Inception

SPOILER ALERT for ‘The Sixth Sense’

Christopher Nolan’s ‘Inception’ is a beautifully filmed, designed, cast and directed car crash of a film. It is so dreadfully dull and predictable if you pick the not too subtle clues early enough. First of all this is not a car crash, it is an interstate pile up of half a dozen cars that blocks traffic for 20 kilometres in all directions.

Here is why:

The concept is very high concept film, it is an intellectual and philosophical film. Nolan – even in the Batman films had not compromised on his vision, and he like successful directors before him enjoys mind f-cking the audience. The easiest to site are Stanley Kubrick and the Davids – David Lynch and David Cronenberg. Thematically these directors ‘fit’ best, but you could throw Terrence Mallick into the mix too.

Stanley Kubrick in ‘2001’ and ‘Full Metal Jacket’ and to a lesser degree in ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ and David’s in ‘Naked Lunch’, ‘Crash’ and ‘Twin Peaks’ puts you in their vision, and doesn’t really care too much if you don’t understand all the nuances, there are no ‘cheats’ to understand the film makers vision. These films usually survive multiple viewings to reveal the film’s ‘true self’.

However, the budget required to make ‘Inception’ look as good, as it assuredly does, means that the ‘high concept’ is quickly sacrificed to deliver the vision – the look and feel of the film. To explain what I mean I would point to James Cameron’s moronic gun fight in the middle of ‘Titanic’ between Billy Zane and Leonardo DiCaprio, a pointless gun fight that is not needed particularly given the ship is going down and taking thousands of souls with it. Today that scene is blatantly redundant. The other film to reference is Steven Spielberg’s total cockup of Kubrick’s script for ‘A.I.’.

There are two ways you can go with the dream within the dream concept. The first is dumb action film such as the very good ‘Total Recall’ and the first ‘The Matrix’, or you can intellectualise the experience. For true commitment to the intellectual vision I would suggest David Cronenberg’s ‘eXistenZ’ and ‘Naked Lunch’, David Lynch’s ‘Blue Velvet’ and ‘Twin Peaks’ as well as Tarkovsky’s original (in Russian) and Steve Soderbergh’s remake of ‘Solaris’.

In ‘Inception’ the cast is totally committed to their part in the films pretence. Nolan’s has cast this film brilliantly especially the two pivotal female parts played by Ellen Page (‘Juno’) and Marion Coitillard (‘Piaf’). I particularly liked Tom Hardy and Ken Wantanabe’s performances. The action scenes are intense, vivid and brilliantly filmed and edited. The performances are great. So why did I walk out at the 90 minute mark of a 145 minute film?

‘Inception’ fails for the movie goer – or this movie goer – once you’re in on the films secret. Have you seen ‘The Sixth Sense’ recently?  It’s as boring as bat shit once you know the film’s trick. That trick is not Inception’s trick but there is a trick, a deceit or a con in play. That is the problem with ‘Inception’. It is the film’s major flaw. It doesn’t matter how fantastic the action, the sets, the production design, editing, cgi and cinematography are because you know how it ends. All your doing once you work out the trick is marking time waiting to be proved right or incredibly wrong. I was not going to be proved wrong, because the budget dictates the predictable. Nobody is going to risk a big budget to a surprise ending.

Nolan to fund the picture, has turned every dream into a Borne rip-off or a Tarrantino film. It is overkill and turns the movie into nothing but an elaborate computer game. There are no dreams of beauty. There are no peaceful contemplative dreams. There are no tranquil dreams in ‘Inception’. There is only action movies, gun fights, and moral and ethical nightmares.

This is the flaw of ‘Inception’. This is why I left at the 90 minute mark. I knew that each dream would be more spectacular than the previous dream level. Either way the films premise was a cheat, a deception that cost a lot of money to tell and tell it so much worse than the films it owes its heritage to.

‘Inception’ is nothing more than playing a multi-level, team player first person shooter computer game on drugs. It feels real but you know it’s not.