Christopher Nolan’s Inception begins mysteriously at a shore, as does Charlie Kaufman’s screenplay Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Both tackle memories at their core, construct for the audience the subconscious mind’s dream state and erode it through some compelling cinematography. The comparison stops there.
Watching these two films, you’ll learn that simplicity is the vehicle to the only complexity that matters: the humanity in films – not the idea, however novel and cerebral it is, but the humanity itself.
Nolan’s idea in Inception would be no stranger to followers of Freud who stated that a dream is a form of psychosis. When we dream, we descend into temporary insanity as we believe and interact with a world that exists only in our minds. He then uses this concept in a storyline where characters use people’s dream to extract information or, more intriguingly, manipulate their subconscious by planting ideas in a dreaming mind.
If Nolan’s concept is to extract or manipulate information in people’s head, Kaufman’s is to selectively erase painful memories. Both ideas are fertile with potential, but if you think the hard part is over, you would have a movie like Inception.
If a movie revolves around a concept, you have a story that talks about it. Dialogue is a great and powerful tool, but it is most effective if employed to get to know characters, not the plot.
Inception, in its use of dialogue, develops an audio book complex that uses words, not images, as exposition. The shot of the street rising and the earth inverting itself into a box is reminiscent of a pop-up book with the explanatory words washing over you. Suddenly, the film becomes self-aware of its cleverness and high budget the way the artificially constructed extras in an inception dream become aware of their artificiality and gaze suspiciously at the dreamer. But no matter how dramatically inanimate objects rise and bend in this film, it still falls emotionally flat.
Simplicity is thoroughly effective in complexity-building, be it in the stratification of dreams Nolan induces in his inception technique or in the layers his cast of character should’ve had so that their pretty but hollow gravity-defying dream sequences don’t invoke an unintended metaphor for paper-thin characters floating away.
Kaufman’s characters fight, not in million-dollar action sequences, but inside intimate homes. The only place more intimate and alive than the reality of Clementine and Joel’s lives is when they go back deep in Joel’s repressed memories, through some low-tech brain damage procedure that takes place in a small clinic and in the depressive patient’s own dingy home.
Nolan’s, on the other hand, is a construct that detaches itself from poignant and well-developed emotions the way its inception scenes have the Earth detach from its core. These scenes invoke awe but they seem to serve no purpose other than to showcase the capabilities of a “dream architect” whose mind maze creation is actually more decorative than plot-driven.
With Eternal Sunshine, the effects are what they’re supposed to be – the means to achieve the drama, the medium that would take us through the painful memories of a failed relationship that would’ve otherwise been too cliché. The protagonist, Joel Barish, who changes his mind too late about erasing his ex-girlfriend Clementine from his memories, runs around in his own head of disintegrating stored moments to hide Clementine in his poignant childhood reminiscence. Here, technology facilitates our desire to self-medicate our bruised psyche and wipe the slate clean of our emotional baggage. Here, philosophy is not just a stagnant idea used as a plot point, but is allowed to play out organically. Here, technology and philosophy meet to show us our humanity and how science is futile against it.
This is not to say
that Inception lacks the heart that Eternal Sunshine has; in fact, it is actually easy to spot, and you wont’ find it in the deceptive beating musical score moments. It lies in the desperation of the dead wife, Mal, whose apparition keeps appearing in her husband’s inception operations. Not only that, Dom Cobb, Mal’s widower, is also haunted by visions of his children whose faces we never see. Suspected to have murdered Mal, Cobb fled the country and abandoned his children to their grandparents. Cobb and Mal, before Mal’s death, had been experimenting in their dreams, and here is where the cue music should swell. Theirs is a backstory that is emotionally bigger in scope and a much more engaging puzzle than the sanitized story at the forefront.
Sometimes, there are puzzles that just make you want to give up, and Inception‘s elaborate dream architecture and corporate interest plot is one such puzzle we are inclined to put down.
Dear readers (particularly Inception fanatics),
Inception might be ripped from . . . a Scrooge McDuck comic book?.
