound, mind and soul shattering cinematic experience of my life. It's indescribably remarkable. The Matrix, in case you're wondering, is not one of the others. HA! That steaming heap of ox dung is remarkable only for its mind numbing stupidity. But Inception, in spite of its verbal excesses, is extreme good fun. 7.5/10