Written & Directed by: Christopher Nolan
Starring: Leonardo di Caprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Ken Watanabe, Dileep Rao, Cillian Murphy
I think it’s now safe to say that Christopher Nolan is my favorite director. Memento, The Prestige, The Dark Knight…I’ve yet to see a film of his that I didn’t like. No, scratch that, that I didn’t love. I’ve said before that I like the movies I review to fall into strong polarities of quality, and Nolan’s always delivered on the positive end of that scale. With Inception, he continues that history. Inception is easily now at the top of my running for Movie of the Year.
I’ve read a few times that you can’t discuss the plot of Inception without spoiling it, but I’m not sure where that idea comes from. It’s an oddly paced film, as one would expect a movie that takes place largely in dreams to be, but it bisects pretty cleanly into two halves, the first rather different from the second. Essentially, we meet Cobb (di Caprio) and his partner Arthur (Gordon-Levitt) in the middle of a job. The job in question: stealing valuable data from a powerful business man named Saito (Watanabe) in his dreams, a process called “extraction”. They don’t do so well, but Saito is impressed none the less and offers them a deal. Saito’s connections will get clear Cobb’s criminal record and get him back to the States and his family. In exchange, Cobb and Arthur must implant an idea into the heir of an energy conglomerate on the way to being a global superpower, through a process called “inception”. Cobb and Arthur assemble a crack team to get it done, but Ariadne (Ellen Page), a gifted but unproven dream architect, discovers Cobb’s harboring a dark secret that could lead to disaster for the entire crew.
That’s a rough outline of course but very close to what does transpire in the first half of the film. You might notice a few things odd in that breakdown, for instance no discussion about how these men and women enter a sleeping person’s mind or where the technology comes from. The reason is quite simple. We’re just not told. Nolan is not a hard science fiction writer, and though he gives us a good working explanation of the mechanics of dream exploration (through a stunning training sequence between di Caprio and Page) the focus is on how this ability to enter dreams can create interesting problems and interactions for the characters. Like in a dream, how we got to this point is lost to the now and you find yourself not really caring. In the first half of the film the stakes for our characters seem rather low, since injuries in dreams have no real effect on the waking body. The second half introduces a twist that adds clear and present danger and ties directly to the growing character arc.
The picture offers up visual treats. Mutability of the dream environments isn’t played with too much but when it is the results are phenomenal, like The Matrix set in an M.C. Escher painting. Dreams in American and European cinema are traditionally depicted as sort of fluid and soft, an out-of-focus drug trip. Here dreams are hard and mechanical, laid out by engineers and architects. These are serious people doing serious business; the intrusion of fantasy is a hazard at best, fatal at worst. When things get too weird or go badly for the dreamer it all falls apart as if the universe itself were collapsing inward. The movement of bodies is imposed on the dream-worlds, so gravity can shift wildly without warning. Objects explode exponentially into ever smaller slow-motion snowflakes and trains careen through downtown streets. Seeing a city fold in on itself was one of the most powerful visual moments in cinema this year. Even without woo-woo gooey camera filters and such we’re still very much in a strange, mutable world within Inceptions dreams.
The characters were fun though very archetypal. You’ve got the loyal, all-business right hand man in Levitt’s Arthur, the wisecracking conman in Tom Hardy’s Eames…It was sort of like Ocean’s 11, with six less people and not nearly as many jokes. Exploration of rebuilding dreamscapes – and therefore Ellen Page’s character – wasn’t used enough, but she still shone through as a serious actress able to go toe-to-toe dramatically with other performers. And as usual, a female character who is highly capable and is not a love interest is a welcome change of pace from Hollywood’s agenda. I’ve heard it said di Caprio was reprising his role from Shutter Island sans the Bostonian accent. I can’t speak to that, never having seen the film. He gives a strong take as a man slowly losing his grip on reality and trying to atone before that clock winds down. If Shutter Island is comparable I may have to pick it up.
It’s been over a week now since release, so it may be that you’ve already made a decision one or the other about Inception. If you’re still on the fence or opted against it let me implore you in the strongest terms to see it. If you can’t now, pick up the DVD when it’s available. You will not get another summer movie that is so intelligent, rewarding and original.
