I remember when I first saw the trailer for "Inception." First, it's the visuals that grab you. Paris is folding over into itself while Leo DiCaprio and Ellen Page sit in a cafe. Things start exploding around them yet they remain safe as though they're in a bubble. Then it's a train running loose down a major city street. A gravity-defying fight is taking place in a hotel hallway. Then you hear those thumping mechanical horns and it says, "From Christopher Nolan," and suddenly I'm getting out my phone to mark opening day in my calendar. It's about dreams? Sounds good. Sign me up.
The weight of expectations was always going to be a challenge for "Inception," the follow-up to Nolan's much adored "The Dark Knight." Expectations were high, and not just because of Batman and how good it was, but because - let's face it - this has been a miserable summer for adults who want to see good blockbusters. "Inception" stood alone as an event movie this season.
So I watched it. And you know what? "Inception" is actually somewhere between very good and great. It manages to be a fairly complex story with a lot of rules you have to follow in order to keep up, but yet it's never alienating. I think this might be where a lot of the debate is starting to center around. Is it too complex? Or is it actually not complex enough? This somehow seems to be where the debate it heading. You'd think consensus would lean towards one side.
To my mind, the story's complexity isn't a problem. True, it never gets into the "Primer" zone, for better or worse. "Primer" is this fascinating indie picture about time travel from a few years ago. Now there's a movie that really challenges your ability to follow along. It essentially dares you to re-watch it and figure out how everything fits together. "Inception" never gets to that point and that's okay. A major idea of the movie centers around our psyche being like a maze, a place that can being physically explored. I suppose to have felt lost within the story would have been an exciting exploration of that theme, but for all its rules, "Inception" is actually a pretty linear story. They go into the dream. Then they go into the dream-within-the-dream. And then they go down two more levels. They find resolution in Level Four and then the dream is over. A little confusing sometimes but no maze there really.
Here's the thing: maze or no maze, it's a really engrossing movie and there's only one thing I can imagine that could really take it to the next level: let's call it the Ellen Page Factor. She is such an enjoyable presence on screen. But her character is devoid of any real development in this story. I propose we use her character to fix a few things about the movie that could have been stronger.
For starters, like DiCaprio's character says in the movie, when you're dreaming you don't know you're dreaming. So why do all of Leo's crew know that they're dreaming all the time? Wouldn't we as an audience have connected more with the main characters if we saw them struggling to remember that the world surrounding them wasn't real? What if the explanation was that it's a skill they have to learn: to stay fully conscious while interacting with dreams. In that case, Ellen Page's character as the newbie could be the one we see struggling to keep it all straight. I think if the audience saw that it would draw us even further into the story. I understand that would pose new obstacles for the writers, since you wouldn't want to keep repeating the same type of scene over and over every time they move into a deeper dream level. "Oh my god, Leo you've been shot! You're dying!" "No no, come on. We've been over this. Remember? We're in a dream, okay?" "Oh yeah, right. I forgot." Yes, it would get old, so you'd have to be clever with how you did it, but it could be done.
Which brings me to the next thing. I would have preferred it if the Fourth Level Dream was given some time to unfold, to really showcase Leo & Ellen Page stuck in this deep inner dimension, much like his character was years ago. I want to see Ellen Page coming unraveled and having deja vu moments about her real life, forgetting if it ever was her real life. This would be much like "2001" after the wormhole scene. Just a bizarre meditation on life and time until they finally find what they're looking for (speaking of which, why was Leo's character still a young man when he found Saito, who was so old?). I think this would've given the story a little extra something, an extra sense of feeling lost in the whole thing. Maybe it needed to be a little mystical here. Something like a memory long forgotten and and briefly remembered. The sense that life has somehow been going on for an eternity. This would give their re-emergence all the more dramatic release when they finally wake-up.
So that's it really. Hey Chris Nolan, you should have used Ellen Page's character more! That's really my whole point. Otherwise, people who didn't like this movie are either stupid or nit-picking. Because it's a really good movie! And that's really rare for Hollywood lately!
