Butterfly dreams and Dark Cities – A review of Inception
Spoiler-free review:
Inception is a very good film. If you’re one of the handful of people who haven’t seen it yet, you should make time to do so. It’s well-acted, tightly-directed and provides a story that unfolds in a generally satisfying way. Its most successful moments are almost entirely visual and those portions of the film are truly unique and compelling and make it a worthy effort entirely on their own.
That being said, I found its core philosophical and narrative challenges to be rather uninspired and some of the story’s choices (particularly near the end) were disappointingly shallow. Inception is a movie defined by new vistas, but not new ideas.
In my view, it exists on the film spectrum occupied on one end by The Matrix and on the other by Dark City. In fact, it felt very much like a movie that has been written and re-written numerous times in the shadow of those earlier films. The result is a partial success – it is better than The Matrix and not as good as Dark City.
Spoilers follow from this point forward:
Once upon a time, I, Zhuangzi, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Zhuangzi. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.
– Zhuangzi – Chinese philospher (369-286 BC)
That’s Inception in a nutshell – ideas that have been rattling around in recorded human consciousness for the better part of two and a half thousand years. Hundreds of years before Zhuangzi, the Greek philosopher Gorgias tackled the same issues. And later Descartes (he of “cogito ergo sum” fame) and hundreds of others weighed in as well.
In fact, it’s hard to imagine that Inception was scripted without some rather direct inspiration from good ol’ Zhuangzi. See if any of this rings a bell:
He who dreams of drinking wine may weep when morning comes; he who dreams of weeping may in the morning go off to hunt. While he is dreaming he does not know it is a dream, and in his dream he may even try to interpret a dream. Only after he wakes does he know it was a dream. And someday there will be a great awakening when we know that this is all a great dream. Yet the stupid believe they are awake, busily and brightly assuming they understand things, calling this man ruler, that one herdsman – how dense! Confucius and you are both dreaming! And when I say you are dreaming, I am dreaming, too. Words like these will be labeled the Supreme Swindle.
Some of that is nearly word-for-word from the film.
But my point is not to accuse Christopher Nolan of theft or plagiarism or anything other sort of intellectual dishonesty. My major criticism of the film is that it chickens out and presents a rather banal consideration of the philosophical challenges that inspired it. It asks the Big Question (“Is it ALL A DREAM?”) and then opts for the cop-out answer (“It’s up to the audience to decide for themselves.”).
It’s a bit of a tall order to expect a film to offer something truly NEW to an issue that’s been puzzled over by many of history’s great thinkers, but to fail to stand behind even the most juvenile, surface interpretations of the issue is disappointing.
Which leads me back to The Matrix and Dark City. Both films – like Inception – deal with concepts of “reality” and with the so-called “problem of other minds”. You can only know what’s in your OWN mind and you can only understand other people and even the world around you by analogy. You can’t trust your perception – only that you are, in fact, CAPABLE of perception, which leads to all sorts of Philosophy 101 queries:
Is the world real?
Are the people around you real?
Is your world real or a facade?
If the world you perceive is false, but more pleasant than reality, would you want to “wake up”?
All three films splash around joyfully in this rather shallow pool and the audience is understandably amused by the display. It’s like a late-night, freshmen year bull-session – fun and engaging enough while everyone is just killing time, but goofy and mostly pointless in the long run. Its value is as a catalyst for fun – not as a sustaining motivator. Only Dark City seems to REALLY be in on this gag.
The Matrix fails because it thinks these ideas are revelatory and Dark City succeeds because it never loses sight of the rather trivial nature of its core inspiration.
Inception fails because it puts too much stock in the narrative value of the “secret” philosophical challenge. By failing to fully clarify itself throughout its climax and into its final scenes, the result feels both lazy and uncertain. The resulting crisis of narrative confidence ripples back through the rest of the story and makes it just feel like a stylish – but futile – exercise. The Matrix suffers from the same problems.
In contrast, Dark City revels in its “secret” and presents it clearly and without equivocation. This leaves us with a complete and extremely satisfying narrative journey. It doesn’t “leave the top spinning”, so to speak.
Inception mistakes this narrative equivocation for depth. Have the top spin perfectly or knock the damn thing over and the film immediately improves.
All of that being said, Inception is a noble – and FUN – failure. Like I mentioned previously, the visuals are worth the price of admission and – perhaps best of all – they AREN’T available in 3D.