Inception is being called the best movie of the summer. With the exception of Toy Story 3, I will have to agree with this statement, but that is as far as my enthusiasm for the film goes. Now before all of you go jumping down my throats and attacking my movie taste... hear me out.
Christopher Nolan is one of my all time favorite directors. He has never directed a movie that I didn't like. Nolan's ability to take risks and to tell a story is nothing short of spectacular and there is no doubt in my mind that he will receive and academy award one day for his work. All of his films dive into the psyche of man and attempts to explore how sometimes we are our own worst enemies. (when I have the chance I will look at each movie again soon and talk about this similar theme) Inception was not any different, but was not the strongest his movies.
The basic story has Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his team trying to plant an idea into the subconscious of Fisher (Cillian Murphy). It comes to the attention of Ariadne (Ellen Page), the designer of the dreams, that Cobb has his own subconscious issues with his late wife Mal (Marion Cotillard) which can interfere with their mission. With three different levels of dreams and a heavy sedative any sort of complication can cause major problems for those involved. The team enters the first level of the dreams and discovers that Fisher's subconscious has been trained to protect against any sort of dream assault. This creates a new level of problems along with Cobb's own unstable unconscious. The team continues to go deeper into the 2 other levels of the dreams in order to plant this idea sucessfully. The movie finally leaves you to wonder if Cobb has returned to reality or if he has been stuck in the world of dreams. Different, Fun, Exciting, Interesting, Thought Provoking... Yes but I had a few problems.
One of my biggest problems with the film was the number of antagonists that Nolan had driving the action. The first forty five minutes of the film set up Cobb and this pending problem with his own subconscious. He does not have any control over the issues with his wife Mal that he has buried deep down. This causes problems when he is in another man's dream because he never knows what is going to pop up and ruin things. If he disturbs anything in the dream, the persons subconscious can begin to become subconcious and turn against Cobb and his team. Because he is going down 3 levels into Fisher's subconcious, his control on his own mind will be worse and in turn create a greater risk for everyone else.
This is an amazing concept and what I expected to see as they entered into Fisher's mind. Cobb was supposed to be losing more and more control on his own subconcious. I was expceting to learn more about Cobb's struggle through the things that where going to come through and disrupt the mission. This should have been enough to create conflict for the team as they went through the levels. This was all that Nolan needed. Instead he added the little element of the trained subconcious and it took away from this brillant idea completely. Cobb was not creating the problems for the team. It was Fisher's own subconcious creating the problem. This took away from Cobb completely. There was no need for Cobb to create any sort of disturbance. It was already there.
Because of this conflict already in place there was very little in the dream levels of Cobb's subconcious and it did not seem to get worse and worse as they went to the deeper levels which was supposed to happen. The subconcious would have turned against the team as Cobb's own mind began to cause problems in Fisher's mind anyway. There was no reason to have it already trained. This took away so much for Cobb's story and his own personal struggle. There was to much going on. The idea seemed to begin to overpower the story.
My other problem was with the consistancy of the dream domino effect. According to the first two levels of the dreams, whatever was occuring in the first dream, will in turn effect what is occuring in the second dream. For example, the team was sleeping in a van in the first dream, at one point the van flys off of a bridge. This causes them to be in a weightless state. Everyone in the second level of the dream becomes weightless and they are floating. My problem lies with the third level of the dream because not one person was effected by the weightlessness of the second level. Everyone was grounded and nobody had any problems walking.
Don't get me wrong...this was a very entertaining movie and is worth seeing at the theater. The acting was fantastic. I have been so impressed with DiCaprio over the last 5 years and this was just further proof that he is going to be around for years to come. Jospeh Gordon-Levitt really impressed me. I am super excited to see that he is coming back into the scene and with such versitile roles (500 Days of Summer and the Inception). I cannot wait to see what he is going to do next. I just cannot justify standing on the roof tops shouting BEST MOVIE EVER because Nolan has produced better before and he will produce better later!
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