Country:
USA
Recognizable Faces:
Leonardo Di Caprio
Ellen Page
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Ken Watanabe
Marion Cotillard
Michael Caines
Tom Berenger
Directed by:
Chris Nolan
I'm bored with blockbuster. I'm bored, jaded and aggressive towards that concept. The prospect of having one with an original scenario enchanted me to no ends, I must admit. No license, no adaptation, nothing. A scenario crafted by Mr. Memento Chris Nolan himself. I had high hopes. So when I received the call from AT, challenging me to the 10:30 PM IMAX viewing, I was like: "Let's do this"...and on I was, to the IMAX premiere of Inception
STORYTELLING
That could've been a Spectulative Fiction novel on its own. Cobb (DiCaprio) and Arthur (Gordon-Levitt) are partner in extractions. They enter important peoples's mind and extract secrets from their most private places. The duo break into the sub-conscious trough controlled dreams and give forms to abstract concept, which they can get a hold of. Of course, it's all conditional to the break-in of DiCaprio's wife, who keeps crashing on his dreams. Complicated yet?
That activity being illegal and Cobb being on the loose due to an outstanding warrant for the murder of his wife (Cotillard) , our hero cannot see his kids anymore. Pushed by a recent failure in business and a desire to see his children again, Cobb accepts from his most recent victim Saito (Watanabe), a business offer to implant inception in the mind of a concurrent. Inception is to implant a new idea inside a person's head, in order to make him behave a certain way. In this case, he'll have to make a competitor quit business. Since the recent passing of his father, the opportunity seems golden.
For that, Cobb and his squad will have to penetrate the subconscious of the victim Robert Fischer (Cilian Murphy) through not one, but three layers of dream. They'll have to penetrate a dream within a dream, within a dream. It has been done before, but at this stage, it's still all experimental...
DIRECTION
Nolan is the shining star of his own movie. He invested the different layers of Robert Mitchell's dream with a symbolism a bit cliché, but somewhat very effective. You're treated with inner rain, storm, desert, destruction. There's a clear view of Mitchell's state of mind through his interior life. Nolan successfully invests setting with emotion, which is something that most directors fail at.
The editing of Inception is also a thing of beauty. Nolan makes four levels of reality co-exist on a different time frame (the more you dream, the quicker your mind goes). The directors keeps rotating them according to their time frame and their relevance with maestria. He stretches his action sequences and his climax as thin as he can though, which makes for a good 30 minutes overload. This movie could have been 2 hours easy without the superfluous scenes with Cobb and his wife.
ACTING
Leonardo Di Caprio does the impossible to inject with life the cardboard character that is Cobb. Basically, he's a blue print of Teddy Daniels from Shutter Island. The business oriented man with a dead wife and a dark past. Gordon-Levitt has a more colourful character in Arthur, who he plays with the subtle confidence we know him. He's a sure-fire bet.
Ellen Page is also a winner in Ariane, the ambitious dream-building architect. Her french accent is even charming. Tom Hardy as Eames has interesting actions with Arthur, which gives the comedic relief to that intense adventure. Ken Watanabe, Michael Caine and Tom Berenger don't grab you as they should, but they're not off. They're just normal.
INTEREST
It's been years since a blockbuster has entertained me like this. It's a complex, yet wild ride within the human mind. Inception is not without defaults. The whole emotional side on Dom is cliché and overplayed and the action is stretched thin to a membrane, but overal, it's a solid action movie, yet highly intellectual effort. Film buffs and your everyday man should enjoy Inception for what it is: a smart and fun movie.
SCORE: B+
