“Dreams feel real while we’re in them. It’s only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange.” – Dom Cobb
After watching Nolan’s newest master-piece I looked up some of the reviews just to get an idea how to build up my review about it. I didn’t want to praise like any other commenter would do and call Nolan a genius based on my subjective opinion – I wanted to have a basis for this post: negative reviews for Inception.
Not all reviewers, however, were so positive about the film. New York magazine’s David Edelstein was reported to “have no idea what so many people are raving about. It’s as if someone went into their heads while they were sleeping and planted the idea that Inception is a visionary masterpiece and—hold on … Whoa! I think I get it. The movie is a metaphor for the power of delusional hype—a metaphor for itself.”[70] Rex Reed of The New York Observer explained the film’s development as “pretty much what we’ve come to expect from summer movies in general and Christopher Nolan movies in particular … [it] doesn’t seem like much of an accomplishment to me.”[71] A.O. Scott of The New York Times commented “there is a lot to see in Inception, there is nothing that counts as genuine vision. Mr. Nolan’s idea of the mind is too literal, too logical, too rule-bound to allow the full measure of madness.” – Wikipedia
I’m not saying they are wrong, in their minds they might be even right, I’m just stating that you might be looking at the picture from the wrong angle. David Edelstein says that Inception is a “metaphor for the power of delusional hype” – saying that after The Dark Knight everybody were waiting for greatness and got that from Inception because they were delusional enough to think that it was good. At least this is what I get from that thought Edelstein said – butlet’s look at this from a different angle. Nolan’s Inception planted an idea into our heads – an idea that made us think that the movie was good – a movie that is able to plant an idea into our heads can’t be a bad movie. Good movies are those that get stuck in our heads and I’m a big fan of the “great story-line” movie which doesn’t have to be logical but which is written to be logical. I thought Inception did a fine job with it and if it did plant the excitement into my head – I don’t mind.
Rex Reed (who to me based on the reviews he has written and I read – seems to be as bitter about everything that I am about romantic comedies) said that “Inception was pretty much what we’ve come to expect from summer movies in general and Nolan movies in particular.” Question, what summer movies is he talking about? I haven’t seen those, I must have missed something. And about the thing, expecting “that” from Nolan – how is not disappointing the viewers by making another good movie bad? They make bad romantic comedies that people are expecting to be bad and worse and that is bad? Making a good movie after a good movie isn’t something to whine about – Nolan delivers what is expected from him – greatnes.
A.O. Scott comments about logic in the movie. “Too logical”. This is the part where I laughed because I have been questioning the logic in so many movies lately and Inception was just so well logically built that it made me smile and Scott is saying that this is a bad thing. Hollywood has this common mistake writing blockbusters – they have the idea, but they don’t have the logical sequence behind the idea. Things happen without reason, especially when a character does something out of his characteristics – the story isn’t built on a story but on the action. The character goes there because the action tells him to – he goes and I think: “what’s his reason behind this?” Inception had that covered – there were no loopholes of logic, it moved like a well oiled machine and since so many movies fail to do that I think the “too logical” thing, was rude.
Anyhow, this is my answer to those negative comments. I’m not gonna add the positive ones because there are too many of those – IMDb states that Inception is already #4 in the greatest movie list! People like the movie and I think the thing that they like is the three things I mentioned before, Inception:
1) gets into our heads and plays with our thought by making us think about the movie after we’ve seen it.
2) is another well delivered movie by Nolan who jet again proves to us that he is one of the greatest in Hollywood.
3) has logic – it’s story is well written and the action is arranged in a way that it doesn’t get out of line while the story is deep enough to keep us interested.
I read that Nolan has been wanting to do a movie with DiCaprio for a long time and he didn’t like the scripts Nolan offered him before Inception came along. DiCaprio ,who has done movies like The Departed and Shutter Island is well known for his great acting skill, doesn’t fail to deliver in Inception. Also, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, my latest favorite is also giving a performance of a life time running in a hallway that has no gravity fighting a bad guy! (Scene that had a actual hallway that turned 360 degrees – Nolan is well known for not using too much visual efects! Another reason why Inception is good – the visual is realistic.) So – acting good, storyline good, director good, visual images good – movie good! And the fact that I want to see it again and would be willing to pay for it again is just a little proof of the fact that 5 out of 5 stars is an understatement to this movie.
METTEL RAY 