Ah…been searching for a review that dared to be brave to be different. Let me be frank and say I’ve not seen Eternal Sunshine…so cannot delve into your comparisons there. But honestly, I know two things…every film has its audience, and the more you can come near Pure Heart or Pure Mind the more you can expand that audience.
According to one of my film theories, films ultimately tell us only three different types of stories – Intelligent ones (Mind Flicks), Emotional Ones (Heart films), Usual Ones (a mishmash of both) and the rare Unusual Ones (excellent mishmashes, right amount of Mind and Heart). I believe this since I live in the land that produces around 1000 movies ranging – and I’m quoting a cousin of mine – from “Fantastic Realities” to “Realistic Fantasies”, ergo “All mind no heart” to the other end.
So, though I love your take on the absence of Heart in Inception, no one can deny that its one hell of an intelligent movie. I thus believe it has drawn in more people who start a sentence with “I think” rather than “I Feel”.
I’m one of them, and my wife’s the complete opposite. I’m going to show her Inception soon, and my theory will (of course just for me) be either proven right or wrong.
As an aside, the debate here in my land of computer geeks (who by the way just love the film) is “will we ever be able to make an Inception”. (And this from a land that has produced masterpieces in “Heart films” like the Apu trilogy from Satyajit Ray and more down the line). Goes to show you what a great Magic trick can achieve.
I guess at the end you judge a creation based on the creator. Nolan has consistently tried to mesmerize us – Prestige, Memento – and tried in some places to give it heart – Dark Night, Memento. In one of his interviews he explicitly stated that this is a Heist movie. As such its a good one, though I also “feel” he could have given it more heart…but I still “think” his Mind is eternal sunshine!
Thanks for the comment Zak! I guess that you could try to categorize films based on their strengths and weaknesses, but I still think it’s not fair to reduce art, which is what I think film is, to its genre. However, I think I am guilty of this. See my review of Salt.
Also, I’m sorry to break this to you but Nolan might have derived Inception from a certain grumpy duck.
Yup, agree with this post and most of the comments on it. Inception comes nowhere close to Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, the dark knight, matrix or vanilla sky. I just dont get what was so great about this movie.
Thanks Avik! I loved The Dark Knight. I have to confess that I have yet to see The Matrix in its entirety. There’s something about that movie that I can’t connect with. I know the “brain in a vat” theory and I have taken philosophy before, so it’s not the philosophy that I can’t wrap my head around. It seems too self-conscious a movie for me and it’s failed to capture my interest, but then again, I haven’t really given it a complete viewing, so I have to give it a chance before judging it.
I have read your comparison and all the comments and I just want to say that I agree with you. You have articulated what was missing in Inception that I found so captivating and intriguing in Eternal Sunshine. It’s the emotional connection that seems to be missing. Through a lot of Inception I was alternately confused and bored by the action sequences. They were fascinating at first but then after awhile it was like “come on, let’s get on with the story.” I felt like I was trapped in a video game. I did get engaged in the mystery of why Dom Cobb’s wife killed herself, and that was the heart of the movie for me. The rest seemed like so much dazzling pyrotechnics. Whereas Eternal Sunshine really held me spellbound throughout, because there was a strong emotional connection between the ex-lovers that made you want to understand what was happening even when the subconscious twists and turns were confusing.
Agree! Actually, now that I think about it, James Cameron’s Avatar is another such movie that has dazzling special effects and a fake world that I connected with. I don’t think Avatar is perfect, don’t get me wrong. It’s not the best screenplay, but if you want to make an aesthetically beautiful film that does not lose sight of entertainment value, you have to have characters that you care about and give some human elements to the story.
I cared about the Na’vi people and Jake. I did not connect at all to any of Inception‘s characters, except briefly to Cobb when he was aching to save his wife and see his children. It may seem like I want a traditional, cliche story, but it’s not really what I want. I want to see heart. I want to see these people for what they are. Concept and design should be background elements, a complement only to the characters at the forefront.
I find that Cameron concocted a world that is beautiful and spellbinding, yet he didn’t lose sight of his main assets: his characters.
Thanks for you comment Laura!
