We viewed Inception last Thursday night.
We came away having been entertained for a couple of hours.
It is no secret that since the advent of home theatres, the
cinemas are finding it harder to attract an audience and our
experience on Thursday night reinforced this for us as
we looked about the enormous cinema that was almost empty.
Nolan's brilliant Memento (2000) has always been a hard act to
follow for this talented and creative director.
When I think of Nolan's films, two things instantly come to
mind. One is the use of non-linear story structure which is
brought about through the style of editing. Nolan & Dody Dorn's
incredible editing in Memento lets us see the world through the
mind of the character of Leonard who suffers short-term memory
loss. In Insomnia (2002), their editing puts us behind the eyelids
of the detective played by Al Pacino. Nolan's employment in more
recent years of Aussie editor Lee Smith continues the trend,
Smith having been an editor on the last two Batman films and
also on Inception. The second thing that comes to mind with
regards the Nolan films I have seen is that the main character
always has some flaw. It was true in Memento, in Insomnia, in
Nolan's depiction of Bruce Wayne in Batman and again the
character played by DiCaprio in Inception. It seems
intentionally, these aren't characters that we would want to be.
We stand aloof from them and see them for what they are.
For me personally, rather than come way from Inception with
the view of it being fresh and original, I came away feeling
that I have been on this "through the looking glass"
movie experience before. As I watched the movie, I could
not help but feel I have had this dream before, when I watched
The Matrix (1999), The Machinist (2004), Brainstorm (1993),
Tron (1982), Fantastic Voyage (1966) and so on, all who have
handled the genre with varying degrees of success or otherwise.
Out of all these, I would have to single out The Matrix
as it took the genre to a new level both technically and
creatively. Like Nolan's own Memento, the Wachowski brother's
Matrix is one hard act to follow.
With such enormous amount of effort these days put into sound
special effects, it sometimes seems to be at the loss of clarity
of dialog. Ken Watanbe's accent is difficult enough and his
lines became a mumble at times. Pete Postlethwaite's last dying
words left us coming out of the theatre asking each other
"What did he say he was disappointed about?".
On a movie trivia note, one thing that did leave us personally
amused was the depiction of the city of Mombasa. The director
makes the assumption that for the vast majority of western
viewers, Mombasa is some far away place, like Timbuktu, that
they have unlikely to have seen. Both of us having been in and
driven all around Mombasa, I can safely inform readers who
have got this far that it looks absolutely nothing like the
place depicted in Inception.
It phased us significantly that
it brought attention to itself and we awoke out of the movie
magic suspension of reality dream for a while.
Anyway,
for some dreamers, what the place really looks like will
matter not and hopefully they will go away having been
entertained.
good on ya hope you enjoy the movie 
