'Inception': As eye-catching, and as profound, as an Usher concert
Scene from Inception. Warner Bros.
7:00 am Jul. 16, 201018
Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight was the film of the shock decade, a summation, in style and content, of an age of techno-savvy, criminal conspiracies and terror. His follow-up, Inception, could be the film of this as-yet untitled decade. If Dark Knight was about criminals and lawmen trading hats, Inception is about a post-law world, where master thieves and mercenaries go about their business without much hassle from the authorities.
In fact, the only real authorities here are billionaires. A Japanese tycoon (Ken Watanabe) brags that one phone call to his contacts in the U.S. can grant a fugitive the right to return to his children without fear of prosecution. In order to expedite a caper that relies upon procuring an airplane, the same bigwig buys an entire airline instead, just to be safe.
Keep in mind, the crooks, and the corporate overlords who hire them, are the "good" guys here. Wait, you're probably saying, I heard Inception is about dreams and reality colliding. What's all this about crooks? Yes, Nolan set out to make a film grappling with the layers and countours of our dreams, via a Dickian sci-fi plot in which a machine jacks people into the subconscious of VIPs to conduct corporate espionage.
But, as detailed as his dreamscapes are here, Nolan is more enamored of vehicles, architecture, tailored suits, $100 haircuts, marbled surfaces and automatic weapons than he is with the stuff dreams are really made of. As critic Jordan Hoffman elegantly points out,"...no boobs? We're inside six guys's subconscious for a long period of time and no one, ever, gets naked?"
Maybe it's the woozy Hans Zimmer Wall of Sound in Nolan's movies that makes it hard to see that this guy was never a sensualist, just a smooth operator. Nolan's a shrewd showroom capitalist, not a seducer. His best films (Following, Memento, The Prestige) are clever card tricks. His worst (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight) strive to be something more, epic statements about the uneasy heads that wear the crowns in big city law enforcement.
In those Batman movies, Nolan got ambitious in the style of the graphic novelists who pushed comic book flicks to be pretentious in the first place, Frank Miller and Alan Moore. Trouble is, like Miller, his manner of adapting comic book style to the moving picture has been to not really adapt it at all. Characters talk out everything they're thinking or feeling, in flatly composed close-ups cut together with the patience of an arcade-button masher.
After so much punishing exposition, the action sequences come as a relief, not a crescendo. Batman turned Nolan the nimble trickster into a lumbering bully. As with The Dark Knight, Inception works from interesting material that a director with a real sense of the characters as something other than props, mouthpieces and totems could have made sing. Stuffing the film with visual references from all over his filmography and cinema history, Nolan is after his own 8 1/2.
Instead, he's made his Trapped in the Closet. Like R. Kelly's R&B video opera, it is a monumentally awkward labor of love that ventures so far into its creator's fixations for so long that we can't help but admire the dogged commitment after a while.
I was grinning my face off by the time the film started cross-cutting endlessly between various dream plunderers on their missions, at different levels of one man's subconscious. The dreamer apparently filters all his stray thoughts through James Bond, Bourne and Jason Statham movies: faceless henchmen on jet skis, hotel hallway brawls (albeit in zero-gravity), a mountainside stronghold, a gargantuan vault. And the dense dialogue becomes incomprehensible even to one of the protagonists: "Wait, whose subconscious are we going into, exactly?"
I take this as Nolan's mischievous taunt in response to those who found The Dark Knight just as impenetrable, like Michael Jackson following up the already-mystifying "Dangerous" with the defiantly self-absorbed "HIStory."
The closest thing to real enjoyment in Inception is in watching Nolan serenely turn his back to his critics and play with his Rubik's Cube.