Absolutely I agree that Inception fails to respect the humanity in its story, but I suspect an almost equal failure is to treat the dreams simply as alternate realities where the rules are only a little more flexible than real life. Where Eternal Sunshine made a point of creating a picture of the subconscious that was at times confusing and panicked (neatly mimicking the emotional plot perhaps), Inception simply inserts the ability to dream up a bigger gun. Maybe that’s an unfair reduction but it was certainly all too tangible and polished. It’s a great film, but with entertainment firmly at it’s heart. Maybe I should say it’s a greatly entertaining film rather than a ‘great film’.
The Science of Sleep, like Eternal Sunshine, made a beautiful attempt at trying to capture the insanity and complexity of our minds, and there too the emotional story wasn’t eaten away by the cinematic achievements. Of course, films will never be able to entirely capture the rich, hyperventilating, dissociative experience of our dreams, but I applaud such bold attempts. Inception didn’t acknowledge this aspect with any conviction.
What I found most confusing after watching Inception was the certainty of most of the people I watched it with that the film was making some profound statement about our minds and perception of reality – they weren’t entirely sure what that statement was, but they were sure it was there if you thought about it enough. And that’s the key I think – the film does make you think – it’s a grand, shiny and spectacular prompt, but that’s where it ends.
I’ll be checking back to see how your cinematic odyssey’s progressing – all the best!
Ah, thanks for bringing up The Science of Sleep Andrew! How could I forget? What a gorgeous film, and, yes, it captures the dream state much more accurately. Inception is not representative at all of our subconscious, in my opinion. When I dream, random events, with pieces of memories of the previous days, collide to make for a funky dream.
If Nolan wanted to us to suspend disbelief, he should’ve mimicked how his own dreams worked. Inception‘s dream worlds seem so stylized, with elevators, eroding buildings and shape-shifting, gravity-defying worlds. Granted that they’re “architected,” the “architects” of these manipulated dreams should’ve researched their target person’s life: Stalked them and taken notes on how their past few days went to construct a dream that is completely believable — something that a dreaming person’s subconscious wouldn’t suspect as fake. In fact, that approach would give the characters the depth they need. As it is, these dreams are more imaginary than they are windows to one’s subconscious.
I guess that Inception is this “great prompt” but if it does not engage (for me anyway), then I’m not really compelled to explore its “layers.” It failed to invite me to its world.
This is what I mean by using personality in dreams. Inherently, dreams are the depth of your character because your mind created it using prompts from the real world. The dream architects in Inception should’ve made it their priority to create a dream that is not detached from reality, but in fact as accurate as reality to seduce one to keep dreaming.
I read somewhere that the purpose of dreams is to keep you asleep. If you’re in the brink of waking up (i.e. you hear a noise, or smell breakfast being prepared), your mind will convince you to stay asleep by conjuring up a dream world that includes all those prompts that are waking you up; you’ll dream about that noise and that breakfast.
Anyway, I’m taking a short break (a week) from my cinematic odyssey. I need to prepare for an important interview and meet some important deadlines. Hope you keep checking back though!
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I waited so long to see this too.. -__- I would expect so much more storyline from Charlie Kaufman because I LOVE Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Like you said, the emotion and story of Inception are not conveyed effectively…! There is suspense in the parts about the dead wife and his estranged children were but they lack peaks and felt so flat… The plot is basically empty. I thought Inception can be so much better if it’s a suspense movie that unfolds mysteries one “dream” at a time… but no, it’s really just a half-action, half I don’t know what…
Same as the plot, they put minimal effort into the cinematography as well. All of the special effects scenes only got a “nice, okay” from me, no WOW or accelerated heartbeat/goosebumps. I thought with a subject like dreams, it should result in something like a non-grungy, modern version of The Cell (one of my favourite movies with AMAZING cinematography) but disappointingly, the art directors played it too safe. BTW, I despise movies that show all the cool parts in trailers; I feel ripped off to see such movies.
