Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010) was always liable to split critical opinion. Following hot on the heels of the immensely successful The Dark Knight (2008) – a film that rocketed into the IMDb top five within days of its release, going on to gross over a billion dollars – there were sure to be sceptics, just waiting for Nolan’s big fall. The hype was tangible even before the trailers hit and when they did arrive – filled to the brim with impressive special effects – it was clear where those Bruce Wayne millions had been spent. Marketed, perhaps misleadingly, as a mind-bending sci-fi where anything could happen, Inception had successfully given itself one more thing to live up to. Critics almost seemed to take it as a personal affront when the final product had more in common with James Bond than it did with Paprika (2006). Nolan had given them a visual tease that the results did not seem to match.
This view was exemplified in UK critic Jonathan Romney’s review for The Independent on Sunday, which argued that Inception’s template is not one of grand and immeasurable possibility, but one of instantly recognisable Hollywood templates. A conclusion as fair as any other; we all have opinions, and Romney is – of course – entitled to his. The problem with Romney’s writing, though, lies not with the verdict reached, but with the contradictions passed in order to get there. Claiming at one point that an early scene in which characters "watch calmly as Paris explodes around them [like the] the cleverest, glossiest sports car advert you've even seen...in a narrative film sticks out as gratuitous show-offery", he later goes on to comment that “dream, as seen [in Inception], is controlled, designed, pre-programmed, policed. Inception is not a hymn to the imagination so much as a militant oppression of it – a film that reduces dream to the mundane logic of the action movie." These, to my mind, seem to be two completely opposing criticisms. Does Romney want the dream sequences to be outlandish or not? The first comment suggests he believes Nolan was right to keep the realms of dream largely grounded, whilst the second seems to suggest that this was a disappointment. Further, Romney complains of the “mundane logic” of the latter dreams, seemingly without realising that he has already explained the reasons behind it – it is the “narrative” of Nolan’s film that dictates exactly why each dream plays out in the way that it does. The first sequence Romney dismisses is present in order for one character, Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), to prove to another, Ariadne (Ellen Page), that they are experiencing a dream together. The latter ones he criticises are constructed with the exact opposite intention; so that the extraction/inception team can fool their target, Fischer (Cillian Murphy), into believing that he is awake. Creating a demented world of floating cheese monkeys probably wouldn’t quite have the desired effect.
Though Romney’s lack of clarity would be better described as clumsy rather than catastrophic, the slips were noticeable enough to get me thinking; does there come a point when criticism needs to be criticised? Romney’s descriptive errors were sloppy, but his main mistake is in believing that a film can be condemned simply for failing to be what you, the viewer, wanted it to be. In a recent blog entry charting the critical response to Inception, Roger Ebert summarised this excellently, writing that; “The last thing [the director] wanted was an untethered dream move. Nolan successfully made the film he had in mind, and shouldn't be faulted for failing to make someone else's.” Critics may not believe that Nolan’s logical approach to dream sequences is the most exciting, but since the film’s central conceit depends upon the idea that these worlds look and feel real, a well-written deconstruction needs to express where the film’s approach fails and not on how a different film may have been more pleasing.
In this light, Romney’s review may not have been the best, but at least he attempted to convey his experience of the film with specific complaints and examples, which – when compared to the abysmal critique provided by The New York Observer’s Rex Reed – seems like a blessing even more than it is a necessity. Reed’s approach consists of the three basic steps;
1) Use as many negative words as possible.
2) Avoiding talking about the film for as long as you can.
3) If you do describe the material, be sure to be inaccurate.
He starts by listing Nolan’s back catalogue, providing each film with a meaninglessly isolated adjective explaining why he doesn’t like it. Memento (2000), for example, is apparently “brainless”, whilst Batman Begins (2005) is “idiotic” and The Dark Knight (most curiously of all) is somehow both “mechanical” and “maniacally baffling”, something that would actually strike me as oddly impressive. Reed doesn’t think so though. “Is it clear that I have consistently hated his movies without exception, and I have yet to see one of them that makes a lick of sense”, he asks – or at least I think he does, it’s hard to tell since his sentence doesn’t actually end with a question mark. That last point may seem petty, almost like a delay tactic to avoid speaking about Reed’s actual description of Inception, but note that I’m describing a review that begins with three hundred and fifty words of name-calling (Reed even finding time to call Charlie Kaufman a “bottom feeder” for no apparent reason) before passing any notable comment on the actual film and it suddenly seems strangely appropriate.
When Reed does finally begin to talk about Nolan’s current release, it’s clear that he doesn’t like the film, but he gives no real impression as to why – other than the fact that he clearly didn’t understand it. I’m not being a smart aleck with that assertion. Reed literally states as much in the title of his review – “Could somebody please explain Inception to me?” His error, however, is to believe that this dictates we won’t understand it either. Keeping his terms derogatory yet vague, Reed assures us that Inception is “prattling drivel” without “one iota of cogent or convincing logic” whilst the frequent use of the second person ensures that this opinion is also put into the mouth of his readers. “You never know who anyone is, what their goals are, who they work for or what they’re doing”, he informs us. For somebody that thinks Nolan’s script is nonsense, Rex certainly has an intriguing ability to see inside our heads.
On the rare occasion that Reed does decide to provide direct reference to Inception’s content, his review is replete with basic factual errors. When describing DiCaprio’s character, for example, he misquotes Cobb as stating that he is “the most skilled extractor of dreams”, the last two words of which Reed has added himself. A small mistake on the surface, this is in fact enough to change the entire intention of Nolan’s script; a trend that continues when Reed describes the film’s central premise. “Inception”, Reed states, is a process in which “instead of stealing dreams, [Cobb’s team] must plant some.” This is entirely wrong. At no point in the film is it suggested that Nolan’s characters steal or plant their target’s dreams, rather it is made clear that they enter shared dreams with their target in order to access or manipulate their ideas. Even when providing the evidence needed to support his opinion then, Reed’s review is inaccurate. We can only hope that it was written in a dream state.
It is true of course that a critic – as with any filmgoer – may not understand every film they see upon first viewing. However, they must be well aware of their obligation to try and explain why. They cannot just provide a list of vague adjectives, supported only by selections of misinformation, and then assume that their readers will undoubtedly agree. Everybody has their own opinion, but in order to express theirs a reviewer must deal accurately and clearly with the material on display. Roger Ebert rightly praised fellow critic David Edelstein’s negative review of Inception, not because he agreed with it, but because it was well-written. Edelstein’s comparisons (“it lacks the nimbleness of Spielberg's Minority Report, or the Jungian-carnival bravado of Joseph Ruben's Dreamscape, or the eerily clean lines and stylized black-suited baddies of The Matrix”) were valid; his argument supported. His writing stands as evidence that – if a review is good – then the opinion given is irrefutable, even if it fails to persuade. If only they could always be like this. As things stand though, sometimes even criticism needs to be criticised.
