Most of this blog entry was actually written last week. I'd just seen Inception and felt compelled to write down some thoughts, but stopped short of actually posting them here. Why be negative about a film that is, after all, a welcome antidote to mindless blockbusters, and one that I actually quite enjoyed? But in the last week I've seen and heard so much sycophantic drooling and fanboy homages to the film that I want to shout -- Enough! It's not THAT good! There's nothing particularly clever in seeing how many levels you can spot. This is not the most intellectual mindfuck of a film since The Matrix. Neither film, in fact, says anything about dreams or the nature of reality that hasn't already been said many times in science fiction writing since the middle of the last century.

Of course I say all this with a couple of qualifications. It's important to have an intelligent summer blockbuster for a change -- hoorah for that. And it is an intelligent and incredibly well-crafted film. In fact I walked away thinking, 'Gosh, that Christopher Nolan is a clever fellow.'

But perhaps that's where the trouble starts. It's a clever action film, but still not quite clever enough. Not that I'm implying I left the cinema feeling unchallenged. Just the reverse -- I'm sure I'll have to watch it several times to pick up all the strands and levels. But aside from the 'level counting' and mental acrobatics involved in unraveling the plot, there is so much in the film that is unbelievable or preposterous. Other big-budget names in the genre take that sort of thing for granted -- who cares if the latest Transformers film doesn't make sense as long as lots of stuff gets blown up? But Inception aims so much higher, so it's disappointing when it falls into a lot of the same traps.

Take Ellen Page's character, for example. She's a young architecture student with no experience in the gun-toting world of international dream-based industrial espionage (hmm, I didn't want that to sound ridiculous, it just kind of came out that way) yet she steps into that world without batting an eye, and excels in it like a seasoned pro. She hands out wise life-lessons and deep psychological observations to DiCaprio's character -- the kind of thing you'd expect from someone several decades older than her, but simply aren't believable coming from a 20-year-old undergrad.

And can anyone give me a good reason why she had to go along on the mission? The genre frequently asks that we suspend our disbelief over things like this -- we're told so-and-so needs to go on the journey because they're the only one who can crack the code, read the map, speak the language, etc., when the 'real' reason is they're the romantic interest, or they need to challenge the hero in the final act, and so on. We understand the convention, we buy in to it. In the case of Page's character the same conventions apply. Compare her character to Megan Fox's character in the Transformers films. Fox gets dragged along with flimsy justification so there can be a romantic sub-plot and for the sake of over-hyped eye candy. Inception is a 'serious' and intelligent film, and so spares Ellen Page this indignity, but essentially it's the same thing: scant reason to take her along (but plenty of reasons to leave her behind -- her extreme lack of experience endangers the mission) just so she can be there (if I remember correctly) to push DiCaprio to take the final plunge into his past.

The list goes on. The gaping plot holes! The contrived metaphors and forced, entry-level symbolism! The flat characterisation! All the stupid stuff that just doesn't make sense! Ultimately, although the film aims to tackle pretty big philosophical and emotional issues, by the end I walked away thinking -- So what?

Postscript

A couple of amusing articles over on Videogum take the discussion to the 'next level' (ahem). Here editor Gabe (who liked the film) discusses pros and cons with a friend (who hated it). And here is 'evidence' that the concept was ripped off from a Scrooge McDuck comic. 

Our terrace and the view. Click to make it big. (Guess who just got a new panorama photo app for their iPhone.)

Two months in. The new flat is a balm. No matter how stressful it gets in the outside world, we can retreat here for quiet, calm and a glass of wine.