Monday Morning Quarterback Part II
By BOP Staff
July 20, 2010
David Mumpower: I want to preface my comments about Inception by indicating that I am not predisposed to love the work of Christopher Nolan like Tom and Josh are. I didn't care for The Prestige, a chore of a movie, I find Insomnia aptly titled and while I admired the artistry of Memento, the ultimate message of nihilism alienated me. Similarly, while I consider there to be innumerable moments of genius in The Dark Knight, the final 40 minutes of that film is a glorious mess. Some of it physically hurts my eyes to watch. I consider Batman Begins to be the superior movie, but that's partially because I believe that the discussion for best comic book adaptation to date is a three film conversation between Spider-Man 2, Iron Man and Batman Begins. When I look at the body of Nolan's work, he has the one great movie, a pair of titles filled with genius that don't move me as much as I wish they did, and a couple that did nothing for me.
Keeping all of the above in mind, I was shocked by how much I found myself enjoying Inception. In point of fact, I briefly imagined what it would be like to sit beside the Wachowski Brothers as they watched the movie in that even they must realize that this is the Matrix sequel audiences wanted rather than the ones they received. And I say that as someone who likes the Matrix sequels. I simply realize that most people did not and the sublime multi-layer mis-en-scene introduced in Inception feels like either a significant progression or the logical conclusion of ideas introduced in The Matrix.
The beauty as well as the conceit of Inception is that this is a computer programmer's movie, a series of nested loops. The impact on the top level filters down to each additional iteration in a manner that is to the best of my knowledge heretofore unknown in modern cinema. Realistically, this is exactly the sort of premise that Quentin Tarantino would have ripped off and claimed as his own (ahem, *homage) had it been originally introduced in Asian cinema. From a structured perspective, it exponentially expands the perils, plights and possibilities of action sequence storytelling. Inception offers that rarest of rare future-defining moment of storytelling thanks to one magnificent hotel floor (and ceiling) fight.
To a larger point, this is exactly why I enjoy the movie so much. I had assumed that the moment The Dark Knight became the Box Office Behemoth, Nolan was done making movies like Memento. To my utter shock and pleasant surprise, he chose to make an even more complicated feature rather than shy away and take a blatant cash grab project like Obvious Sequel #4. I would imagine that the power trio of Michael Bay, Brett Ratner and McG are all sour this week now that they have seen an action film that none of them has the skill and artistic confidence to create (though I hope that McG gets to that point one day). With the advent of Inception, Nolan has squarely placed himself ahead of Peter Jackson at the head of the class as the next Spielberg. He seems to have the requisite bravado to take that mantle and claim/earn it as his own.
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