So, yeah. I, like many others, went to see Inception. I walked into the theater expecting to really, really dig it, because all signs pointed to it being exactly the kind of movie that hits all my buttons. Mindfucks! Team dynamics! Secrets! Intelligence! Plus, I really liked the way that marketing managed to be engaging, viral, interesting and not annoying. Snaps for the build up, Chris Nolan. And, not gonna lie, the fact that the cast was hotter than the face of the sun helped a lot. (I'll refrain from talking about how Ken Watanabe and Ellen Page should be in every movie ever.)
Oddly enough, I wasn't actually let down by the movie itself. I tried to bank my expectations before the movie started, because hype cometh before the disappointment. But man. Man. Inception turned out to be smart and layered and engaging without falling so much in love with its own cleverness that it stopped making sense. (I'm looking at you, back half of the Matrix trilogy.) There's some debate over this on the internet, but it hit just right emotional notes the whole way through, even with Mal and Cobb's scenes. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is not someone I would have pinned as successfully being able to play a stick in the mud, but he did it well and looked great in all those sharp, sexy clothes they had him dressed in. And Ellen Page was a thousand times more enjoyable, charming and compelling provided this kind of exposition than she was in Juno.
Basically, I would say it's definitely worth the ten bucks for a ticket. And hopefully this could serve as a signal to Hollywood that summer audiences are actually a whole lot smarter than we're given credit for. Give us a little bit more intelligent fare and we will go see it and see it again.
But, because the world we live in is sadly not perfect, I do have one bone that I need to pick with Inception. Or more specifically, a bone that I need to pick with Chris Nolan.
Inception has two female characters with a significant presence in the film. One is Ariadne, who is the architect and has one the best referential names I've seen in film. She's the new person on the team and serves as the audience's in to the world, asking all the questions that we're asking in our heads. I don't have issues with Ariadne, other than being potentially too fond of her character. (Though there is legitimate criticism to be made about her being less developed than her male counterparts.)
The other female character is Mal, called the shade in marketing for the film; she's the wife of Leonardo DiCaprio's main character, Cobb, and serves as a kind of dangerous bogeyman in the dream world. What's particularly interesting about Mal is that she is never not seen as a construct of Cobb's guilty mind. Her purpose is largely to give Cobb angst and catharsis, and to serve as the concrete "bad guy" in the film. Granted, that doesn't change the fact for me that she is one of the more interesting characters and Marion Cotillard did a wonderful job with the role. If this were the one example of Nolan using this trope, I wouldn't mind (as much).
The problem is, Nolan has a long established habit of fridging the wife. In Batman Begins, the mother dies. In the Dark Knight, the girlfriend dies and Commissioner Gordon's fantastic canon daughter, Barbara, is replaced with a son. In Memento, the wife dies. In the Prestige, the wife and the girlfriend both die.
On the level of my brain that doesn't have a social conscience (the same level that watches Supernatural) I love Nolan's filmmaking style. I think the dude has a really incredible talent for telling smart, sharp, tight stories that don't assume the audience is incapable of following plot. His visuals are consistently incredibly compelling, but still natural to the setting of the story being told.
But I do have a social conscience. So, Nolan, let's make a deal. In your next film, you won't fridge a single female character. Deal? I want to like your films and I do, but it would be great if I could do that without feeling guilty.
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