Her Name Was Mal

I saw Inception a couple of weeks ago. This was supposed to be a suspenseful film, and it was for a while. I thought it was a good movie, but it was far from great. I thought it was too easy to figure out. There were, I feel, far too many clues. Not too deep into the film, I thought I had figured out the hook; nothing I saw from that point forward told me otherwise. When I figure out a movie’s so-called twist early, my feelings about it are dependent upon the execution of the film’s other aspects. Essentially, it comes down to the quality of acting, how well the secondary stories are portrayed, and how much the movie makes me think and emote.

As I said earlier, Inception was too easy. The first clue was Cobb’s wife. If we are to believe in Cobb’s story, we must accept that he is trying to rescue the beautiful, wonderful love of his life. Her name was Mal. When a character in a thinking movie has an odd name, I can’t help but to try and think of what relevance that name has to the scope and plot of the film. It is a novelist’s technique. Admittedly, I did not know the spelling of the character’s name until I was back in my apartment looking at IMDB. Still, I heard her name and knew of only three ways it could have been spelled. Other than the actual spelling, Mal, her name could have been Mol or Moll. The former reminds me of the root –mal, as in malice. This was not hard to consider since she did her best to sabotage one of Inception’s first scenes. The other two possible spellings made me think of mole—and she certainly seemed like one in each of her scenes—and moll. Moll, as I remember from high school, is old British slang for a female criminal or prostitute. There was no way I could see this character as good. She was not going to be a damsel in distress whose rescue, return, and redemption I would eagerly anticipate. Not her. Not in that movie. Not with a name like Mal.

Then we have the other woman featured prominently throughout the film. When Cobb sought a young architect to help construct the dream world for the scheme on Fischer, he went to see his father-in-law, Miles, in France. Miles introduced his son-in-law to a bright, young student of his, who just happened to be an English-speaking American. Miles obviously had to be teaching at the American University in Paris, but I found this to be a little too contrived. Asking me to buy that was asking too much of me. Then we learned her name is Ariadne. They should have just named her Clue. Under normal circumstances I may or may not have remembered Ariadne from Greek mythology, but I just read the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series early this year. I do remember Ariadne.

There were other, smaller clues along the way that reinforced what I felt I already knew. Cobb once warned Ariadne not to let him touch her totem—the feel and weight of each totem should be private to its owner. The only totem we ever see with Cobb, however, is the one he said was Mal’s. We never see Cobb’s own totem. We never see any evidence that Cobb ever had one of his own; therefore, Inception provides zero evidence Cobb was capable of knowing if he was in the “real” world.

I’m sure Miles’ appearance to greet Cobb in Los Angeles is a big thing on the internet. It should be. Cobb’s team had little advance notice as to the departure of the flight containing the elder Fischer’s body. In order for Miles to know to be at LAX, he would need to have spoken to Cobb. Their meeting in Paris suggested, though, that the two had very little contact with each other. Furthermore, how would Cobb have known Miles would be in Los Angeles? He could not have flown there from Paris—he would have had even less advance notice than Miles; and if he had to fly into LAX, there would have been no real reason for him to show up there except that it makes for a nice moment on screen—so he had to already be in Los Angeles. What was he doing in Los Angeles? All of it is too contrived to be believed.

What was everyone’s motivation to help Cobb with the inception? We know Ariadne was intrigued by the opportunity to construct a world of her own design. What about everyone else? The only discussion of money was Cobb’s statement that he was giving up his share. There had been no previous discussion of payment by Saito. This was a giant red flag for me. I can’t recall a single caper type of movie that left out the scene when the terms of payment were discussed. We always know how much the thief is getting paid to commit the crime. Not in Inception. Furthermore, Saito had offered Cobb a chance to return to America as a free man. What more payment would he have needed; what leverage did he have to ask for more. Even if money had been negotiated for his team—whatever they earned should probably have come directly out of Cobb’s pocket, not Saito’s—why would Cobb get a share? That did not make sense to me. It came across as a line that was thrown in just to show that they weren’t working for free. That reeked to me.

In order to maintain suspension, Inception required me to believe in too many things that came off as contrived attempts at cleverness. I liked it, but came nowhere close to loving it. It probably would have worked better for me as a novel because much more introspective detail would have been required. In the end, that’s what Inception lacked for me.

The film did not lack superb acting. I thought all of the performances were outstanding. Inception required a great deal from the cast, and they all pulled their share of the weight. I found Ellen Page’s portrayal of Ariadne to be excellent. Among the cast, Page stood out to me. Playing her role well was pivotal to the movie’s success. Ariadne’s one-on-one dialogues with Cobb were the most important moments of Inception. She was the one who was trying to keep him focused. At its heart, Inception is about Cobb’s focus and mind. Cobb’s success or failure was largely dependent upon Ariadne’s ability to keep his mind focused. Even though I think she looks too young to actually be Ariadne, Ellen Page owned that role.

In the end, though, Inception is Cobb’s story. It is all his story. There were no true secondary stories because everything tied directly to Cobb; everything was about Cobb. There was no rooting for anyone else because there was no one else but Cobb. Every other character was but a tool to teach us more about the protagonist. The film tries to get the audience to care about the man along with his wife and kids. But I found Cobb too single-minded and self-absorbed to care about him. I didn’t care about faceless, voiceless kids. And I did not care about his relationship with Mal. I had nothing to root for in Inception, and that was its ultimate downfall in my eyes. It was 130 minutes of me not caring.