I was very curious about this film, as the kinds of people whose opinions I respect seemed to be divided between those who really, really loved it and those who thought it was utter crap; the kind of thing that happened with Avatar (which, for the record, I went in expecting to hate but ended up quite liking).

I found it enjoyable overall, but perhaps it would have been more so had there been less buzz around it, as I may have expected too much (either epic win or epic fail, when really, it was just pleasant). I found its supposed complexity overstated, as the structure of nested realities/multiple dreamscapes was not THAT mindblowing; it’s cool, but not more.

The worst part for me was that for a film so focussed on psychic “depth”, there was little of it to be found in the characters. I could not empathize with any of them, as I didn’t really get a chance to really know them, or invest emotionally in them. The whole plot zoomed by like under dream-logic in itself, which might be some teenagers’ idea of a filmic “twist” (no doubt some will interpret the final gimmick as such, though that interpretation hardly coheres given the film’s own diegetic logic), yet I watch films to feel something. Maybe I would have thought otherwise had I seen Inception as a teen; high concept was enough to thrill me back then, but not anymore.

Don’t get me wrong, there were several strong scenes where the editing, music & acting helped evoke some emotions, but even these rang hollow within the story arc as a whole, making them seem more like gestures of plot than an actual progression of one.

I want to share one particular anecdote from the theater though: after the parallel-edited scene between Youssef’s tumbling van & Arthur’s fight in the hotel, a guy in the audience let out an audible sound of impressed relief, and several people then started clapping (this sometimes happens in Lebanese cinemas, but usually at the end, or after a major climax). I found this especially poignant given the structural/psychic connections between the two realities on screen; the audience’s affective response metaphorically meshed our reality with the scaffolding of  realities on screen. This lucky metaphor became even more ‘blatant’ when, after the clapping subsided, Youssef turns around and asks his companions: “Did you see that?”, seemingly echoing the audience’s own impressed feelings with the situation.

I also really liked the score. lol