Movies look like dreams because we make sense of movies the same way we make sense of dreams, ignoring the gaps between scenes, the discontinuity, the leaps in logic.
To make a movie about dreams is easy: tell the audience they are watching a dream. But to make a great movie about dreams is much harder: you have to inspire the audience to care about what happens after telling them, repeatedly, that none of what they are seeing is really happening.
Inception doesn’t rise to that challenge. It focuses its considerable energies not on why we dream or how we think but rather on its wind-up plot, a fascinating whirling mechanism that has captivated millions.
But who cares when this spinning top falls? No one in the movie appears to. I doubt the director does. Perhaps audience members who bought a large soda do, especially after a two and a half hour Parade of MacGuffins.
Had the director and writers chosen to be either less or more serious about dreams, viewers might be less likely to feel they’ve been taken for a ride.
It’s no bother to be dropped off exactly where you started if you know you are boarding a roller coaster with its closed loop and mechanical thrills.
But to be told you’re on a journey to deep insights and then get spun around for a while before being dropped off, only to realize, as your inner ear settles, that you’re none the wiser, is a let down.
Synecdoche, New York | Being John Malkovich – genuine feelings + awesome action sequences = Inception.