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symbot commented on 'Inception': As eye-catching, and as profound, as an Usher concert

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.

Posted on July 22nd, 2010 3:31pm