12th
Inception (2010)
Big Important Movie. Whoop whoop. Was it good? Ok yeah it was pretty entertaining. The rotating hallway – they built that? what? – was pretty great. And the linkage between the different levels of dream – the car is in freefall so the elevator is weightless – are bizarrely satisfying. (Why are simple cause and effect so pleasurable to see on screen? The marble hits the dish and the angry dog wakes up … the actual sight of why something happens is wonderful, for whatever reason.) The movie is fun. It’s not a drag. And the scope of it …damn. There’s even a little bit of heat and passion and heart - when Marion Cotillard pulls her swan dive? Yeah. That got to me. This hard heart will own up to that: the miscommunication in that scene, and the tragic results, really pulled at my … empathy and pity … I suppose those are the right emotions. It’s whatever you feel when you see something horrible happening, and beyond being unable to stop it, know that it is inevitable and essential. Pure tragedy. So tick one off for Inception on whatever score card keeps track of Successful High Drama Moments. Hopefully it also contains a box for “sweet snow battle” because you can double-check off that one.
But man, there’s something just not quite there in there. Maybe it’s the last shot. It’s not the right final image. The question we should be left with is not “was it all a dream?” but “was it all moral?” (I just ruined the movie for you if you haven’t seen it. Why in God’s name haven’t you seen it? That’s really your fault; I’m not taking the bullet for that one.) Yes, the question is about the actual deed and McGuffin of the film – the slight of hand trick that Leo pulls on Cillian, and that Ellen Paige (me thinks) pulls on King-of-the-World Leo: is inception, the act not the film, an ethically tolerable action? If you plant an idea in someone’s head, against their will and without their knowledge, and that idea makes them a happier person, was your thought crime justified? Should it be encouraged? It’s like asking whether the government is justified in lying to its people for their own good. There’s not really a good answer. “Yeah it’s ok … so long as we actually end up better off after the deception.” A more rigid rational philosopher would probably say differently, but I’m soft and lazy. You can lie and manipulate me all you want, so long as I’m happier afterwards. But mess with my head and make me sad … well, please just don’t do that.
So ok. Inception sort of missed it’s own point. In all the planning and the explaining and the big stunts and the big sets, amid the rollercoaster-ready brass-horn-hallelujah blown out by Hans Zimmer’s massive pipes, Nolan et al sort of landed three blocks away from where they should have been. It’s a shame. Sort of like watching Bob Ross paint a happy little tree in just the wrong place – “man, it would have been perfect if not for that last minute blunder” – you wish, more than anything else, that they had just gotten it right. But in a sea of summer mediocrity, and in a season of “important, real” films that seem too timid to try anything at bat except for a bunt, it’s pleasant, affirming, and worthwhile to go see a movie that really unloads over the plate and swings for the moon. Whether it makes it there or not is sort of beside the point: the effort, monumental and high minded, endears it enough. Go see it. Again.