Of the legion of acclaimed actors in the movie, wraith-like Cillian Murphy gets the best direction. He plays an obnoxious heir to a multinational that Leonardo DiCaprio's team of idea thieves hope to implant with an idea. He is an overgrown trust-fund kid who turns out to have been tormented and starved for affection from his recently deceased father (Pete Postelthwaite). When he confronts his dad in the climactic crosscutting dream sequence, he's astonished to learn that... Well, that would be a spoiler, so I'll hold off. But let's just say that you'll be astonished, not at the plot twist, but at the fact that it emerges, my God, VISUALLY, through a simple insert shot and a beautiful closeup of Murphy's humbled, haunted face streaming real tears.
Poor Leonardo DiCaprio gets only one good moment like that, at the end of the movie. Otherwise, he's stuck announcing his predicaments while emoting—actions that cancel each other out.
His character, Dom Cobb, is a dream-world designer and hacker who lost his touch after his wife died. He uses the dream machine to visit memories of her the way other grieving husbands might hit the bottle. It's a horrible thing, losing someone so close to you. The person who cleaned up your vomit and cradled your feeble head when when you were sick; whose soul you could feel mingling with yours in the moment you conceived your first child; with whom you've weathered the hell of fights, breakups and misunderstandings on the way to downright miraculous reconciliations; who knows your shame, your fear; who took so many shared experiences to the grave with them, a part of you, gone forever.
So when Ariadne (Ellen Page), the architect hired to assist Cobb, starts nosing around in his dreams, she's clearly unnerved at what she might come across. No need. Cobb's memories of his lost love and shattered family are the kind of stock images you find in a brand new wallet: pretty wife strolling a sunny beach; adorable kids frolicking in a backyard, hair backlit with a Miller Time glow. Even the "traumatic" stuff is familiar from daytime soap opera cliffhangers. If you want some idea of how timid and businesslike Inception is in its human concerns (while very bold as a feat of engineering), see a film I suspect was on Nolan's list of homages here, Satoshi Kon's Paprika.
That anime also involves a dream machine project run amok. But Kon, a true sensualist and surrealist, isn't afraid to imagine that people's minds contain something more than just chaste, greeting-card love, movie violence and conceptual chatter. Paprika is bursting at the seams with Japan's barely repressed pathologies, in the form of an insecure scientist who runs his hand under the elastic skin of the woman he can never seduce, then pops her like a balloon; or a parade of salarymen whose heads morph into cameras to take upskirt pictures of high school girls; or a giant naked toddler who feasts on a towering, soot-black demon—the avatar of a tyrannical patriarch character—until she grows into a bodacious giantess the size of Godzilla.
In Paprika, Kon confronts his tormented society with visual poetry, not just a remix of tropes and set pieces. He goes deep, where Inception just talks of depth and darkness but, as a screen experience, sticks with glib pyrotechnics fit for a Superbowl commercial or an Usher concert. Like I said, film of the decade.
I disagree with your overall take on 'Inception', but enjoyed your review nevertheless. However, I do take issue with your evaluation of 'Cobb's memories of his lost love and shattered family...' towards the end of the criticism.
In the film, Cobb addresses the fact that the memories he is reliving with his wife are really only idealized projections of what once was their lives. In fact, his acknowledging this fact is a pivotal scene in the film, the scene in which he finally confronts Mal. This understanding is what helps propel him forward emotionally and (possibly) into reality.
I feel Cobb's romanticizing of his past is in keeping with the characters underlying fixation with his guilt. I was raised Catholic, so I know a few things about guilt as motivation. I've never murdered anyone, but I've certainly made some mistakes and caused others harm.
If you allow your mind to hold onto guilt, if you permit it to fester and and grow, within a short amount of time your relationship to the subject causing your guilt will become unravelled. Objectivity and reason no longer matter when you are consumed with self-condemnation. Your emotions will guide you. The lower you are willing to beat yourself down, the higher and more virtuous the person you've wronged sometimes seems to be.
