'Inception' is good, but the hype is greater than the film deserves

Rating: 8/10 (20 November 2010)

With Inception Christopher Nolan ends a decade in his carrier marked by a series of movies which brought together the best in the traditional Hollywood cinema with intelligent scripts that explore the space beyond reality. His latest film is closer of all his precedent movies to the one that opened the decade and his first success - Memento that he made in 2000 - in being a challenge for the cinema viewers who are asked to do more than just relax and eat popcorn while the story runs for itself. The sophisticated story of dreams control requires attention beyond the usual visual effects satisfaction granted to science-fiction blockbusters watchers.
The idea that reality may be a controlled dream of ourselves or of some supernatural divinity, that the world is the subjective summation of thoughts and feelings of all living is not new in philosophy, literature or cinema. It gets however more and more attention lately, also due to the increased popularity of virtual reality computer programs and communication. The script of Inception plays well into the genre, with a team of dream controllers taking the apparently impossible mission of getting into the brain of a corporate shark heir in order to change his mind about the destiny of the corporation. The rather non-important pretext allows Nolan to develop a sophisticated web of action scenes in which reality, dreams, dreams in dreams, and yes, dreams in dreams in dreams play the most important role. All the structure is carefully build, and the logic seemed to me perfect during the viewing, and very well supported by visual effects as well as by the explanations given by the characters.
Yet, this is not enough in my opinion to justify the super-hype created around this film although I agree there are not much better in view around this year, and especially not the #4 where it stands now in the IMDb all-time viewers preferences. With the narrative structure put aside we are left with a rather schematic set of characters, some of them incompletely developed despite the almost 2 and a half hour of duration, with a love story which we have seen too many times for us to be impressed despite Leo's presence, and with a sometimes questionable choice of actors (Ellen Page?). For a film with such an innovative structure it is surprising how much stuff is borrowed from the typical Hollywood bag of tricks. Action scenes seem to clone a Bond film, and if the story pretext has any importance we never know actually how the intrigue ends but we are served with a very conventional and sentimental rosy style ending instead. On the good side Leonardo DiCaprio is better and better in each film he acts. As in Memento the idea of the movie is mind-blowing. None of them succeed in being the great film they aspire to be, Memento was too cool (in the negative sense, lacking human touch) and Inception is too conventional in the details of its execution. Both are however films to remember coming from a director who does not seem to know how to make forgettable movies which is certainly no little thing.