INCEPTION

by Gordon

Directed by: Christopher Nolan

Released: 2010

Rating: PG-13 [sequences of violence and action throughout]

Runtime: 148 min.

Main Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Marion Cotillard, Cillian Murphy, Michael Caine, Lukas Haas, Tom Berenger, Pete Postlethwaite

Rotten Tomatoes: 85%                    IMDB: 9.4/10

 

   Inception was one of those long-awaited movies for me, stemming back to initial teaser trailers that showed men in suits fighting in a gravity-defying hallway, sported Leonardo DiCaprio in a film directed by Christopher Nolan (who had already more than proved his talent as a director with films like Memento and the two most recent Batman movies), and played a deep, brass-y note throughout that sounded as ominous as the imagery appeared. I had no idea what it was about or what to expect, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t wait to see the movie.

   Turns out that the story centers on the ability to enter a dream world, with others if you so choose, by taking a sedative and hooking yourself up to a briefcase-carrying contraption. Once inside, one can “steal”, or in this rare case implant ideas in the minds of others, in order to gain or alter important information. Complicating the scenario (while simultaneously calling to mind the ten years’ time it’s taken Nolan to imagine and write this daring piece of fiction), one can hook themselves up and enter a dream within a dream, taking them again somewhere else entirely (still designed by the Architect), the constructs of time and space further contorted the further down the rabbit hole you go.

   The tagline for the film reads, “Your mind is the scene of the crime.” Though they play more like the heroes, the criminals are an eclectic mix of almost other-worldly specialists, including Cobb, or the Extractor (DiCaprio), an expert in subconscious security, Arthur, or the Point Man (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who’s responsible for researching the team’s targets, Ariadne, or the Architect (Ellen Page), a young college girl who designs the dream landscapes, Eames, or the Forger (Tom Hardy), capable of shape shifting his identity inside the dreams, Yusuf, or the Chemist (Dileep Rao), who provides the team with the necessary sedatives to get them inside the dreams, and Saito, or the Tourist (Ken Watanabe), the businessman who hires the team for the specific mission which is the focus of the film.

   The cast are as eclectic and talented as the characters they play. Hardy works well as the thickly-accented comic relief from time to time, and Gordon-Levitt once again surprises us (though it shouldn’t anymore) with another great performance off the heels of 2009’s 500 Days of Summer. He somehow landed what I see as the coolest role in the film as the sharp-suited, charming sidekick who gets one of the most visually entertaining and probably most fun scenes involving the gravity-defying fight scene as mentioned earlier.

   The cast not comprising the team are to be equally lauded. Lukas Haas, a talent I hope to see one day rise above the minor roles so often given him, plays the team’s first Architect, who unfortunately fails in his profession. Michael Caine has a small but necessary role as Miles, Cobb’s mentor, teacher, and father-in-law, who introduces Cobb to Ariadne for the team’s purposes. Cillian Murphy plays Robert Fischer, or the Mark, who as the heir to a business empire has attracted the attention of Saito and thus become the team’s target. Tom Berenger makes a surprising film return (in a movie such as this) as Robert’s godfather and advice-giver in the time of his father’s (Pete Postlethwaite) death. And the beautiful Marion Cotillard plays Mallorie, or the Shade, Cobb’s deceased wife who spent decades living with him in their own lovers’ dream world, one that in the end ruined the pair and has continued to haunt and disrupt the life of Cobb in his present line of work. The backstory she helps to create is what drives any emotional interest we feel for Cobb or the movie in general.

   Attempting to even describe the events of the movie would a) fill three entire reviews and b) not at all serve justice to the complexities that Nolan has been so careful to visually explain. While I was at many points in the film baffled, confused, and even a little annoyed with both my inability to understand what I was witnessing as well as the director’s purposeful intent of that being the case, I must congratulate him for being ambitious enough to even tackle such a fantasy. While somehow still shying away from as much computer-generated imagery as he can successfully avoid, the visuals were at times unlike anything I’d ever seen onscreen, with materials and landscapes bending and popping in somehow the realest of form. And though it may seem like a tough sell for those unable to connect with anything sci-fi or other-worldly, just as the strangest of dreams can seem real while we’re asleep, so too did Inception while I sat in that theater.

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