His dreams (and the dreams within those dreams) altered his memories, but so too did his mind's heavy and secret burden. I believe the film intentionally, and successfully, made this argument. As Cobb entered into deeper levels, he was no longer contending only with raw, untouched memories of his wife, but also of projections of her created in his subconscious, a guilty subconscious. This additional layer of recursive thinking added to my enjoyment and respect for the film.
I've heard some say that the mission to birth an idea inside Fischer's head was just a MacGuffin. I agree with that thought, but I am willing to take it one step further. The idea of 'dream travel' was an artificial (and visually enticing) MacGuffin as well. The universality and surreality of dreams allowed the film to ask larger questions. Questions about our relationship to memory and reality itself, whether we are awake or sleeping.
We are influenced by both conscious and unconscious thoughts. But how often, especially in a heated moment, are we able decipher which type of thought is ruling our actions?
I've only seen the film once. Perhaps I am giving it too much credit. But any film that even raises these type of debates is a success in by book.
It's reliance on literal exposition during the second act was its only (albeit very substantial) flaw.
Thanks for writing a review that helped me suss out my own personal feelings about the film.
P.S. - It is really annoying that the site throws away all formatting for comments. There were multiple paragraph breaks in there...oh well.
bromidictirades, you pay me the highest compliment there. I like provoking thoughtful disagreement rather than either empty approval or dismissal.
I agree with your analysis of the dreams and memories depicted in the film. But my argument isn't that Nolan has been lazy in the conceptual department, just that his way of relating his ideas is frustratingly uncinematic. I don't think even Alan Greenspan has a subconscious so arid and tidy. Critics and intellectual types take it as a given that Nolan is a master of the form because he's so conceptually ambitious. I'll take Steve McQueen's Hunger or (for an example more in Nolan's playing field) Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds over Inception any day, because those directors understand how to let moments develop a certain weight and resonance in screen time. It's a really pissy, picayune-seeming argument I'm making, but to me, it is the central problem of most films today- especially mainstream behemoths like Inception. Everything is cut together not like a dream or a memory so much as a trailer, a TV spot or a music video. Nolan sells it to us. Maybe 30 years of exposure to sales montage has rewired most folks' inner life to reflect that, but certainly not mine. The recursion that marks all of Nolan's films really works well in all but his Batman films and this one, which, in pursuit of their ambitions, forget the basic pleasure of a narrative that unfolds at the shot level. I'm starting to think this guy should move into comic books, where a stream of jargon and exposition is a pleasurable thing to take in alone, flipping pages. I would probably have eaten up Inception, the graphic novel. In the darkened theater, there are so many more effective ways to get at the big ideas. See 2001: A Space Odyssey. Stalker. Metropolis. Shoot, even The Matrix, to some extent.
It just starts to make me wonder about the nature of film criticism. Do you review the film and its success at being what the filmmaker wanted it to be? Or do you review it in terms of the movie you wanted it to be vs. the movie that it is?
Because the argument you seem to be making is that this didn't seem like a dream movie to you because it was too "arid and tidy," as you say. What are our alternatives here, though? This is what Nolan's movies look like. If he made a movie that looked differently and was about dream space, it would look like a David Lynch movie, or something infinitely worse. The "architecture" and look and feel of the dream space makes perfect sense in terms of what kind of movie this is: it's a slick heist/caper movie, but with more to chew on.
I'll absolutely agree that deep emotion is not Nolan's strong suit. But I don't go to his movies for that. This one was fun to think about and fun to watch, visually stunning with enough behind it to make it more than mindless entertainment. It's not mind-bendingly intelligent because it can't be. I think Nolan got burned with The Prestige and learned his lesson and feels a need to explain things a bit more than maybe some of us would like (and I didn't think The Prestige was hard to understand either, but I had to explain it to a lot of my co-workers- film professionals- afterward). And judging from some overheard post-movie conversations, most of the audience in the theater with me still didn't understand this one. At all.