If you have to ask me to compare a movie to Inception.. Somehow many parts of the movie reminds me of The Matrix (the word “architect,” the fighting scenes, and the metallic luggage box which is so overused in any movie). I have not yet found a movie that can even compare to the WOW and racing heartbeat I got when I watched The Matrix more than 10 years ago in the theatre – that was all before the buzz and great reviews. I remember it was the first few days after the movie came out and we just happened to watch it with no expectations and it totally caught me by surprise as an amazing film. I’m not sure how Inception is a hit; maybe it’s all the marketing and media hype. The trailer I saw 6 months ago did leave me wanting to watch it for sure. Maybe if I didn’t have any expectation, Inception would seem better. Since none of the new movies give me the same amount of thrill I got from watching a 10-year-old movie, maybe it’s time for people to do better movies!
It’s time for you Angela to go to film school and put your artistic talent to good use.
All this movie-watching is actually making reconsider my journalism career. Screenwriting is just so much more fun, glamorous and PROFITABLE. Haha! We could team up. I could write the screenplay and you could be DP.
Seriously, I’m glad that you saw for yourself how overrated this film is. It’s very reaffirming. It’s not just me! I’m not crazy!
Hi. We are not sure in the end if it is all Cobb’s dream. If it is not, then Inception is a heist movie and follows the pre established formula and I was happy it was presented in such a refreshing way. I completely agree with ‘anthony portillo’ – developing the emotional core any further than it already has been would only have gone against the pacing, and indeed the point, of a heist film. In a heist movie you want to see the heist, i.e., the plot, take shape.
Let’s assume for a moment that the whole film is Cobb’s dream. If it is then every single character in the film is a projection of Cobb’s subconscious and so a shade of his character. Then the whole film is one huge character study of Dom Cobb! And that is where the genius of Nolan lies. Coming from an Engineering background, I can appreciate the meticulous detail he has put into the story and how he has left it as a never ending loop (in the same vein as in software programmes). The plot is so bullet proof and incredibly detailed that it makes for a hugely entertaining heist movie.
That is why Warner Bros. green-lit the film with a $160 million dollar budget in the first place. Exposition is used here with the same amount of liberty as it was used in ‘The Dark Knight’. If it was not, the audience of the film would have narrowed down and so would have the box office revenues and so would the film’s budget. Another point that I would like to link here is that the exposition bit of the film cannot have been filmed due to the response at the test screenings but was indeed a part of the original script. Shooting such a sequence would have required numerous rewrites, more post production and pick-up shoots (filming that is done to fine tune the first draft of a film after it is put together). This would have resulted in huge delays in the film’s release and since it is positioned as a summer blockbuster given its huge budget and all – the studio could only have released it in December to capitalise on the holiday season in order to return their huge investment. So Warner Bros. would not have given Nolan $160 million dollars if the exposition bit was not there. Since the plot is so tight one can only think that no huge last munite changes were added to it and it was indeed passed by the studio before the shooting began.
So that is why Inception lacks soul, if it does. It does have a very strong emotional backbone. If it were to posses any of the soul of ‘The Eternal…’, its gross at the box-office would have been similar – $34 million over its lifetime in America. But Inception grossed $62 million on its opening weekend alone, and its 2 week domestic gross already stands at over $160 million – justifying Warner Bros. investment in the movie and Nolan’s plot structure and his dream to make blockbuster movies.
Hi Paul! I didn’t know Nolan has an engineering background, which reminds me of the book I’m almost done reading: The Futurist, a biography of James Cameron. Cameron was destined to be an engineer too (dad and brother are both engineers) but he pursued his passion for film instead, which was a good call.
Cameron had the same problem as Nolan: getting a studio to green-light a crazy project (Titanic) and give it an $80-million funding. Cameron ended up surpassing that amount to excesses of $200 million. To add to that, he was running way behind schedule. Fox green-lit the project with the condition that it would be released in the summer. Cameron called up the studio and said that he COULD release Titanic by the contractual date, but he warned them that it would be a compromised film.
Fox, surprisingly, despite the fact the everyone in Hollywood thought this most expensive movie ever made at the time was going to be a flop, agreed to push the release date to December.
