Despite that, there were a couple of things that nagged at me during the film. One was some clunky dialogue–not so much with the technical exposition, which was actually pretty deftly handled, I thought, but with some of the more emotional bits with Cobb talking about his children, etc. Leo really tries to sell it, but a lot of his lines are groan-worth cliche. (I accept that many will think I'm being too nitpicky on this point, but when the filmmaker talks about spending 10 years on a script, I think it's a valid criticism.)

The other thing that bothered me was something Spencer & Laremy discussed on this week's podcast, which is the secondary characters and their lack of depth. The conclusion they seemed to reach was that backstory for these characters wouldn't have added to the film, but I would have appreciated at least a dash of that. In particular I found it maddening to the point of significant distraction to have no idea why Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character had any motivation to be doing any of the things he was doing. Others I could accept being caught up in the excitement/profit aspect of it, but for his character's importance and the history with DiCaprio's character that is implied, I needed more.

Interestingly, the character aspects that bothered me could be dealt with tidily if I'm looking at the film through the interpretation of this article that Spencer linked to on his twitter account: http://chud.com/articles/categories/Editorial/T... I love that interpretation and will definitely consider it upon second viewing. It gives the characters purpose beyond that in a traditional narrative and in a way that makes up for their lack of development.

No matter what, this is a film and an accomplishment we'll be talking about for some time.