Inception is the story of Leonardo “The Beach” DiCaprio, Juno, and 3rd Rock from the Sun taking a nap. But not just an ordinary nap. A really long nap. Like, 10 hours long.
Do you remember that movie Lost in Translation, where at the beginning Scarlet Johansen is depressed and takes naps all the time? This is just like that, except in Lost in Translation Scarlett Johansson eventually starts doing things such as meeting Bill Murray and complaining about things, whereas in Inception, no, they just take a nap. I also want to warn you that whereas Lost in Translation takes place entirely in Tokyo, Inception takes place only partially in Tokyo. So if you only watch movies about Tokyo, or if you are looking for a movie to write a paper on for your Japan 101 class, Inception will probably not fit the syllabus requirements. You would think that Christopher Nolan, who commandeered such hits as The Dark Knight and Memento could come up with something more interesting to make a 2 and a half hour movie about than people napping. On the other hand, he did make that movie Insomnia about not being able to go to sleep, so maybe he’s trying to even out his movies’ sleep karma or something. I don’t know for sure.
Anyway! Inception is the best movie of the year, Inception is the new savior of humanity, I want Inception to have my baby, etc. Seriously, it’s a great movie. I am sure, however, that every single one of you has read just about as many “did the top fall?” reviews as you can stomach. I have too. I love love love this movie, but seeing how everyone and their brother has written a 1000-word review trying to spin as complex of a metaphor or simile as possible to say, “Inception is like a big puzzle,” I don’t want to write another one just as much as you don’t want to read another one. Though all of these things are true, I'm not going to waste space writing about how amazing the score is, how phenomenal the special effects are, or that brilliant Royal Wedding homage with Joseph Gordon-Levitt fighting on the walls and ceiling. I’m gonna write about, you know, other stuff.
Apparently nobody has told Christopher Nolan the rules about how you make movies. We moviegoers have committed to an unspoken agreement concerning how big a movie’s budget is relative to how engaging it can be. For instance, you know as well as I do that if you want to see a fun movie, you go to your local suburban multiplex, pay $25 for a Volkswagen-sized tub of popcorn, and watch the A-Team blow shit up confusingly. We all understand that when presented with a $200 trillion dollar budget, a director cannot be expected to remember about things like character development, pacing, and hiring an editor who knows what he or she is doing. Likewise, you know that if you want to see a movie that engages your brain, you go to your local indie movie theater (you do live in a city, right?), pay $15 for a boutique herbal tea, and sigh along knowingly and pretentiously to the latest Noah Baumbach opus. These are the rules. What I’m trying to say is we’ve bought into this dumb=expensive, smart=low budget nonsense so much so that entire theater chains have flourished to cater to this false premise. It’s not an idea anymore; it’s an institution. I’m looking at you, Landmark.
I’m not going to spend too much time harping on about the old days, but things were truly not always this way. Once upon a time, some Powell and Pressburger movies were actually popular. Rewatch some Hitchcock – say To Catch a Thief – and tell me if you can honestly turn your brain off and still understand what in the world is going on. Lawrence of freaking Arabia, for goodness sake! I might get myself in trouble comparing Christopher Nolan to Powell, Hitchcock, and Lean – that’s not my intention. But the man certainly knows what to do with a big budget. Unlike the Michael Bay’s of the universe, a giant Hollywood budget can be used for hiring the most talented people in the world to work on your production, rather than sinking it all into CGI ‘splosions and forgetting about, oh, working on the script a little.
What I find so compelling about Nolan is that he is not an indie-come-Hollywood director either. He is through and through blockbuster from front to back. One might expect in this day and age that the best big budget Hollywood movies would be made by guys and gals who cut their teeth on indie productions. We’ve seen, however, indie directors presented with a substantial production budget fail time and time again. Sam Raimi is obviously much more comfortable working on a (relatively) small production like Drag Me to Hell than a bloated monstrosity like Spiderman 3. Peter Jackson, who spent the 90s making great movies with duct tape and popsicle sticks, found mainstream success with the iconic Lord of the Rings series, but has floundered trying to imbue any weight or heft in subsequent projects like King Kong and the particularly embarrassing Lovely Bones. I could go on – Robert Rodriguez, James Cameron. It seems bigger budgets brings out these once scrappy directors’ most infantile inclinations.
This is what makes Nolan such a fascinating character. He’s smart and classy in a way that moviemakers of this generation aren’t. I can’t figure this guy out. Have you ever seen a picture of Christopher Nolan in shorts and a t-shirt? Me neither. I can’t picture the guy dressed down any more than a full on suit with tie and jacket. He projects a real deal classic Hollywood vibe, and would look more at home in a photo op standing next to the likes of Howard Hawks, John Huston, and John Ford than any of his contemporaries. What’s more, he has the movie know-how to back him up. It must be every budding moviemaker’s nightmare to work hard and finally get a big break on a big production, and then realize that they have absolutely no clue how to manage a blockbuster. Whereas most must find that they are little fish swimming amongst sharks, Nolan is proving to be, like, a whale shark. Or a great white, or something. Something fierce. Maybe a hammerhead.
However you side on the “Is Inception a classic, or just a really good movie?” debate, one thing is for certain: Nolan has assembled perhaps the most uniformly competent, talented, and inspired film crew in years. While watching the movie, I remember being extremely impressed by the continuity adviser, Steve Gehrke. Usually, if I starting thinking about the relative merits of continuity supervision, that’s probably not a good sign, but with Inception, I think it means something different. I would like to credit my friend Eric with coming up with the following analogy:
At the height of their success, Van Halen included a requirement in their live show contract that a bowl of brown M&Ms would be placed in the green room before their arrival. Not just a bowl of M&Ms, but a bowl of specifically only the brown ones. Some have interpreted this as merely an odd eccentricity by some nitpicky, too-famous-for-their-own-good prima donna musicians. The brown M&Ms served a very specific and rational purpose, however. Owing to the massive amounts of electricity and pyrotechnics pulsing through the stage at a classic Van Halen concert, the band had obvious and reasonable concerns about their safety. The thought was, if the venue was competent and detail oriented enough to have someone sift through bags and bags of M&Ms and pick out only the brown ones with no mistakes, they were competent enough to safely execute a Van Halen live show.
Good continuity supervision is Inception’s brown M&Ms.
-Ben