A favourite ploy of film critics out to trash a movie is to attack those who like it, usually by calling them feeble-minded, brainless, immature, and so on. Then there are those for whom no film is ever quite good enough, even though they’re fundamentally incapable of writing or conceiving or making one themselves. A third category locks itself into a quaint past, holding up for comparison some cinematic relic that is wholly unwatchable today and finding the film under review wanting. And there’s the fourth, a critic or reviewer who just has to hate the film only because so many people love it — it’s so chic, so über-cool to hate it; this is the kind of reviewer who out-Kaels Pauline.
Poor Christopher Nolan. He gets all four types for Inception. There’s the savaging by Rex Reed in the New York Observer — but then Mr Reed seems particularly to hate Mr Nolan and trashes all his work. Then we have someone called Nick Pinkerton at the Village Voice. Not only does he get his facts wrong (Nolan is described as an “Anglo-American action director”), but also prefers Disney’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice to Inception. Besides, never trust a writer who uses exclamation marks. Or one who uses words without any real understanding of their meaning. Whatever else one might accuse Mr Nolan of being, maladroit he is not. The review is maladroit, not the film.
While Kurt Loder at MTV.com (does anyone take that seriously?) is somewhat gentler in his appreciation of Mr Nolan’s work, he couldn’t ‘parse’ it. Too bad for him.
AO Scott at the New York Times and David Edelstein at New York Magazine seem to have gone to the movies together. Or perhaps they shared a beer after or took a stroll around Gramercy Park and discussed this one. Their reviews are uncannily similar.
Scott: "Mr. Nolan’s idea of the mind is too literal, too logical, too rule-bound to allow the full measure of madness …"
Edelstein: "Nolan is too literal-minded, too caught up in ticktock logistics, to make a great, untethered dream movie."
Edelstein uses exclamation marks too (at least six), and to reinforce his view that the film is “clunky and confusing” and nothing like 2001: A Space Odyssey, also throws in this little jewel: "Slap! Wake up, people! Shalalala! Slap!"
So much for being even passably literate.
Article comments
1 - Johan
While I don't agree with any critic that's gnashing his teeth over the hoopla this film's generating, it's certainly not all the things this review claims. It is a high concept film, formulaic in its near flawless execution. I cannot knock it for the pretty package that it is--I like my products well packaged--but I will say that I agree that in its rigidity (for mass-consumption), the concept loses the flexibility for madness, insanity, unpredictable free thought. It establishes rules and a hierarchy, ordered to make the story easier to consume -- this, however, is not a complaint as it allows for Nolan to convince Hollywood to explore dreams, a risky proposition in an industry averse to risk. For a concept film, it's top notch For art? Probably depends on how much time the viewer had previously spent contemplating the subjects at hand.
2 - sumi lee
walked out.
3 - Sexy
Oh my don't you just hit it on the head! I'm sure everyone will like that!