Titanic, despite all the doubts cast against it, made money. It made so much money in fact that it became the highest grossing film in history, that is until Avatar which is by the same director.
I’m not saying that Titanic was a great film, script-wise. I’m saying that Inception didn’t need to sell out and rush its production for the sake of making money. I judge movies based on its artistic merits after all, not its box office potential. Not to mention, the movie 2012 made $166 million in the U.S. alone, but you can’t honestly say that it’s a good movie based on the money it made. If you look at the box office, shitty but commercial movies almost always top the truly great ones that are not always as commercial.
But, you’re right, Inception is a box-office success, just don’t confuse that as an artistic success.
Fair enough. Good points. On a different note, I’ve just seen The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and loved it as well. You should write a review on that.
I’m afraid it’s not relevant anymore. I’m only reviewing recently released films and old films that are listed in the book The Best DVDs You’ve Never Seen, Just Missed or Almost Forgotten compiled by the New York Times movie critics.
While eternal sunshine still shines as my favorite film, and inception somewhere around 10 or 11th… i think you’re comparison of them is a bit too ‘apples and oranges’ when it comes to the criticism of the latter. Inception is about a relationship within the confines of a sci-fi setting (as opposed to the vice versa in eternal sunshine). Inception is built as a thriller, a visual drama. Eternal sunshine from the very basic concept is a much more closely focused, delicate perspective. Inception was pretty in general, well shot, but as far as ‘special effects extravaganza’ it was not. The only gimmick was the single CGI shot from the trailer. If anything I wish there was more spectacle, because when the story is focused on the dream (almost more than character) I want to see the impossible, personally.
Good point, but I contrasted Eternal Sunshine and Inception because I think, sci-fi thriller or not, Inception could use a heart.
For a movie about car chases that take place in dreams, this one is quite a yawn. It’s boring, not on the level that it’s not visually arresting, but on the level that it’s not emotionally exciting. I don’t know the characters right to the very end. They are so poorly drawn that it makes me wonder whether Nolan really cared about his film. If he did, he would’ve given it emotional weight. And, no, emotional weight is not achieved through an underdeveloped flashback scene accompanied by some grating soundtrack that is the equivalent to a live audience flash card telling you when to applaud. You need to go back and tell a story. As it is, this film’s scrambled chronology didn’t succeed the way ES’s fragmentations did.
If you’re writing a thriller, characterization is all the more crucial because the thrill should be in the characters. In thrillers, you are compelled to root for someone. The only thing I’m compelled to do is forget the overpriced admission I paid for and just let myself drift into my own dreams that have often been far more exciting than what Nolan can architect.
Ofelia Dear,
As much as you’re my new best friend, and I agree with 90% of what you say, don’t you think you’re being a little hard on this flick?
ES is my favorite movie and Adaptation is close behind and better films than Inception but this is still genius right? Isn’t it better than most stuff out there? And if your dreams top the ones featured in this film well then I wanna be in them.
The backstory of Cobb was sad and interesting. And the whole thing of what he is feeling so guilty about is such an interesting and complex concept. My biggest complaint I guess was them not spending enough time on this.
I look forward to reading more of your reviews.
g.
It is precisely because of the great potential of this film that I criticize it quite harshly. To be fair, I was tired when I watched it, haha. But I never let myself nod off in movies because I love movies, and the thought of falling asleep is just simply sacrilegious. My most recent memory of myself needing toothpicks to prop up my eyelids during a movie is when I saw The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. That was pure will that I managed to stay up and I was actually wide awake halfway through. You know why? Because the story AND the characters were electrifying.
With Inception, I did the unthinkable and let my eyes rest from time to time. I mean, why shouldn’t I when I can just hear DiCaprio narrate the movie for me?
To Nolan’s credit, I loved Memento and The Dark Knight. With Inception, he got carried away. It could’ve been great, and I really wanted to like it, but he left me feeling indifferent to the characters and their plight.
I was thinking today as I was holding my two week old grandchild while she slept that Eternal Sunshine was a marvel and I was going to go home and google Charlie Kaufman so I did and here I am. I couldn’t agree more. Inception was insulting and without soul. Pretty though.