So I do think it really is all about what movie you wanted to see. I knew what the visuals were going to be and I was really pleased with the way everything played out. I was entertained. But, for instance, I can't tell if "Glee" is even well made because it's not the show I want it to be- so I literally don't understand how it's working for other people because it's just. Not. Working. For me. I know that is an insane comparison to make and I don't mean to trivialize your problems with the film, but I understand where you're coming from. I just don't think it's an objective evaluation. But what film criticism is?
montiliana, thanks for your thoughtful response. Well, I'm a lot easier to understand than Inception. (Not that Inception is hard to grasp, despite certain folks awarding themselves medals for "getting" it.) Here's the big spoiler w/me: Nearly every review I write grapples with the same problem: that the visual language has broken down; that even the filmmakers popularly regarded as wizardly crowd-pleasers have lost much sense of the power of screen time and space. The way they hopscotch through scenes, they might as well be amateur pornographers. Lunge, thrust, jape.
Uniformly first-rate production design and cinematography mask these symptoms. (It's a popular illusion akin to New Yorkers' belief that the Yankee$ are a hometown institution instead of a 'roided-up collection of mercenaries.)
Go into a quiet room, shut the lights, and watch this scene to its conclusion:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvBcl40QOhQ
See how much was communicated. How few (but brilliantly chosen) words. How beautiful.
Understanding is not the problem. Your friends are not dummies. Pleasure is the lack here. These movies we're getting are unshapely and rhythmless, no matter how many layers of designer duds they have on. Where many others see "slick," I see a disregard of basic directorial craft spackled over by expensive actors and production values. That's what unites Nolan and a critics' whipping boy like Michael Bay.
Okay, to put it yet more crudely (but maybe more effectively):
Visual pleasure is the lubricant for any ideas and emotions one might introduce into these big summer movies. That doesn't mean eye-popping trillion-dollar images, but an understanding that each image forges a delicate relationship with the audience, and with its brothers in front and behind. This delicacy can be shattered outright by a director who privileges his ideas over that relationship. OR it can be massaged and coaxed for potentially explosive cumulative impact-- in the manner of great foreplay, by a filmmaker who possesses, as Stephanie Zacharek once said of David Lynch, a visual flow "as sensitive as a set of fingertips." Don't laugh. That's not highfalutin stuff. That's truly good storytelling, and the real key to a great, viscerally stimulating time at the movies. Look what was accomplished with the equivalent of Inception's dry cleaning budget:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMYLjlpP0NY
Thanks, Stephen, for your insightful response as well. You don't know that you're actually preaching to the choir- I'm a film archivist, which means that I'm, by definition, a huge classic film fan/historian/aspiring dictionary (it would make my job easier if I could actually succeed in the dictionary department and identify all silent movie stars on sight, sheesh). I love the power of visual storytelling as well, and I hope I am not easily won over by a slick-looking sequence that doesn't really make any narrative sense from shot to shot. The amount of times I've said, "I literally don't understand what those last 4 (or 3, or 6, etc.) shots put together were trying to tell me" in the last year or so makes me die a little inside. But maybe I just shouldn't watch movies like Twilight out of morbid curiosity. Anyway, I probably just ask less from my summer blockbusters- but that's not to say that you shouldn't ask for more from someone like Nolan, who is surely capable of putting together something more powerful. I feel like you might be putting him on trial for the offenses of an entire generation of filmmakers, though.
And I do think this movie carries a lot of outside influence along with it- studio people making sure it was understandable to the masses, pressure to make shinier and faster-cut action sequences, consequences of getting burned by previous efforts- so I chose to look past what didn't work and enjoy what did, and enjoy the fact that what I got was so much better than what I usually get from a movie in July. Maybe it's wrong to judge Nolan's movies against the other crap I'm given, and I should be judging him against what he's capable of. But if this is mostly the movie he wanted to make, and he's just not into normal sequencing, establishing shots, building of tension in a classically visual and understandable way- well. I don't know. If people can understand it, I'm not sure it's wrong. It may be inferior to us, but is it just evolution? Language changing to fit modern times? I'm going to stop before I open up some can of worms that will never get closed again. I'll go home and watch something stunning and intelligible in your honor- I'm feeling maybe a black-and-white John Ford coming my way tonight. Thanks for the grounded response.
