Let's be clear: I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. A great movie experience. Thoughtful and wholly unique. Rousing effects and chase scenes. Great directing, writing, editing, etc. Thoroughly enjoyed watching this movie.
But like any good book I enjoy, I find weaknesses in them. Points and plot direction that fail to work. And I realize with Inception that I am in quite a minority. So though I enjoyed the movie, it didn't resonate to me as being one of the great movies of all time (And mind you I'm hedging that category to blanket movies of this nature: with sci-fi bends and twists, action and philosophy. Matrix-y type movies.) I also didn't think it was even one of the best movies of the year. So let me tell you why....
Sure the plot was intricate. But it wasn't tough to follow. Nolan, much to his credit, realized the nuances and took the time to explain them. And he did so rather eloquently with the Architect. So much so that I could have tolerated an entire movie about the designing of dreams via the Architect. That was fascinating to me. But the movie didn't stop to enjoy the view, instead opting to climb higher (or lower as it was) to get a 'better view'. The nature of dreams explained, our belief wonderfully and subtly asked to be suspended to allow for the merry-band-of-dream-invaders to easily parade in and out of dreams, the movie then veers to nothing more than a heist kind of movie. And this is where Nolan truly lost me. He had this wonderful, amazing idea and then degraded it into a heist flick. Making the Fischer character completely one-dimensional as the villain/target/mark by his easy acquiescence to everything Cobb told him. Sure there were too many other twists and turns to have Fischer be anything but easy to convince. But if I can't feel the catharsis for Fischer's character then how can I be expected to feel rewarded as a patron.
This leads me to other character problems because this is where the movie disappointed me. Arthur, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, was too shallow and gave off an air of discontent without every truly allowing him to rebel like his character needed too. Ariadne was also too shallow. We are introduced to her with the promise of genius and then nothing. At all. And I am still not clear on exactly how she was so easily allowed to challenge Cobb. What right did she have? I know it's movie-making, but it's also story-telling. And there was more story that needed to be there for that to work. Characters were way to shallow for a movie as literally deep as this. Way too shallow. Even Cobb didn't quite work out. Almost. But not quite. The only character truly penetrating and real was Mal. You felt her anguish. Her isolation. Her rage.
All this said, Inception did challenge some ideas. Like how memories and dreams are different. And how memories can penetrate dreams. Also about ideas. How they are solely unique if they are truly ideas -- I could've used a lot more on this concept.
As for that controversial last scene: eh. It was an utterly shameful break from the narrative. An outright challenge to the viewer. And that. never. works. You can't break from the Voice in the final shot. You can't issue a challenge, a talking point completely out of context within the movie, the only commentary on that challenge being a lingering shot of the top and the scene going to blank. It's shameful and it left me viscerally upset as a story-teller. Like the time I immediately put down "The Shack" on page 63 because the narrative broke completely as the author clearly interjected his own voice and commentary into the scene devoid of any of the other characters present in it. I'm not a perfect writer myself, I do similar things sometimes. And it never, ever works.
For what it's worth, I would've written that last scene to show Cobb pulling the top out of his pocket, look at it and contemplate spinning it, look at his kids playing, look back at the top and then put the top back in his pocket. Because whatever was real at that point truly didn't matter to Cobb. And so it shouldn't matter to us whether it actually was real or not, because to Cobb all that mattered was that he was with his kids, wherever he was. We still could've debated it like it's been done, but the narrative wouldn't have been broken and the scene would've been more poignant. In my mind.
Still a very good movie. At one point I found it better than Memento. Now I'm not so sure. Both will need repeated viewings. And in my book, a movie I must return to means it's something special, even if flawed -- which maybe the only way it can be special. Who wants perfections anyway? That's a crazy idea...
For further reference on EXCELLENT movies dealing with mind, philosophy, dreams, love, loss, memories: see Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; Synecdoche, New York)
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