Christopher Nolan has just officially claimed his place among the elite film directors of the past decade. He has the uncanny knack of incrementally improving on each project he works on, and I would say that Inception is the pinnacle of that build-up, which actually may be a bad thing. I just don’t see how he can improve on this.
One of the main points I came away from the film with (along with many questions to ponder) is that Mr. Nolan took a leap of faith and actually respects the audience’s intelligence, by not having every little thing explained or spoon fed to the viewer. The time period the movie is set in is irrelevant; we know we are in a time and place where somehow people have figured out a way to enter in to people’s dreams and share these dreams with others. It’s hinted that the technology was originally intended for military use (of course) but again, that’s irrelevant. What is relevant is that we are watching a world in which this is possible, so you just have to accept that.
Apparently this dream-sharing process has given rise to thieves ‘breaking in’ to people’s dreams and stealing their ideas. Our protagonist, Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is one of these thieves, and a damn good one at that. He has taken up this line of work in an effort to somehow find a way to get back to his children, not being allowed to simply return because he is suspected in the death of his wife. He finds an opportunity in one last big job...an “inception” job--the planting of an idea, rather than the theft of one. It’s thought to be impossible, so he assembles a crack team to help him pull off the ultimate mind-job. Problems start to arise though when Cobb’s own inner demons start coming to light.
So what we have at its core is basically a heist film (which I thoroughly enjoy anyway) but Nolan succeeds in completely turning that on its head and then spinning it around at breakneck speed. In order to pull of this inception, this team has to go though multiple levels of subconscious reality; basically multiple levels of dreams within a dream. It sounds confusing, and it is, however it is handled so brilliantly that you never really lose your frame of reference as to which level you are currently watching. The effects that the events in the waking world have on the dream world are absolutely fantastic, for instance while a our team is sleeping in the back of a van and that van goes airborne, in the dream world there is no gravity. It makes for one of the coolest and technically fascinating fight scenes since The Matrix.
It’s very easy for such a complex concept to end up having many holes, but really any questions are tied up nice and neat with simple ground rules for how the process works. And here’s the kicker: they actually stick to the ground rules. There’s nothing worse (well there are things worse, but still...) than a sci-fi movie that has rules for how something is supposed to work, only to have some rogue characters or something break those rules as a way to introduce some sort of ‘twist.’ For instance, how do they have time to do all this stuff in the dream? Because your mind perceives time in a dream differently than when awake. While only 5 minutes may pass in the waking world, that is the equivalent to about an hour in a dream, and if you dig down to another level of subconscious, time goes even slower. And so on. You still with me?
One of the things I’ve always been impressed with Nolan for is how he manages to get the absolute best performances out of his actors, and even actors that you wouldn’t necessarily think were capable of such things. Case in point: Heath Ledger. Did anybody really think when he was announced as the Joker that he was capable of a performance of that caliber? He does it again here, with Ellen Page turning in an absolutely captivating performance as the young student-turned-dream-architect, and proving that she’s more than just Juno. And while not having a huge part, Joseph Gordon-Levitt really shines and will immediately trump any memory you may have of The Rise of Cobra (but let’s be honest...nobody has any memory of that). Nolan said that he never considered anybody else but Leonardo DiCaprio playing the part of Cobb, and it shows. I would put this in as one of Leo’s best performances to date, and I honestly can’t think of anybody that could have fit the role any better than him.
One of the main questions I came away with after the film (not related to the film itself anyway) is whether the general public will embrace this film or not. The ratings on IMDB and Metacritic and the like seem to suggest they are, at least so far, but I wonder how long that will last, being a summer blockbuster with a brain and all. I’ll keep my hopes up and if it continues to do well, it may do a lot to restore some faith in humanity. The cool thing about it is that I could give away the ending right now, and it wouldn’t even spoil anything because it’s all about context. I won’t do that, but still...without having any knowledge of how it got to that point, it would make absolutely no sense and to me that is just absolutely genius writing and storytelling. The bar has absolutely been raised for film-making, and I can’t see anybody topping this one for some time to come, and if it happens it’ll probably be Nolan that does it.