Belated thanks, montiliana. Much food for thought.
I think, at this point in our cultural evolution, it might be time to start treating the ADD-generation storytelling conventions as valid (though certainly not superior). With pacing sped up, montage fragmented, and visual spectacle taking on such a larger role, you have to tell stories in a more desperate, virulent way: introduce hooks early on, save your most interesting twists and set pieces for the critical moments, and make sure your exposition is clever and tolerable, so that it can settle into the texture of the film. One of the reasons Inception is so good is that Nolan is the best at these things of any director working today.
I have to excuse a lot of valid critiques to justify my complete surrender to (and enjoyment of) Inception. It relies heavily on conditioned genre tropes, and a lot of what seemed brilliant was really just liberties taken with gravity, slow-motion, gunplay, and special effects. I've spent a lot of mental energy being amused and impressed by the logic, so I can't complain about the exposition. And though I found the central "trauma" and the seed of Cobb's guilt to be very compelling, the overall sentimentality only worked for me as a sinew, not as the heart and soul of the film.
However, these things notwithstanding, I found that Inception took those ADD-generation conventions discussed above and used them to create a striking, moving, engaging, and coherent film with a very tight, complex treatment of its motifs: can we trust our own minds to serve us, or even to be transparent to us? How can our emotions lead us unsuspectingly from protectiveness to betrayal? How much of ourselves can we access, and how hard should we try to do so?
I don't feel I'm alone in this. Despite your claims that there's nothing enjoyable about Inception, there are a lot of things that speak otherwise... a largely positive response from reviewers, a respectable opening weekend, and the continued momentum of a lot of positive buzz. I might be more convinced if you maintained that there's nothing innovative, or historically significant, or worthy of critical praise; or if you contextualized your experience by noting that there's nothing here for someone who appreciates the classic art of sculpting a compelling narrative.
I know it's not your responsibility to include your biography or your artistic philosophy with every review, and that the subjective nature of a review is implied in the act of criticism. However, the subjectivity here is too glaring. If you don't at LEAST give the film its due as a fast-moving, eye-catching genre picture (cliches of film criticism, I know), you're in danger of making your entire argument sound like a mere complaint.
Wow, this thread is still alive? Well, symbot, I am definitely out of step with these times, and I'm alright with that. I didn't smoke weed or join a gang growing up, either. Crowds are overrated.
I could answer your charges at length (I'm actually sitting on my hands to prevent from doing just that), but I prefer to just point you to an article by Jessica Winter from 2006 that makes more sense now than ever:
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2006/08/13/the_lost_art_...
As for personal context, check out a piece I wrote about Charlie Chaplin on this site last week.
I didn't give Inception "its due as a fast-moving, eye-catching genre picture" because I don't think it is. As we speak, I'm watching a '70s crime movie called Machine Gun McCain that most definitely fits that description. You might as well ask me to fawn over Lil Wayne's two-step jig after seeing the Nicholas Brothers defy gravity.
Typo: It's Pete Postlethwaite, not Postelwaite.
I can't say any of the people I know that've seen this film would sympathize with this critique, most of whom are artist/writers. I find that the creative mind often time is the only mind that can look beyond the superficial, read between the lines and not need to have everything explained to them like scared, confused children. Films like this are so rare and fleeting these days, it is quite refreshing to behold amidst the garbage of needless ramkes the likes of Alice in Wonderland, and yes- Avatar, one of the most boldly unoriginal, painfully derivitive films ever offered up by the industry. Dark Knight was a near-flawless script, and probably the best a Bat-flick we'll ever see. I can't understand the running of it through the mud, but then again- film criticts only criticize because they can't out do. I often read reviews and laugh because, why in the hell would I take the word of someone who reviews films for a living? Talk about needless. Thinking for the mindless masses I suppose is in high demand, however.
