Movie Review - 'Inception'

Inception Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Marion Cotillard Directed by Christopher Nolan Rated PG-13

There is almost always something new to dissect and digest in each scene of Christopher Nolan's Inception, a film made with so much bravura that it's hard to dismiss any part of it. A near-perfect heist movie, a near-perfect sci-fi movie, and a near perfect film noir, it is the work of an absolute clinician in total control. The only drawback is that watching Inception means consciously watching Christopher Nolan work, and he may have been such a perfectionist that he drains out of this a little of the joy of watching the movies. Anne Thompson, the great film journalist at IndieWire, compared Nolan's latest to Stanley Kubrick, and that's partially true. The tone of the film, the high-wire act the filmmaker walks knowing that there's nearly as much risk of failure as chance for staggering success, is reminiscent of Kubrick. And, in fact, Inception has some of the fingerprints of Kubrick's The Killing on its most basic structure. However, a comparison of what Nolan is attempting to do to anyone, even a great filmmaker like Kubrick, isn't fair to what is one of the most technically accomplished films you'll ever see. Original storytelling, original stuntwork, and original visual effects add up to a disorienting experience, and yet, Nolan takes great pains in making the plot, its characters, and its unique world make perfect sense throughout, although it still requires a massive amount of explanation, so complex is Nolan's story. Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) wants nothing more than to get home to his children. He's half a world away, constantly working, waiting for the day when he can finally return. He's offered one last job by a powerful client named Saito (Ken Watanabe). Cobb is a thief of sorts. He breaks into people's minds and steals their deepest secrets. Cobb and his associates insinuate themselves into a subject's dream and, extracting pivotal pieces of information through what is self-evidently referred to as Deception. The dream state is chemically induced, and is shared by a team, just as there would be necessary workers during a bank heist: Someone to plan it, someone to be a decoy, someone to crack the vault, and someone to drive the car. The dreams themselves seem longer than they are. For every five minutes Dom is under, an hour of dream time elapses. Supposing the dream went one level deeper - a dream within a dream - those five minutes would buy Dom about 12 hours. That's a long time, which serves an extractor very well, because the world of the dream is completely constructed by an architect. In other words, all the world's a stage. For Saito, though, Deception is not nearly enough. Rather than steal an idea from his business rival, Robert Fischer, Jr. (Cillian Murphy) -- who stands to inherit the energy empire of his father -- Saito wants Cobb to insert an idea into the younger Fischer's subconscious to break up the individual companies in the corporation. In other words: Inception. Cobb has attempted Inception only once before, with his late wife, Mal (a transcendent Marion Cotillard), though he does not want to share the details. Needless to say, Mal's death haunts Cobb and since it's buried so deep in his own subconscious, Mal features prominently in other peoples' dreams. To build the world for Saito's stratagem and to execute the heist, Cobb assembles a team including a young architect (Ellen Page), a point man who does all the necessary research on Fischer (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), and a forger who can falsify identities within dreams (Tom Hardy), among others. The scheme is so extensive that the dream world eventually goes four levels deep and inspires a maddening race against time: As a van careens off a bridge in the first dream, the players have hours to work three levels below before seconds tick off the clock in the levels above. Inception is clearly ahead of its time in many ways. It challenges audiences to think on multiple levels for over two hours, and it can be exhausting. The illusion of creating a dream world, so ingeniously envisioned as a walk through a four-dimensional Paris with DiCaprio and Page, rewrites the rules of visual effects as narrative structures rather than simply visual ones. Those visuals only matter if the execution of the plot and the development of the characters is worth watching, and this is the true strength of Inception. Bridging several genres by embracing their most recognizable elements, Nolan is able to create something brand new, a film that won't be duplicated. Unlike many motion pictures that are so densely packed and detailed, Inception weaves a series of magnificent performances. DiCaprio, normally a better character actor than leading man, is the anchor, and Cotillard, Hardy, and Gordon-Levitt are all excellent. However, this is patently Christopher Nolan's achievement. And "achievement" is a word rarely heard in discussions about films, because so few of them actually do anything out of the ordinary. Inception does just about everything out of the ordinary, and in fact, is built on it. And there isn't a stitch out of place. But Inception feels more like a film made for Christopher Nolan than for audiences. He has every right to be proud of it, though; it's an alarming piece of filmmaking, but maybe not a fully entertaining one.

Comments

[Jonathan Silva]

Every minute that went by my eyes, ears, and mind was glued to the screen. I felt that Chris Nolan didn't just make the film for himself but for movie goers like me who kept thinking. I live in Brooklyn and everyone has this stereotype of brooklynites that there small minded but the film had everyone talking what was the real world and what was the dream world. And everybody in that theatre didn't say a word because they were fixated on the story. So Chris Nolan made this film to be enjoyed by everyone. By the way, when you saw it in an audience, did everyone in the theatre bellow a sound that's hard to describe at the very last 10 seconds?

[K]

Shutter Island

[Visu]

I just saw it. It was WOW. It was like seeing Memento - getting confused about what's happening. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Hans Zimmer has done a wonderful job with the background score.

Colin - any particular reason why only Four Dirty Damn Apes and not Five?

[dan novak]

the story got so complex but the way he went about it i was never confused for a second. expert story teller ,amazing breathtaking movie, and yeah why not five you give kick ass five and not this? come on

[D]

Saw it at a midnight IMAX (and it was a real IMAX theater) show (first time I've done so for a movie not shot with IMAX cameras or 3D) and I loved everything except for the Mal subplot. The character just felt forced into the movie sort of like Rachel Dawes. The movie would have been better off with the Cobb and his wife parts exercised. Overall I would put the movie on about the same level as Insomnia and Batman Begins.
(Full disclosure I'm a Nolan fanboy)

[john]

I really dont see how the cobb and wife story can be excised. its pretty integral to the whole story

[Get The Big Picture]

So is Saito, but for an hour, Ken Watanabe didn't do anything but almost die very slowly. That's something I didn't care for.

[common]

Guys common on, the movie was way to predictable. The elevator gravity trick(oooo some one read a book on physic thought experiments) is boring but pretty. The ending was a load of predictable crap too. Please... a cut scene from him in his mind to the plane with not "knowing" how he got there? This is a b- movie at best.