DISSECTION: The Debate About Film Debate

[NOTE: This is not actually a review of Inception. This is a discussion about the tendencies in negative reviews of the movie. For the record, I liked the movie a lot; a bit overlong at times, but still a great piece of work from Christopher Nolan.]

Film criticism is nothing if not a contentious arena. Any movie, no matter how beloved, will have not only some negative reviews, but spirited debate about the merit of said reviews. As well-received as Toy Story 3 was, there was someone who hated it. And many who hated that guy.

Inception seems no different. Though the general consensus on the film is less overwhelmingly positive than Toy Story 3 or Nolan’s last film, The Dark Knight, it’s still pulling about an 85% on Rotten Tomatoes, so the feeling is still very strongly thumbs up. However, the hype surrounding Inception (partly due to the success of Dark Knight, partly due to the lack of big hits this summer), as well as the plot of the film itself, has placed it in the unenviable position of being the big “opinion” movie of the season, if not the year.

This is a movie that will be debated for a while, even internally; some otherwise positive reviews have faulted the pacing, or the handling of the dreams, or the plot. And some of the negative reviews have been brutal. Inception is a movie that, if you didn’t like it, you REALLY didn’t like. But the cottage industry of late is criticizing Inception‘s criticisms. That’s right; we’re going into the floating hotel here. Layers deep.

No, LAYERS. Layers.

I took a stroll through Rotten Tomatoes, reading through some of the negative reviews. Some of the critiques are well-written, and examine flaws in the film with which I can agree. But in reading more of them, I find a couple of major trends:

(Willful?) Ignorance

Also known as Patton Oswalt’s “Arch Campbell Syndrome,” some of the most heated critiques of Inception are based not simply in confusion about the film, but anger that the film was complex to begin with. Examples:

Sorry, I happen to resent it when a summer blockbuster feels more like an SAT test than relaxing escapist entertainment. – Kam Williams

I figured out rather quickly that watching Inception gave me a headache. – Diana Saenger

First it’s hard to connect with a movie when it tries so hard to “fool” you or to keep you guessing; is this a dream, is it not, is it a dream within a dream? Who cares? Just commit to something and get on with it. – Michelle Alexandria

Call me stupid. Nolan lost me in the first act. – Gary Wolcott

I want to be sympathetic to anyone who feels like maybe the movie was too ambitious and advanced, but a lot of these kinds of critiques sound like “HULK ANGRY ABOUT COMPLICATED PLOT! HULK SMASH THEATRE!”

HULK ENJOY CRITICISM OF ANDRE BAZIN!

The reviews seem less like, “The movie was confusing,” and more like, “The movie confused me,” and that’s a big difference. I saw Inception with my wife and friends, and we were all fine with it. Even if there were some points that warranted a second viewing (which I will gladly do), the basic throughline could be followed. So, when I see a reviewer say something like, “Meh, I checked out after 30 minutes,” I don’t know what to do with him/her.

I wonder how many of these folks lamented at some point that mainstream movies are getting stupider and worse. How many times they wished a film would come along that didn’t treat the viewer like an idiot. Then a movie like Inception is made, and we get “Ow, brain hurt. Turn off movie.”

Too Cool for School

The smaller, but somehow more annoying, trend is the opposite of the first: the idea that the film is idiotic, as are you for thinking it’s smart.

“Rule of thumb: if a movie uses the word ‘deep’ as much as this one does, it probably isn’t,” states Walter Chaw of FilmFreakCentral.net. I think if a review uses “idioglossia,” it’s not either.

It’s alright if you believe the film isn’t as smart as it thinks; if you followed everything, good on you. But there’s an undercurrent here of critics thinking all Inception was was a joke on the audience; that Nolan wrote a movie simply to fuck with the plebians, and that these guys are out to warn us. Here’s the problem; by insinuating that Nolan is a pretentious ass, these guys just seem more pretentious and assy (Sarah Palin said that word was OK). I’ve seen complaints lamenting that Nolan strayed too far from Jungian psychology in his use of dreams. Folks, it’s a fucking heist movie set inside the brain. Never was the phrase “Jungian” even used or implied.

Our friend Armond White (of the Toy Story trashing earlier) predictably stomps on Inception, noting that Nolan is a “born con artist.” OK…

Who else could rook Warner Bros. out of $200 million to make Hollywood’s most elaborate video-game movie and slap on a puzzling, unappealing title?

Mindfuck—Nolan’s specialty—is a perfect conman’s scheme that involves undermining a mark’s confidence.

Oh, I get it: because he dared to make a movie that people might see as smart, Nolan successfully grifted Hollywood and the movie-going public. It’s all a con job. Inception isn’t a movie, made by a studio to offer entertainment to the public in a unique way; it’s a pyramid scheme. It’s a shitty pyramid scheme, though, since it cost about $200 million to make to begin with. It’s easier to just invent a diet powder or a foreclosure-flipping system, and sell them for $50 a pop.

Guys like Armond White annoy me. It’s not enough that they don’t like the movie; they have to declare that anyone who does just got seduced by obvious trickery (except them, of course). It’s like the recent Tea Party hysteria; all of Obama’s policies are just a back door to socialism! You know, like offering health care and trying to help the unemployed. All of it is a con! Watch yourselves! 9/11 was an inside job!

Yes, we do: Toy Story 3 was obviously perpetrated by the Pentagon.

Look, everyone is entitled to their opinion, and criticizing the critics is a slippery slope, since that means, to some extent, you’re just piling on. And I don’t know that there’s a simple answer like, “We need an objective scale.” Something like that is fraught with all sorts of problems. But the debate is necessary. And I think, just as critics have a right to call an otherwise-beloved film crap, we have a right to question their criticism. If someone like Michelle Alexandria can post her complaints about the film, she should be able to accept (or at least ignore) the counter-arguments presented instead of getting huffy about it, as she does with her Inception review:

How many times do I have to say I UNDERSTOOD everything in this DUMB movie! It’s not as complex as you all try to make it out to be. I JUST DIDN’T CARE! This is my last post on this topic.

OK.

I don’t know what all I did or didn’t accomplish here, but there’s a difference between honest criticism and “Ugh, that’s stupid. Eew.” And I’m probably guilty of some of that here. All I know is, if you criticize anything, beloved or not, your reasoning should be better than either “It’s dumb” or “You’re dumb if you liked it.”

[BTW – Armond White liked Confessions of a Shopaholic. “Hogan’s enchanted (not screwball) point of view would be recognized as a major vision if gay-themed movies weren’t subject to the mainstream’s pathological, intrinsically homophobic clichés (whether Brokeback Mountain or Milk).” Right.]