Inception

So went to see Inception at the IMAX last night. There are plenty of SPOILERS in this so don't read on until you've seen it because you should.

It is good. There's no denying that in the grand scheme of blockbusters this one is smart, engaging and technically magnificent.

But it's a Christopher Nolan film and I want to hold it to a higher standard. Which leaves me unsure.

So I'll start by describing how I felt. As I came out of the IMAX and put on this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqT5Y2Ul3bg and headed out I was strangely removed from my surroundings. The southbank at night with the lights gleaming, and they seemed to be sharper than usual although that may be just I cleaned them for once, has a surreal aspect. You walk above and around buildings and strange exhibits and performances go on around you, the London Eye and the Palace of Westminster can be seen together looking like different worlds.

Now I do that walk a lot. It's always great and there's nowhere on earth I love more. But it doesn't often feel other-wordly. Which is a strong sign that Inception worked. It left me feeling a little bit discombobulated, a little bit gleefully wondering if I was in a dream. Which was great. On that visceral level it had worked.

What's more it's got all its ducks in a row in terms of internal logic and uncertainty. It fits together and has no big flaws in what's a gloriously difficult thing to map. So technically as a script it deserves a huge amount of praise.

And yet. And yet. The same precision that made the internal logic so tight and the set pieces fit so meticulously seems to slightly constrain it. The plot ties us into dreams which must not deviate too much from reality because there are people involved who must not suspect it's a dream.

This is a shame because a) early on Dicaprio points out that you never realise a dream is weird while you're in it, yet they spend the rest of the film making dreams if anything more boring then the world Dicaprio actually lives in. Now that may be deliberate to stress that sneaking suspicion throughout the movie that Dicaprio is actually dreaming. But it also makes a slightly disappointing touch to the big sequence that defines it.

The original dream worlds we see involve beautiful ornate japanese palaces full of black tie guests, rioters streaming through the streets of some unknown city and, in the scene that truly makes the most of the freedom of dreams, a Paris which bends in on itself, builds bridges and contorts mirrors. It also has a Tokyo which feels as gloriously urban and unsettling as it can on film and a Mombasa that feels surreal and wondrously exotic but they're in the real world. And that's b) they've made the real world cities pretty exciting. And then they've gone and made one of the dreams a raining LA with lots of chasing cars in a way that feels like a million derivative action movies, a stylish hotel which I do quite like and crucially loses gravity which allows for lots of great scenes and a snowy lair which, as has been mentioned by many people, feels like Roger Moore era Bond and crucially means we rarely see who is who and lost interest soon after.

At the end of it they end up in DiCaprio's head, in a dream world he spent years creating with his wife and Ellen Page says how magnificent it is but to be honest it doesn't seem that great. It's the wrong end of the film to be chucking in an even more fantastic world but then don't say it is magnificent. Say it has a simplicity that is beautiful. And make the raining LA and the snowy fortress a bit more magical. Make this world a contrast.

My other complaint is that there's no room given to anyone but Cobb having a character really. Now this may well be deliberate. They are after all quite possibly any memories or indeed creations from his subconscious. But if they can't have character arcs they could at least have character. There's one moment when Joseph Gordon Levitt persuades Ellen Page to kiss him to hide the parts of his subconscious from staring at him. It has no effect, why would it? But it was worth a shot. Page's smile is one of the few moments of warmth and humour in the whole film. And I guess it would have been nice to give them a little more to say for themselves. Page in particular is basil exposition a lot of the time.

But I've realised something over the last few days with Heartbreakers and this. I love a heist. I love a team plotting something fiendish. It might be a perfect date or a perfect crime or a perfect ride but it's that sense of things being planned and them being one step ahead of you or thinking they are that is immensely satisfying.

So yeah, it is a great blockbuster. Lacking the visceral power of the Dark Knight or the mind blowing imagination of Avatar but it's tight and exciting and you come out with that sense of having been taken to another place which makes focusing on the real world a little tricky. I just feel that from where it started he could have let himself go a little, a little more flair, a little more humour, a little less po-faced angst. Which teaches me something because I always thought a film could never be too tight. So there's my learning experience. Flair vs discipline, discipline shouldn't always win, even for me.