Sorry for the terribly obvious use of The Tempest, but what with my recent viewing of the trailer, my own experience as sound designer for my school's production, and the fact that I'm blogging about Inception, I felt it was okay.
After all, "terribly obvious" is my problem with the film.
(Oh, and yes, this post is spoilered out the wazoo. Just to let you know. If you don't want to know, do not read the blog. I cannot emphasize this enough. Just stop reading here if you don't want to be spoiled, because that's exactly what I'm going to do.)
Before I get to this point, I'd like to air my irritation at the air of "realism" which Nolan often wears (or perhaps is cast upon him - I don't necessarily want to blame him for something for which his fanboys are responsible). To me, there is realism of presentation and realism of content. The former is that, given the rules of the story's world (which may or may not be consistent with reality as we know it), the people and objects within the story behave consistently with what we know about reality. The latter is that the events and people all could conceivably occur in the world as we know it. The two are not related in any necessary way. For instance, I could tell a story about talking fish which portrayed them as psychologically complex and interesting, "realistic" characters, despite the fact that fish don't talk or have personalities. I could also tell a story about a boy and girl who meet and fall in love which contained no semblance of psychological, moral, or physical truth, despite their world resembling on a superficial level the one in which we all reside. (Er, that is, Finding Nemo is more realistic than How To Lose A Guy In Ten Days).
Inception (and The Dark Knight/Batman Begins, and most of Nolan's work in general) is hailed by critics and the cast (I'm referring particularly to DiCaprio) as being "realistic" science fiction. Except no one ever explains how a dream can be shared. A dream isn't a virtual reality existing outside of heads. Nor is it a fantasy dimension. It's electrons in the brain. And none of the chemical/wire-thingy briefcase handwaving Nolan pulls makes his dream sharing any more realistic than hyperspace, telekinesis, or artificial gravity. There is no good reason for it other than "It lets me do cool things."
Now that that's out of the way, let me get to my point: the film's obviousness.
1) Hans Zimmer: I don't know if I've complained about him on this blog before, but I find his scores to be a combination of hideously stupid and moronically effective. I do frequently listen to his score for Batman Begins, and enjoy occasionally listening to the Pirates of the Carribean scores, but generally feel kind of disgusted afterwards. His limp melodies (unless helped by his everpresent ghostwriters or co-scorers), blaringly obvious harmonic progressions, ugly over-testosteroned electronic orchestration, and infuriatingly lazy repeated tricks combine to make his creative output generally feel like the same score, over and over and over again (though, to be fair, often his assigned movies are a similar lazy blend of messiness). In Inception, he disappoints me not one whit - I hear no melodies, no interesting harmonies, no new tricks, nothing of any originality whatsoever. It was like The Dark Knight, only with less sweetness from James Newton Howard.
2) Dialogue: One of the things which really angered me about The Prestige was the pretentious dialogue, comparing life and storytelling to magic tricks in a repeated and hamfisted Michael Caine speech. Here, Leonardo DiCaprio gets his version of the speech, this time comparing life and storytelling to dreams. I'm getting a pattern - Nolan love to talk in metafictional ways about what he's doing, and he's very bad at it.
3) Which leads me to my next subpoint in obviousness: dreams do not equal story. For me, a dream is completely unconscious, while a story must be primarily consciously created, though our unconscious aids us in both creating and interpreting it. Neil Gaiman makes a similar comparison in his otherwise strong comic series The Sandman, and having seen and wrestled with Inception finally gave me my epiphany why I react so negatively to this concept. (This idea is discussed well here: http://wrongquestions.blogspot.com/2010/07/inception.html, and http://wrongquestions.blogspot.com/2010/07/inception-further-thoughts.html)
4) Emotional manipulations: many have complained about the ending, but I feel Nolan tends to play this kind of game even in the beginnings of his films - where he throws in a bit of a climax of the movie at the front end, and then jumps about. It's like the Twilight books (and much as I enjoy those, I would never claim they are well written, so it's not a compliment) or J. J. Abrams (who I dislike more and more every time I watch something he's done). This works in Memento (which I still believe is Nolan's best film) because that's the whole point of the film, but it feels lazy and out of place when done in this and other films Nolan's done.
5) Characters used for exposition rather than character: what it says on the tin. I know the world is Deep and Complex, man, but seriously, do you have to make the dialogue explaining it so lifeless and personality-free? And so boringly obvious?
6) Plot happens because it happens: which is also my biggest artistic (as opposed to moral) complaint against The Dark Knight (which is another post altogether). Why don't they all wake up when the van rolls? Why does a kick have two components, which is only stated when it's convenient? How are dreams shared? What is this mysterious sedative unknown to science which knocks you out all the way for years, but leaves your balance intact? Why is there so much handwaving? Answer: because it looks cool and/or sets up later plot/structural events. My response: yes, but not cool enough to justify the holes you're leaving.
I will say, as a major point in the film's favor, that the acting (even Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Page, both of whom I'm strongly predisposed to really dislike) was quite good, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt was particularly fine as the straightlaced security expert. Just imagine him as Neo, and you understand a bit of what The Matrix might have been with someone who was a bit less, um, wooden. Though honestly, The Matrix's dialogue makes Nolan's sledgehammers feel like tiny elfy hammers. So it might not have made a difference.
Also, for all my complaining about the characters above, Arthur, Cobb, and Ariadne are quite likeable - loyal, smart, and caring. I just wish they didn't act so stupid most of the time.
Nolan does seem to have an obsession with storytelling, particularly in Inception and The Prestige. Unfortunately, his hamhandedness (particularly in dialogue) tends to really ruin any kind of profundity, and the movies come off as incredibly pretentious to me. All in all, Inception was better than I expected, but still confirms me in my opinion that the third Batman film, and all future Nolan projects, will be approached with very low expectations indeed.
Now, I'm fairly sure that many people, if they ever read this blog (and I'm also aware that very very few people will read it) will consider Inception an amazing, awesome movie (as Orson Scott Card did here: http://www.hatrack.com/osc/reviews/everything/2010-07-18.shtml, to my disappointment - but then, he also loved Star Trek, so I should really not be too surprised - I just remember that he also pointed me to/shares my love of some of my favorite films, including getting me to watch both Peter Pan and Serenity, and loving A Man For All Seasons and Jane Austen). And they will see this blog as thinking way too hard about a story that's just awesome. But I must say - a story is important to us because it shapes the way we look at the world (which is one thing I think Nolan was right in attempting to grasp the concept of Inception), and therefore we should respect the filmmaker who tries to challenge us to think about what he's saying. I've attempted to give Mr. Nolan that respect while strongly disagreeing with his conclusions and methods. His (and all stories, really) deserves better than a simple "way cool, made me think" response, whether we agree or not.
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