Don't read this, Kevin! Not for two days!
I thought it was great. Well structured, laid out, allusions galore.
However, it wasn't earth-shattering, not in the same way that a true masterpiece-of-a-mind-fuck should be. It was a powerfully original concept and story, masterfully woven, but still just that: a story. Nice for a couple hours discussion afterwards with friends over coffee, but mostly about the surface level story, about the weaving of the tale. No actual deep, philosophic, teleologic, psychological or ontonlogical meanings really there to be uncovered, explored, and disseminated, which I think is what Christopher Nolan was going for.
It's sort of a trap, I think, to try to create these huge, supposedly deep introspective works while rocking the budget of a huge Hollywood blockbuster. It's almost as if Nolan was trying to make a thoughtful arthouse film on a James Cameron budget. I suppose it's a matter of trying to please all the people, but he seems to thumb his nose at that sentiment while at the same time closetedly trying to embrace it in the least conspicuous way he can. Guys like Kubrick and Lynch mastered the art of blowing minds by proxy, not by hitting you over the head with stunning images, and forcing the viewer with lots of mental work, but by shattering your illusions of what cinema is, not what it can be.
Inception is a great story; original, gripping, visually arresting more often than not, but not that much more than that.
