Inception vs Inland Empire

Prior to its release (and perhaps from now on), I heard Inception described as mind-bending and confusing. Now that I’ve seen it, I can tell you that it’s complicated, full of puzzles and mysteries and levels to comprehend, mull over, solve and discuss later. But really all Inception is doing is asking for is your participation. It engages you from more than one angle, and requires your attention. Are you someone who likes to text during movies? Find yourself needing to get up again and again for refills? Just plain old stupid? Maybe sit this one out. The rest of us won’t even know you’re gone.

Leonardo DiCaprio is Cobb, a slick genius who runs a freelance criminal organization specializing in extracting ideas from the dreams of powerful people. As the movie begins, his team (including Lukas Haas and Joseph Gordon Levitt) is auditioning for the mysterious Saito (Ken Watanabe). It goes well, but only to a point; Saito wants Cobb to put together a better team, for a tougher job. This time, instead of taking an idea, he wants them to leave one. He wants the heir of a powerful corporation (Cillian Murphy), to break up his business and branch out on his own, leaving a greater market share for Saito’s company. In return for this “inception”, which is near impossible, Saito guarantees Cobb’s return to the United States and his estranged children.

Cobb puts together his team: Arthur (Levitt), Ariadne (Ellen Page), Eames (Tom Hardy), and Yusuf (Dileep Rao). Each member of the team has a special skill and task: Ariadne is the architect responsible for designing the world of each dream, Eames is a forger and master of disguise, etc. They’re kind of like the Ocean’s 11 (12, 13) guys, only even smarter and more daring. As fun as I find the Ocean’s movies, nothing in them has left me as mesmerized as the events in Inception. “Edge-of-your-seat” is a cliché. So is “jaw-dropping”. For much of Inception’s near three hours, I was barely seated. For the last half hour? Jaw was dropped. As the inception plot unfolds, Cobb’s team digs deeper and deeper into Murphy’s subconscious, and their own, dreams within dreams within dreams within dreams (spoiler: within dreams). Each is in a new location, complete with new weather, architecture and costumes. About the costumes: they are good. Inception has the sharpest dressed cast since the glory days of the Hollywood studio system. Inception doesn’t take place in a particular time or place (I assume it’s the future, although just as much evidence exists for the present day, or even the past), so by dressing everyone up, there’s no distraction from any kind of gear or paraphernalia. The costumes in The Matrix looked like the future in 1999; now they look like nothing besides 1999.

Inception is the newest movie from Christopher Nolan. He’s made seven feature-length films in just over a decade. If not for my inability to see The Dark Knight as anything but perfect, I’d declare Inception his best yet. It has an obvious resemblance to various heist movies (though it’s better than any I recall), and to head-trips like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Dark City and 12 Monkeys. Inception works as an action movie, with brutal fights and shoot-outs, but also contains an hypnotic sequence with Arthur trapped hovering mid-air, forced to “swim” his way through a spinning hotel. And for every scene of tough-guy bravado, there’s another of emotional heft, typically featuring Marion Cotillard, as Cobb’s wife, popping up in his subconscious as alternately deranged and beatific. All of the performances are clever and engrossing, but none more than DiCaprio, who is having a hell of a year, and Cotillard, who also gets a nifty little shout-out on the film’s soundtrack.

Of course, no one does mind-bending movies better than David Lynch. There’s something to examine, to rewatch, to discuss, in each of his movies. The difference with Lynch’s movies, like Mulholland Dr. and Blue Velvet, is that the surreal moments happen organically, with the viewer only as witness. Inception has rules and methods, laid out clearly by the characters. You might be confused or lose track of details, but those details are present. In Lynch’s world, details are sometimes missing, or presented out of order. Sometimes there’s a dream within a dream, but we aren’t clued in. The most recent example is the thrilling, frustrating Inland Empire.

Laura Dern plays an actress hired to be in a movie that is a remake of a movie that was never finished because of some incident or curse during the production. We see her in her real life, in the world of the movie she’s making, in the world of the failed production and in each from the other direction, as if each world is a fictional representation of the previous, when the opposite had been true a scene before. There’s also a family of rabbit-headed actors on a stage, and episodes that may or may not take place in dreams. Or the past. Or the future. It’s around three hours long, but took about four to watch because my friends and I stopped it periodically to make sure we all understood what exactly was going on. We didn’t, but Inland Empire, despite being infuriatingly vague, is addictively watchable. You might not understand what’s coming next, but you’ll be eager to see it anyway. The foremost reason for this is Laura Dern, who gives the (three) best performance(s) of her career in Inland Empire. Dern’s physicality is played up in extreme ways throughout the movie. At times she’s poised and graceful, an obvious choice for portraying an in-demand Hollywood actress; in others, her features are exaggerated by lighting and shadows, as well as Dern’s Botox-free silent-film-style mugging. Few actors could understand Inland Empire’s complicated script (on which Dern collaborated with Lynch), and even fewer would allow themselves to be shot with their own face superimposed upon itself, enlarged to grotesque, freakish proportions, running towards the camera. Did I mention that Inland Empire is hilariously, ludicrously terrifying? And terrifyingly, hilariously, ludicrous? And ludicrously, terrifyingly, hilarious? I can’t promise that it’s as exciting as Inception, or that it looks as good, or that it’ll make as much sense later when you’re drawing restaurant-napkin diagrams with your friends. Hey, not much is.

Inception: A

Inland Empire: A-