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.
Posted on July 19th, 2010 2:02am