Lois: Welcome! Inception should’ve been a good film, but it lacked the intimate focus that ES has. I also don’t like that it’s pretty. I think it’s pretty in a gimmicky way, just to draw people who are easily drawn to obvious, surface beauty (not to mention those who are vulnerable to PR marketing campaigns and herd mentality). The result is a film that is overdeveloped and lacks authenticity and emotion. I applaud the concept behind it but, as a story, on the basic level (like, really, Screenwriting 101), it fails to engage. It visually engages, it intellectually engages, but as a story it’s a mess.
Hey, great, smart post, I really appreciate your take on the film, but it’s a little harsh to say that those of us who liked ‘Inception’ are “easily drawn to obvious, surface beauty (not to mention those who are vulnerable to PR marketing campaigns and herd mentality).”
Can’t it just be different takes on the film? Does it have to be that I am actually mentally inferior? I think there’s a little more nuance involved than that.
Welcome Scott! Thanks. I guess that statement WAS oversimplifying Inception fans. I didn’t intend to paint everyone who liked it in broad strokes, so that came out wrong, I apologize. I do still think that there’s a “Hollywood mentality.” Producers and studios use their power to influence directors and screenwriters whose films wouldn’t get made otherwise to cater to an oversimplified “Hollywood audience.” They analyze the stats (what makes a film a blockbuster hit) and try to reproduce successes.
That results, most of the time, to formulaic, cliche filmmaking and, some of the time, to decent, even great, films that are compromised.
I can’t claim for sure whether Nolan compromised his film, but it seems like it. It was a gorgeous film and a gorgeous idea that was poorly executed. It also could’ve been because the idea was too big that he got caught up in making it great that he forgot the details. Whatever the case, this movie wasn’t what I expected from this intelligent filmmaker. But he can take it as a compliment as I’m really harsh to filmmakers I love who blow their subsequent movie(s) (ahem, M. Night Shyamalan).
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agree. i do wish the wife story was at the forefront and not as much time was wasted with the cillian murphy bit.
and i also thought of eternal sunshine as evidence that you can be clever and smart and not sacrifice heart.
nice review.
Thank you! I like you. I like you very much. Because not many people are like us — disliking a phenomenon like Inception out in the open. I see a True Blood-like series about our tale of bravery in the future. I think the Cillian Murphy bit would’ve worked but we were rushed into his story; meanwhile too much time was wasted explaining how fancy you can get with your architected dream world. It’s all very pretty and all but don’t sacrifice good characterization for nifty special effects. And I also like you because for once you’re not my mom, a friend or a colleague, no offense Flynn.
The main issue was the sheer amount of exposition, probably put in after the marketing team noticed the slack jaws of the focus group during the first screening. The result is that what should be a plot filled with mystery, with clues strewn about in their memories as to what the real cause of everything is and the whole “is this a dream, is this not a dream.” thing is now simply an entertaining action flick.
If anything it should have borrowed more cues from that ‘serious Jim Carry movie’. No, not that one, the other one. Yeah the one with the Frodo and stuff.
Haha! It never crossed my mind that a movie could be ruined by test screenings but, thanks to you, it all makes sense now. It’s funny how movie critics say that Inception gives the audience credit by making them think, but it didn’t cross their minds that it’s anything but. It’s a slightly condescending film considering that it has a cool concept that could’ve worked if only Nolan trusted his audience and handled his plot more delicately and subtly.
I love LOTR, but you should give “that serious Jim Carrey movie” a chance. Knowing you, you probably won’t like it because it’s a sci-fi romantic dramedy (if we have to reduce it to a hybrid genre) but even if it’s not your cup of tea, it deserves to be viewed for the great artistic choices it makes. Unlike that big-budget overrated film about dreams which I never would’ve watched if it weren’t for Leonardo DiCaprio and Christopher Nolan…
Frodo was a reference to the fact Elijah wood was in it, or was it spider man? I always get those two confused. I’ve seen it though and very much enjoyed it.
Ah, Spider Man (Toby Maguire) then, but I could understand the confusion. They’re both baby-faced.