Naww, AtomManhattan, I'm not a film critic out of frustration or envy. I love writing about film, just as much as I love filmmaking. I'd say most film critics are like that. And while many of us DO have some practical filmmaking experience, the truth is that virtually everybody is a film "expert." This culture is saturated in movies, and we all have a ton of experience "working" with images, from birth. The kind of distinction you make between your "artist/writer" pals and the rest of us is just the kind of Mensa-membership segregation that films like Inception encourage.
(I have this crackpot theory that all of the big pop sensations last decade (CSI, Bourne movies, George Clooney-running-down-the-street flicks) were designed to make those from a certain class of urban professional feel good about their jobs. And for the rest of us to bow low, haha.)
And, formally, this film has more in common with Alice in Wonderland and Avatar than its academic pedigree lets on. These are all bloated white elephants that mean to trample us. (But at least Avatar made a gesture toward the downtrodden, however silly.)
Can I "out do" Inception? Depends on what you mean by that. I'm sure I could not helm a production that massive without having a nervous breakdown, just as I am not fit to lead a Marine company into the Afghan mountains. Box office performance? Pfft. I'd be happy to take in $200 at the door.
But if by that you mean make something that engages and entertains whatever size audience, hell yeah. And I'm sure it won't take $200 million and four continents. Go on YouTube and, amidst all the dancing babies and narcoleptic cats, you'll find teenagers and shut-ins making little gems that pack more wonderment in 5 minutes than the whole of Inception.
I didn't see any plot twist connected to the Cillian Murphy character's confrontation of his father. Everything that occurred in that scene was openly predicted--explained, even. That Boone saw a plot twist makes me question whether he understood it.
jimstoic, I'm sure I zoned out when they were discussing that during the briefing portion of the movie. Also, my pen light was busted.
Well, Mr Steven Boone, I have to say that I loved this movie to bits - I couldn't believe I was seeing something so expensive, and at the same time so good. However, my fanboyish ire is defused by the strength and calmness of your arguments (cf. the incoherent rant of one Rex Reed).
It seems like your main gripe with the movie is that it's not free-wheeling and imaginative enough in showing what are, purportedly, dreams (by the way, thank you for reminding me of the excellent Paprika, which I need to rewatch). Jordan Hoffman's comment is hilarious and spot-on. Thing is... was this movie ever meant to be an exploration of the real, messy subconscious? Come to think, I don't believe you even once see anyone just simply sleeping in this film - what it presents is a heavily sedated and closely managed semi-conscious state which has about as much in common with regular old dreaming as Olympic gymnastics does with skipping rope. The comparison with Paprika seems unwarranted, since that movie was all about Satoshi Kon's usual id bubbling up uncontrollably and leaving nasty stains on the "real world," and in Inception, the whole point is to create a subconscious state for the "victims" that is as rigidly planned and controlled as possible. Inception is closer kin to clockwork heist pictures than to Paprika or What Dreams May Come or whaddaya got. I happily celebrate the fact that Nolan has found such an interesting twist on the heist - and that instead of money, or diamonds, or a Rembrandt, there seem to be more emotionally engaging things at stake. The final ploy DiCaprio's team uses to get into Cillian Murphy's head and perform inception on him is an astoundingly dishonest and manipulative trick, but at the same time, the fake setup seems to lead to a genuine emotional experience for him. Was it ultimately a good thing for his character? Does the possibly benign result justify such an invasion? Who knows? but there's certainly a lot more to think and talk about here than any of the James Bond movies that you compare Inception to.
Perhaps if, instead of "dreaming," they referred to it as I dunno, Structured Nootic Induction, or Applied Phlebotinized Subducted Visualization, you might have had less of a problem with it?
