I must confess to something of a bias, but I’ve never been a big fan of Christopher Nolan’s work, especially when he serves as a writer as well. I feel he substitutes (or confuses) gimmicky for profundity. If Memento had the same dialogue, same actors, same story but was played in chronological order I doubt the movie would have been raved about as much as it was. Simply reverse the order of the movie and everyone is going ecstatic over it.

If Christian Bale spoke in the same voice as Batman and Bruce Wayne and Heath Ledger didn’t die young and tragically, The Dark Knight would still be a success but not on such a large scale as it was.

I don’t think it a coincidence that Christopher Nolan’s best films (The Prestige minus the last 10 minutes and Insomnia) were ones he didn’t write. Nolan is a much better director than he is as a writer. His directing is engaging, but his writing is pretentious. Inception is the most recent example of this.

I’m sure we all know what the plot of Inception is by now, but if you don’t I’ll humor you and explain it briefly. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Dom Cobb who is an extractor. Cobb’s job is to remove ideas from people’s brain and he does this when the person is in a dream state. Cobb is assigned a different kind of job—instead of removing an idea he has to plant an idea inside the person’s mind deep in the subconscious so the person isn’t aware that the idea Cobb planted was his all along (and not Cobb’s); this process is known as inception.

There. You have the plot. Happy now? Me neither, but at least you are somewhat more contented.

Most of Inception has people (Cobb and his underlings) explain what inception is. There is way, way, too much dialogue and time spent on explaining things. The movie is close to 2 and a half hours long and could of easily been cut in half (it would probably be incoherent then, but I’m sure Nolan would prefer it that way).

The acting is on par with the acting in The Matrix—non-existent. Why is it in sci-fi and fantasy movies every character has to talk and act the same way? All of Cobb’s workers pretty much act and talk the same and no character is really individualized. The actor’s are simply spitting out Nolan’s inane dialogue hoping “complexity” will suffice.

It is revealed that when Cobb enters a person’s dream state, he sees images of his dead wife (whoops did I spoil something?), Mel (the enigmatic Marion Cotillard, whose talents is completely wasted in a flat role) and his children. There is a scene which explains the reason why Cobb always sees Mel in someone’s dreams. The reason why is straight out of Memento. We already saw the theme of guilt and the way it was portrayed in Memento. Why did Christopher Nolan have to be repetitive instead of thinking of a way to explain Cobb and his obsession that Nolan didn’t already use?

Cobb hires Ariadne (Ellen Page whose acting skills are also completely ignored here), an architect to build people’s dreams. I won’t bother explaining how it’s impossible to build an environment that is inside a person’s brain. Cobb explains how this is possible, but not in any convincing way.

Inception also stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Arthur, one of Cobb’s assistants (I’ll let you guess if Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s acting skills are displayed here).

Inception isn’t a total loss. After the first incoherent hour, the film does get progressively better the further it goes along. The scene depicting Cobb’s motive for being an extractor, while not entirely original is a dramatically moving moment. There are nice effects, camera shots and the music by Hans Zimmer isn’t overused and really adds flavor to the film’s surroundings. There is also a great scene when one of Cobb’s assistants survives a dangerous crash and turns to the people in back of him and says, “did you see that?” only to remember that they are sleeping.

I’m probably being a bit too harsh on the film. I guess because the film has been so universally praised (months before the film was even released) I feel the need to even the score and tone down the underserved hype and enthusiasm.

Inception isn’t as awful as I’ve made it sound, but with all the talent involved, Inception under-performs greatly (which isn’t so great).

“When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing”— Enrique Jardiel Poncela

“The best style is the style you don’t notice”— Somerset Maugham

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough”—Albert Einstein

The three quotes above aren’t just essential to great works or art, but to life as well, if only Christopher Nolan read them before he made Inception. Inception isn’t a bad film. It’s competently directed, has a good musical score that isn’t over-played, is ambitious and has some nice scenes. Inception is also unnecessarily convoluted (if you understand everything that’s going on within the first 10 minutes, you are one smart person) with overwrought dialogue that has the characters explain everything they are doing.

Inception doesn’t start off well and actually gets better as it goes along. Inception has been hailed as “this year’s Matrix” and it’s similar in that movie in many ways—it’s pseudo philosophical (philosophy for the sake of philosophy does not a philosopher make), plays with gravity (people walking upside down, cars driving vertically, buildings circling around itself) and deals with dreams vs. reality.

Christopher Nolan is a director who seems to believe that the more complex something is the smarter and more meaningful it is. As Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio in brooding mode) says, “”The stronger the issues, the more powerful the catharsis.” Dom looks like Christopher Nolan himself and seems to be partly auto-biographical.

Dom hires Ariadne, an architect (played by Ellen Page) to enter into a person’s dream and construct a world that seems to be reflect reality (somewhat) so the person isn’t aware they are dreaming. Cob asks Ariadne to draw a maze that takes two minutes to make and one minute to solve. Cob keeps solving Ariadne’s mazes in a matter of seconds and asks her to keep drawing more models until it takes him a minute to solve the puzzle. Ariadne finally constructs a maze so complicated the audience doesn’t see Cob solve it. This scene seems to echo Christopher Nolan’s view of filmmaking—it must be hard to solve for it to be worth doing. If only Christopher Nolan knew what smart works of art really are.

Inception has moments of entertainment. The scene of a building rising from the ground and folding over itself while the camera follows the building and moves in the same direction is a neat trick. The scene that shows the origin of why Cobb decides to enter a person’s dream to either remove an idea of plant one is a powerful moment. Unfortunately, the pedantic and clamorous dialogue, the pretentiousness, and the almost non-existing acting (expect for Leonardo DiCaprio) make Inception intercepting Christopher Nolan’s themes and ideas instead of making Inception interesting.