mariness

So. Some thoughts typed out over the past few days after I finally managed to see the entire film.

( Spoilery: cut for those of you that haven't seen it yet. Also, long. )

(Note: I'm starting this with a spoiler-free discussion; possible spoilers for Inception, The Prestige and The Dark Knight may appear in the comments.)

Christopher Nolan is rapidly turning into one of those directors that I admire, but don't and can't love – primarily because I don't and seemingly can't get into his lead characters, and often find myself not even liking his side characters.

Take Prestige where absolutely everyone, with the possible exception of the little girl, was deeply, terribly unlikeable. (And I didn't even like her either, but she at least wasn't as blatantly amoral and cruel and just, well, uncharismatic as everyone else.) This even included Michael Caine, dropping his usual, "Hi. I'm Michael Caine, your trustworthy font of wisdom for this film" role (although he's since picked that back up in other Christopher Nolan films, including Inception.) It made it terribly, terribly difficult for me to care overmuch about the plot when I was spending my time rather hoping that both leads, and their romantic interests, and their various mentors, would all get blown up in a magic trick. (This is all apart from the "oh give me a break" of the last few seconds.) Well. I did like the little birds, but you know, THEY WERE THE ONES GETTING KILLED in the magic trick, which, sniffle. It goes far further than not having anyone to identify with onscreen – I can live with that (see, Northanger Abbey); if I don't like anyone in the film enough to care if they survive, I'm not going to get into it. I admired the film and the first part of the ending (not the last few seconds), but I couldn't like the film, or even enjoy it very much. Whereas I immediately fell in love with the equally if not considerably more implausible magician film that came out at about the same time, The Illusionist, since that offered me a fairly likeable female lead and an entirely likeable, thoroughly sympathetic supporting character in Paul Giamatti's police inspector, to accompany a rather mysterious, but, you know, generally sympathetic character for the male lead. Sure, I can quibble about it (a lot of it) but, I wanted the inspector to figure things out, so I was involved. There. Into the film.

I felt the almost the same way about Batman Begins, although I certainly didn't hate the characters as much. Liked the great starting plot (ludicrous and irritating ending plot), liked the action sequences (HOWEVER RIDICULOUS THE END SETUP) couldn't get into any of the characters (although to be fair part of this was sheer irritation at Katie Holmes which probably no director could have overcome). Almost, because, well, Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine gave me someone to like, and Christian Bale was almost likeable. Sometimes. Maybe. Plus, you know, he's Batman, so, coolness factor. So, ok film.

But the only Christopher Nolan film I've been able to admire AND like has been The Dark Knight, which did include three (gasp, three!) likeable characters (Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine and whoever was playing Commissioner Gordon), one generally sympathetic character (Harvey Dent) and one utterly compelling, compulsively watchable character – Heath Ledger's Joker. And in this film, the greyness and questionable morals of the lead character worked, because the film was actively questioning this greyness, these issues. (Those of you who have seen Inception and The Prestige can probably guess where I'm going with this.) But still. Three characters that I could cheer for, that I worried over, and four that I wanted to know the fates of.

But otherwise, I'm left chilled by Christopher Nolan films – and their characters.

And I don't think it's the actors, either. Admittedly, I'm drawing a blank on coming up with any characters that Christian Bale has played that I've liked…hmm….hmmm…..(pause to check IMDB) Oh right! Loved the poor kid in Henry V, and he at least started out likeable in Little Women. So he can play likeable, but in his grown-up career, he's tended to focus on playing unsympathetic dudes who are fundamentally jerks (yes, this is includes Bruce Wayne). But Hugh Jackman can be absolutely charming, compelling and likeable, even when given a absolutely crappy script, as can David Bowie, as can Leonardo DiCaprio (at times), as can Cillian Murphy when playing in anything other than a Christopher Nolan film. So I have to go with the explanation that it's not the actors, it's Christopher Nolan – quite possibly ordering them to turn the charm off.

So, Inception.

Just as with The Prestige, we have another intellectually engaging, emotionally uninteresting, and potentially repelling, film, and yet another unsympathetic and unlikeable lead. (The "reveal" at the end does not help.) The film does a little better than The Prestige in some respects, in that Michael Caine is back to being likeable and genial again, yay, and Tom Hardy gives us an immediately likeable and charming scoundrel of a forger. (Inexplicably, Ellen Page is not hooked up with him.) And….that pretty much ends the list of likeable characters (although Ellen Page tries hard, and also tries to add a certain moral voice to a film that is not, for the most part, particularly interested in morality.) Everybody else is blah or unlikeable. Pete Postelwaite is blah and unlikeable. And since Michael Caine and Tom Hardy are not in the film much (they're about third rate supporting characters) it's not enough to draw us in emotionally to the film. And alas, nobody (not even Pete Postelwaite!) but nobody gives us the riveting, utterly compelling of Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight. We are not just stuck for characters we care about, we are stuck (except for Tom Hardy) for characters who are interesting to watch.

So, you ask, what about the plot? The ideas?

As you've probably heard by now, Inception deals with a group of thieves who can walk into the dreams of others and steal things – specifically, ideas, secrets and the like. I have sometimes been shocked by a sudden detail in a dream showing me that my subconscious has been paying more attention than I have to certain matters, so I can buy this, although I would have thought that at least some effort would need to into interpreting a dream to understand the secret, but, whatever. Let us not dwell on the psychological issues of this. Anyway, to steal ideas, the thieves kidnap their targets, including the always tough Ken Watanabe, put them under sedation, and then go dream hopping through surprisingly sensible and realistic looking dreams, presumably to save on production costs, if later somewhat waved away by the idea that the kidnap victims/targets are actually in carefully constructed dreams made by dream architects (talk about, seriously, my dream career) and presumably the thieves are looking for a relatively comfortable, physically reassuring environment to do all their thieving in, which makes some of their later decisions improbable, but, I digress. (One scene does suggest the intriguing possibility of manufacturing dreams with impossible landscapes, but this sadly ends up leading nowhere.)

This is all fascinating, marvelous, twisted. So, what exactly are these dream stealers going to be using this amazingly advanced kidnapping/dream theft/building technology to do? 1) Steal some engineering plans, for some unknown and never explained reason (why they don't just hire the Leverage team to go steal the plans, I do not know) and 2) try to convince this billionaire billionaire dude that he should break up his company. Why? Well, somebody briefly mentions, you know, energy monopolies and the like, but he's not exactly a trustworthy source, and the point is completely dropped. Oh, and yeah, Leo, who, and this is important, we don't like, trust, or care about much, wants to go see his kid again, so, um, on with the billionaire kidnapping.

( And this is where things get ridiculous AND VERY SPOILERY FOR THE ENDING )