I finally went around to watching Inception. Never mind the fact that I always expected to wanting to watch it again, but I think it really is a requirement to watch it more than once, and it really isn't because it leaves you with more questions than answers (though it certainly does just that). So no Die Hard for this post, unless you want to say Inception is Die Hard in a dream (well, that does technically work on some level) but I think that may be pushing things. So yeah, it's a tangent, I will go back to Die Hard week/month after this review.
Inception is Christopher Nolan's first original film since his directorial debut in Following. He supposedly started writing Inception for the past ten years.
The story is about an extractor, Dom Cobb, who is trained in the art of stealing information from people's minds through dreams and is currently on the run from the government, forced to live his life as a fugitive. A wealthy Japanese businessman has contracted him for a job, that if Cobb successfully performs it, he will be rid of the charges against him and finally go back home to see his kids. The job: Inception, to plant an idea in someone's head rather than stealing one, a task that is seemingly an impossibility. But Cobb desperately wants to return home to his children and reluctantly takes the job.
So a film ten years in the making, with a studio essentially given a carte blanche to a filmmaker to direct a film entirely in his and only his vision that surrounds the idea of being able to enter dreams and the subconcious. Wow, can I say what a fucking gamble? It's heady stuff and really an idea that if I were to have pitched to me, I would say to the writer, "you're fucking crazy for even trying to attempt this kind of shit". There are elements working against it. First, it has to be a big budget film, second, it's a rather alien idea. I can't point to too many successful movies that dealt with the idea of entering dreams (One may point out the film Dreamscape starring Dennis Quaid but it's a film I've never seen nor heard of until recently) and it could easily have backfired immensely for the studio. Second, because of the talent involved, it certainly built a lot of hype for the film. Does it deliver?
Now, I have been anticipating this movie ever since I heard of it, mainly due the the pedigree of the artists associated with the film. Dicaprio, Marion Cotilliard, Ellen Page, Joseph Gorden Levitt, Michael Caine, Ken Wattanabe, Cillian Murphy, and the grandaddy of them all, Christopher Nolan.
Everything about the cast was great, Tom Hardy has quickly become one of the new talents that I'll be keeping an eye on. His Eames and Levitt's Arthur are two of the biggest badasses in the film. Leo never fails to turn in a great performance, and really all of the cast is great. Nolan has a great eye of working with great talented actors.
One of the things working against the film is that Inception does one of the big storytelling no no's. Exposition. But to Nolan's credit, it more than just delivering information, it worked because this is something we haven't seen before. The exposition establishes the rules within the dreamscape and it's always interesting to see (and be told) how and why these things happen, and it's for this reason that I think the film manages to get away with all the exposition that it has. We simply are intrigued about how dreams work in this world.
Granted, the emotional journey of Cobb's character has arguably been done to death but it's refreshing to see a new take on the same thing. It doesn't really match the emotional heights of other films this year, but this is a heist movie with a beating heart.
I didn't really understand the criticism that this was an emotionally cold film. I felt that it was quite the contrary, Cobb goes through a lot of emotional turmoil in the film. I mean c'mon, the dude's trying to get back to his kids and dealing with the guilt of his past actions.
But what really blew me away in this movie is how structurally complex everything is yet it never seems to lose its way as a story. As the movie progresses, we go deeper and deeper into these dreams within dreams and each dream state has a different objective that the characters have to accomplish that ties with the general goal of inception. I was amazed at how elegant everything turns out. The complexity hardly becomes an issue and it's truly a beautiful thing to see such a complex idea executed in such a seemingly simple way.
Man is it a mindbending film. Granted there are a few plot holes that I didn't quite understand, but I suppose it's one of those things that could be explained in after a second viewing, perhaps it's a minor detail that was overlooked. But again, to Nolan's credit, those said plot holes didn't detract from the immersing experience. I guess I was too busy getting mindfucked by everything I was seeing. Plot holes tend to come with the territory when we're dealing with films that question reality, so I guess I'm used to that.
I loved the set up for the simultaneous kicks that each level needs performed. I loved how, as we get deeper in each dream, time slows down more, essentially giving the characters more time to perform the inception. I love how, despite this can be a potential tension killer, the wrong things happen in the wrong time that forces the characters to perform their job as quickly as possible, and even though each dream within a dream gives them more time, the film never loses that tension that time IS running out. It's contradictory and I love it.
It's amazing that Nolan managed to make such a complex set-up feel so effortless and simple. And it sets up one of my favourite sequences in the film:
ZERO G Fighting!! That was one hell of a sequence, I couldn't believe that such a crazy thing would've been attempted.
And despite the fact that the film has one of those "open endings", it doesn't feel like it betrays the audience like it often does because it fits within the confines of Inception's theme's about dreams and reality. No matter what you choose to interpret, Cobb's emotional journey has found its end. And it's because of this open ending that the film gains another level of complexity, it forces you to pay attention and draw your own conclusions, and the film is brilliant in this regard because every frame of the movie gives you more to think about. It manages to walk the fine line in being ambiguous without feeling like a cheat.
Films like Inception come along once in a while, perhaps once a year, sometimes less. But a film that fires on all cylinders and actually lives up to the hype, and one that doesn't betray the audience, one that is a smart and thrilling roller coaster ride, they come around once in a film generation.
9.5/10
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