Zentrope

Inception

Watched Inception last night (iTunes rental). A lot of good things about it. Suspenseful, tense, great restraint on the use of soundtrack (action always works better with no music, I think), and just all around very well crafted. The slight implication that it’s all a dream at the end was cheap and unnecessary and it maybe points out the larger problem of the movie, which is that it doesn’t seem to have an emotional pull, at least not for me (or the audience in general). I see that it’s supposed to — the hero’s struggles with his wife and kids — but it seems to me that the conclusion is foregone in those cases, that there’s no damned-no-matter-what dilemma that really marks out a fine, emotionally draining and cathartic story. In some ways, the Cillian Murphy macguffin plot, in which he has that totally manipulated (by the other characters) moment with his father is far more touching.

Thematically, things work out really nicely, especially if you think of the movie as being about movies themselves (without drawing too much attention to the fact). The characters on the outer layer of the movie are all about the technology of engineering a cathartic moment for the characters on the inner layer, just as narrative artists might do. Alas, I think there’s a bit of an imitative fallacy in that the audience ends up drawn to the technical “caper” plot rather than the emotional core, and thus end up in a fascinated but dispassionate frame of mind. (The feel of a documentary.)

Maybe part of the issue is Leonardo DiCaprio. Whatever his gifts, he doesn’t embody that deep well of melancholy that, say, actors like Russell Crowe do.

Regardless, Chris Nolan really knows how to draw you in to a world and keep you completely engaged in it. For me, his absolutely best instance of this was his first batman movie. Something about it, and the soundtrack, made me wish I could keep watching for hours. And I really like hanging out with craftsmen, but they aren’t going to make me cry.