As for the "endless exposition"... the Lawrence of Arabia clip was a very impressive example of doing with less, but then, I'm not sure how one can establish a whole science-fiction premise that way. I suppose I'm such a sci-fi nerd that I don't get turned off by explanations of ideas and technology - on the contrary, they tend to put a big ol' grin on my face.
Of course, I'm not an expert on film theory - it may very well be that, to the practiced eye, Inception is a giant mess. However, to my unenlightened mind, it was a sheer joy to watch this movie unfold precisely, like a fine puzzle, and every piece fall exactly into place. I didn't feel there was a single wasted frame in the whole thing. We could do a lot worse this summer.
P.S. Another interesting fact - Anyone notice that Nolan made a huge summer action movie that has no villain? Yeah!
Very sharp, ixat, I'll even accept the grave insult-- your insinuation that I have (gasp!) a "practiced eye." I ain't no expert in nothing! But I AM starting to understand what so many of you smarty pants folks see in the movie. It just seems like the world's most expensive NY Times crossword puzzle.
You said, "Anyone notice that Nolan made a huge summer action movie that has no villain? Yeah!" I do appreciate that, Nolan using his new clout the same way Spielberg used his to keep E.T. villain-free.
But, in the interest of childishly having the last word, I will quote my own email reply to an Inception-loving reader (and then gaffer-tape my mouth shut):
Okay, say you're Chris Nolan. You're handed $200 million, and you've already made the blockbuster hit of the decade (Dark Knight), so the studio will support practically anything you want to do. You live in a sick, exponentially terrifying world of obscene wealth, environmental disaster, poverty, endless wars and spiritual decay. You know that the whole world will be watching what you come up with. And you give us a brilliant metaphysical chess game.
In the pop arena, I much prefer the Chaplins, the Michael Jacksons, the Spielbergs and the Stevie Wonders, who take their power and naively, passionately, foolishly attempt to heal the world through their work. None of them are as whip smart as Nolan, but I think smarts are overrated.
I in turn am starting to understand why you weren't so keen on the movie. The "heal the world" aspect never occurred to me - perhaps because my own tastes lean somewhat toward the cynical and dystopian.
I have to say, for a bunch of guys who ain't experts in nothing, we had ourselves a nice and intelligent discussion here. All credit is to you, sir, for writing a critical review that was a solid analysis instead of flame bait, and for replying to us poor schlubs afterwards.
I just saw this movie last night and have been reading stuff now, finally, that I wanted to read. I found my way to this review via Roger Ebert and figured I'd post here because the discussion is so reasonable. So kudos all around for being so attractive.
Anyway, one thing that I find common to most negative reviews, including this one, is the idea that the dream worlds weren't dream-like enough. Not surreal enough, etc. Aside from a matter of taste - "I like my cinedreams real trippy!" - I think this complaint misses the point.
As one character says during the film, "You don't know it's a dream till after you wake up". I think it's implied or said that though dreams can be weird, it often doesn't seem that way till you have woken and can reflect on it. Since part of the movie's shtick is to blur the divisions between dream and reality, it wouldn't really do to have the dreams obviously be dreams. The emotional center of the film - Cob & his wife - is utterly dependent on a certain verisimilitude in the dreams.
So the audience experiences the dreams almost subjectively: It seems as real to us as it does to the dreamer. In that sense it's not really a "literal" portrayal of dreams.
Also, I don't think it's meant to be very dark, nor profound. I mean, it's essentially a heist movie with a happy ending. The question of whether one is a wake or dreaming doesn't strike me as very interesting beyond the context of the movie, and I don't think it's posed in any way to make me think otherwise.
Anyway, I guess I can say I thought it was terrific. Full disclosure and all that. It's a relief when a "real movie" gets made at this level. And I just enjoy that kind of exquisite queasiness Nolan conjures, as in Memento and The Prestige. (Personally I think Batman Begins is 2/3 really good and 1/3 so-so, and The Dark Knight is 2/3 excellent and 1/3 decent.)