Inception (2009)

Siegfried Kracauer, in his 1941 review of Dumbo, complains that "the miracle does not result simply from the fact that the film is a cartoon film, but originates in the psychological effect of a 'magic feather.'"  He notes that Disney's older cartoons paid no heed to reality and created their own physical laws.  Minnie Mouse can turn her coat into a parachute without any explanation of why that would work.  Kracauer asks: "Is the cartoonist dependent on fabulous princes, wizards, and magic feathers in order to defy the laws of nature?"

What strikes me about Inception is that a huge amount of the dialogue consists of someone telling you what the rules are.  It creates a world with a million miracles and has a magic feather for every single one of them.  

For some of Nolan's films, this actually works in their favor.  Most them use crosscutting liberally, but the events they cut between are not always happening simultaneously and don't always take the same amount of time.  It happens in Inception, Interstellar, Tenet, and Dunkirk.  But in Dunkirk it's a little more noticeable, a little more off-putting when we find ourselves dislodged in time.  The other films all have some literal explanation for why time should be strange.  But in Dunkirk, the reasons for it are entirely thematic and emotional, and not made as obvious.  

Kracauer had a problem with Dumbo's magic feather because he believed that the value of cartoons was in their potential to diverge from "conventional reality," not "to draw a reality which can be better photographed."  He also found it distasteful that Dumbo doesn't even use his miracle to make a new life for himself, instead remaining a paid employee of the circus that abused his mother.

There is a slightly conservative bent to some of Nolan's work.  Dunkirk has basic nationalist themes.  Common elements in Nolan's films include returning home or salvaging something from one's past.  Nolan is an advocate of shooting on film stock, staging real events, and theatrical releases.  His films mix and match the genres he loves, Inception especially.  But this is why Inception benefits from its magic feathers.  They exist because the film's purpose isn't simply reverie, but to be a pastiche of spy thrillers, sci-fi, and heist films.  To properly mimic these genres, the film needs the rules so the characters can fight against them.

It proceeds as a series of gags.  There's Tom Hardy' disguises, the Penrose stairs, the "Mr. Charles gambit," and so on.  None of these are actually related to the drama between Cillian Murphy and his father, or Leonardo DiCaprio and his dead wife.  There's also no necessary progression from any of these to the next.  They pad out the length of the film.  But no scenes in any film are necessary, really.  

Still, it looks a little flat overall and could do with a smaller rulebook.  Nolan's films are often too eager for answers that perfectly tie up the knot.  Inception's ending is ambiguous only in that it cuts before we get the answer we know is there, not in that it depicts a real, existing tension.  Nolan would eventually make a purer spy thriller than Inception by leaving this impulse behind in Tenet.