Inception

“Inception”

USA. 2010. Written and directed by Christopher Nolan. Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Cillian Murphy, Ken Watanabe, Marion Cotillard, Dileep Rao, Tom Hardy, Tom Berenger, Pete Postlethwaite, Michael Caine, Lukas Haas, Tai-Li Lee, Claire Geare, Magnus Nolan, Taylor Geare and Jonathan Geare.

Rating: ★★★★

Christopher Nolan said he spent eight years developing his latest visionary film, Inception and it is tempting to say it is the movie he has been working towards until now. He has thus far never made a bad movie from the smaller ones such as Following, Memento, Insomnia and The Prestige to the revivified Batman movies and each of his movies has examined a different facet of deep emotions of internal guilt and obsession. The brilliance of Inception is in how it expands on some of the core, lingering emotions from all his previous films and marries them to an original, dazzling concept and the exhilaration of classical action sequences found in the very best of the Hollywood summer blockbusters.

If you have been following the trailers and the buzz, you will gather the general story concept is about characters who try to steal other people's ideas in their own dreams. If that is all you know, that is all you deserve to know before going into this film. The movie springs so many story surprises and visual delights that you should walk into this one cold. Shelve this review until later if you plan to see this film (and you should).

The story, like all of Nolan’s past efforts, opens at a very unusual place. Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is meeting with a rich client, Saito (Ken Watanabe) after just having been washed up ashore on the seas. The conversation then starts moving through levels of dreams within dreams until it builds into a nifty action sequence with Cobb’s right-hand man, Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Cobb's wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard).

In just these first 15 minutes, Nolan already sets up several of the key players and orients the audience to traversing through the levels of dreams while also building the conflict and rigorous test of trust and mistrust between Cobb and his client. That he masterfully uses cinematic shorthand to relay all of this is yet another reminder of how Nolan knows how to propel a story forward.

Once the movie brings us back to the real world, for which both Cobb and Arthur need totem objects and carry to confirm, we see that they are dream thieves who burrow deep into the dreams of others to steal corporate ideas and secrets out of the deep recesses of people’s subconscious. What Saito proposes, however, is the opposite that is inception, which is to implant an idea into a dreamer’s mind so convincingly that the dreamer believes it to be his or her own. Cobb is at first hesitant to complete this seemingly impossible task towards the intended target, Fischer (Cillian Murphy) but is soon drawn back in when Saito offers to use his powerful connections to bring Cobb back home from exile to his family.

Cobb then selects his team including Arthur, a dream architect, Ariadne (Ellen Page), whom he is introduced to by his father-in-law, Miles (Michael Caine), a master identity forger, Eames (Tom Hardy) and an expert chemist, Yusuf (Dileep Rao). The team knows that because the mind is so good at rejecting foreign ideas, they will have to burrow through multiple levels of dreams within dreams to actually make an inception. This is why Cobb tells Ariadne to design such a deceptively clever dream maze that will distract Fischer from the new idea to incept. It is no coincidence that Nolan names her after the mistress of the labyrinth in Greek mythology.

Because Nolan so carefully lays out the logic and rules of his dream labyrinth and the purpose of every single team member, we are completely fascinated and hooked as the movie skips around through several levels of dreams and so frequently bends the logic and rules, sometimes to the breaking point. One slight concern I did have going into the theater is whether the wild action sequences that check off locations from London to Morocco to Tokyo to Paris would stand out as merely sensational stunts amidst this dream heist. Knowing Nolan’s movies though, my concerns should have been moot, as they all fit seamlessly into the dream narrative so that we actually know how and why it is happening and care about the people in addition to marveling at the scope and choreography.

The tumbling zero-gravity hallway fight involving Joseph Gordon-Levitt in particular, which in full will remind Fred Astaire fans of the wall dancing sequence in Royal Wedding, is sure to become an instant classic. When I saw it in the theater, I could certainly sense the entire audience holding their breath during this whole sequence that was shot on a real physical revolving set. There are other sights of pure visual wonder, my favorite being where Paris literally starts to fold in half like a mirroring sandwich during one of Cobb’s training dream workshops with Ariadne. Some will certainly spot some influences from past science fiction films like 2001: A Space Odyssey (partially in that zero-gravity fight), Blade Runner, Dark City and The Matrix, all of which Nolan, along with his great cinematographer, Wally Pfister, expands on against a backdrop of color schemes reminiscent of Impressionism artwork.

Another of the movie’s pleasures is in how the movie truly is an ensemble piece. Each actor gets his or her moment to shine in crucial dialogue passages. Gordon-Levitt and Page have one of the best as they discuss the infinite staircase while DiCaprio also gets one of the most memorable lines as he warns Page’s Ariadne to avoid creating dreams out of memory because that will make the dreams hard to distinguish from reality. No one is left out of the action either, as various characters must take charge of perilous situations at different levels and layers of dreams (although, on a side note, I wish that the usually great Hans Zimmer's background musical score was more low-key this time and less pounding in attempting to underscore the tension).

For all its labyrinthine cerebral innovation, however, the most brilliant story idea Nolan conjures up is in its emotional core, which is where I think it far surpasses even The Matrix. I hesitate to reveal too much to leave you to make the discoveries but the film finds new emotional places to return to one of his past explored themes, which is that for all our intellectual, rational and philosophical thoughts that might even potentially lead to wiser decisions, humans are all finally privy to their emotions. That this theme is turned towards the love, guilt and regret that Cobb feels towards his wife, Mallorie allows the movie to turn the concept of perfect romantic idealism on its head to much darker, obsessive extremes.

The exploration of that theme also allows perhaps the best surprise, which is in that among the strongly acted ensemble typical for a Nolan film, he has gotten a memorable performance from a female actor. Nolan’s movies have thus far all been about very masculine struggles with the supporting actresses most often left in the sidelines. While this film certainly fills the quota of high-powered action and gunfights among the male players, it is with very good reason that he chose an actress of Marion Cotillard’s complexity to play Mallorie who can alternately seem lovingly idealized to quietly unnerving in Cobb’s dreams or flashbacks (sometimes we are not sure which is which). Her psychic weight and presence also adds yet another wild card at crucial moments.

Inception is as brainy, breathtaking and engaging a movie you will likely see all this year. The year in general until now has consisted mostly of boring, lazy remakes and sequels and movies from the recycling store of genre cliché parts. It is a relief to know that there is a director like Nolan who does not settle on riding the wave of success from a movie like The Dark Knight but makes a blockbuster filled with proper heart and intelligence. With the general drop-off in the box office thus far this year, here is hoping that this movie will become so successful that the studios will see that mass audiences really do crave more creativity and quality in mainstream films.