The Geometry of the Grey Matter

 Inception

Directed by Christopher Nolan

Three Stars

What we find in Christopher Nolan's "Inception", when we burrow our way tangibly into the landscape of the human dream, is not dormant emotions or suppressed memories or any other nakedness of the soul, but rather places. Surfaces. The cold, drab exteriors of modern architecture. Our subconscious populates these empty streets with meaningless faces, and when reality shifts, it is entirely literal. Buildings shift or explode, time slows, but the chronology of events remains strictly linear. "Inception" suggests a sterile dreamscape indeed. I am reminded of Stanley Kubrick, who over the course of his illustrious career created a body of work that suggested that the human soul, our desires, our memories, our very nature, could be deconstructed in such a way as to reveal a being as mechanical and clinical as turning gears (Consider "A Clockwork Orange", "Full Metal Jacket", "Barry Lyndon", and of course "2001: A Space Odyssey" among the rest of his work). Nolan however, has constructed for himself and for his film a set of intellectual rules that map the human psyche like layers in an onion, not so much for the exploration of the mind but simply for the purpose of creating an action thriller, and where Kubrick's films made bold assertions, Nolan merely ponders.


But alas, I'm being harsh. "Inception" is a good film. A very good film if all you want is a piece of slam-bang science fiction action. It certainly works better as a thriller than it does as an allegory, because its circumstances cannot account for many of the fundamental aspects of our dreams, such as those I mentioned above. Mr. Nolan allegedly spent ten years working on the script for "Inception" and it is easy to see, when all of the logistics of his world are considered, how he would need such time to streamline the story into something that isn't overwhelmingly complicated. What he is left with, though, is more of a premise than a story, and because the premise is so complex, there isn't room for much else.

Mr. Nolan's concept is less concerned with dream-states, it seems, than it is with our perception of time. Time, like many forms of measurement, is really quite relative. How long is an inch? How long is a second? Think about it. "Inception" assumes a series of layers within the mind, wherein the deeper one ventures, the faster one perceives time. Eventually, one reaches a point where  time is perceived so quickly that we can experience an entire lifetime in the span of a night's rest. The problem here being, of course, that development within the dream cannot be physical, as it is technically unreal, and, because the mind can only construct a dream based on information already accumulated, mental and spiritual growth within a dream are inherently inhibited. That is to say, one cannot learn something new (i.e. grow) within a dream.

But here lies Mr. Nolan's variable - Inception. The implanting of a new and alien idea into the mind of another human via their dreams. Dom Cobb (Leonardo Dicaprio) is a specialist in the practice of dream extraction, which involves the invasion of another man's mind through a controlled dream to remove (or extract) information for someone else. The process is achieved through a special device, which of course is portable in a metal briefcase and involves an I.V., and maintains, or so I assume, a stable dream environment and state of coherence for Mr. Cobb, who is tasked with the thankless challenge of working while he sleeps.

But in a setup so short and inconsequential that many viewers will forget about it entirely, Mr. Cobb is hired by the head of a shadowy energy firm (Ken Watanabe) to do the exact opposite - to implant a new idea into the mind of a young rival (Cillian Murphey) that would persuade him to dismember his father's company. The problem is simple. The mind will sense that the idea is foreign and reject it, so Mr. Cobb and his league of associates must find a way to make the man think he thought of it himself.

This is all, I must confess, terribly interesting in theory, but Mr. Nolan's film is bogged down by the weight of its own complexity. There are countless scenes in which characters sit, stand, or wander around and talk about the various rules and logistics of this technology (it all feels like a video game tutorial, where you are instructed which buttons perform which functions and which objectives should be pursued during which scenario), and almost no scenes where a character steps away from exposition long enough to reveal something about themselves that makes then distinct and engaging people.

There lies, on top of this central conflict, an underlying one involving Mr. Cobb's wife Mal (Marion Cotillard), but more I could not begin to say. Mal provides the central emotional arc of the film. Hers is the more tragic of their plights. Without her, the film would be almost completely without motive. "Inception" is under no circumstances a film of moral issues, but Mal by nature is one.

The second half of the film, which plays like a conventional heist movie, is rather thrilling, if more for the sake of seeing Mr. Nolan's rules in practice than out of any spiritual connection to his somewhat lifeless characters (Joseph Gordon-Levitt in particular is almost entirely void of identity). Nolan juggles the layers of his reality seemlessly so that we are able to follow it, and it is because we can comprehend it that it is exciting. We are seeing him deliver on his promises.

But I would like to think that Mr. Nolan didn't just spend ten years on "Inception" to create a conceptual heist movie. He has found a way to approach this material so that it is comprehensible, but not entirely engaging and not so that it has anything to say. This is in part because his concept of dreaming seems removed from mine, and because his characters are vessels of manufactured conflict and not real people responding to genuine circumstances. Nolan was so wrapped up in an idea that he forgot to make a movie.

There I go, being harsh again. I admit I wanted to like "Inception" more than I did. Give Nolan credit (I'm giving him a recommendation's worth). He is almost without question the only mainstream director with the intellectual ambition to approach such material, and certainly the only one capable of packaging it in a way that will appeal to nonintellectuals. To watch something so courageously thoughtful in a packed theater was refreshing. This must have been earth-shattering for those in the crowd who thought "Transformers" was a good movie. Nolan has reintroduced to popular culture the big idea, but sometimes in the cinema, an idea just isn't quite enough.

Rollan Schott
July 21, 2010