Some follow-up thoughts on INCEPTION (Super Spoiler edition--BEWARE!)

So I know it's kind of early to post these as most people haven't even seen the film yet, but here are some things I've been chewing on:

• One of my criticisms of the film is the lack of "dreaminess" (for lack of a better word) to the dream sequences. Everything is crisp, structured and rather straightforward which, I don't know about you, is not what my dreams are like. Even when the impossible happens (a cityscape folding itself in half, a literal "stairway to nowhere") it happens with a mathematical precision that seems at odds with the subject of dreams and the subconscious. We even get a breakdown of exactly how the time differences between dream levels work. This seems a bit fussy and anal retentive to me.

  But a comment from Justin Chang's review in Variety got me thinking. He compares Nolan's filmmaking to dreaming, calling it "an activity devoted to constructing a simulacrum of reality, intended to seduce us, mess with our heads and leave a lasting impression." So maybe the fact that Nolan structures his dream sequences like James Bond action sequences as opposed to David Lynchian nightmares is intentional. Maybe he wants the dreams to look similar to the "reality" of the movie so that we have difficulty distinguishing between the two. A giant white rabbit or a talking scarecrow would instantly clue us in that we're in dream territory when the trick is to have us there without us realizing it, just like in our own dreams.

  On the other hand, maybe Nolan just lacks the imagination and loopiness required to delve into this territory. As A.O Scott puts it in his Times review, "Nolan’s idea of the mind is too literal, too logical, too rule-bound to allow the full measure of madness — the risk of real confusion, of delirium, of ineffable ambiguity — that this subject requires." Hmm...is it best to just think of the whole enterprise as a classic heist movie with some heady sci-fi trappings. Who knows?