Inception

(2010)

Directed by

Christopher Nolan

Review by Terry Plucknett

Posted - 7/20/10

With every film he makes, Christopher Nolan continues to show that he is one of the best filmmakers we have right now.  Each film adds something new to his continuously growing legacy.  His latest film, Inception, once again adds more to that legacy in what is one of his best to date.

In the first original story tackled by Nolan since the groundbreaking mind-bender Memento (which was actually based on a short film made by his brother and frequent collaborator Jonathan Nolan), Inception dives into people’s dreams and subconscious.  The lead character is Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), a man who has specialized in the art of extraction, a process of using dreams to steal information from someone’s subconscious.  This uses a process that allows multiple people to have a shared experience in one individual’s dream.  Cobb and his team, brought to life by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, and Dileep Rao, are first seen trying to extract information from Saito (Ken Watanabe), who is so impressed with their efforts that he hires them to attempt inception on a business rival Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy).  Inception is a delicate process of using dreams to implant ideas deep in one’s subconscious.  The thought to be implanted in Fischer’s subconscious is to split up his company.  Cobb and his team accept the job with the promise that Saito will help Cobb with some legal trouble surrounding the death of his wife (Marion Cotillard) who frequently haunts Cobb’s dreams and sabotages their jobs from inside those dreams.

DiCaprio’s Cobb is very similar to the other role DiCaprio portrayed this year: Teddy Daniels in Scorsese’s Shutter Island.  Both characters are working a job while fighting the memory of a deceased wife that haunts and torments him.  Both characters are very good at their job, but the memory of the wife is hindering their effectiveness.  In this role, as in Shutter Island, Leo is on top form.  The rest of the cast brings in tremendous performances as well, highlighted by Cotillard and Page.

When talking about how great this movie is, everything has to come back to Christopher Nolan.  There were a lot of strong performances by the actors in this film, but this is mainly because of how strong the script was they were working with.  Nolan builds a world better than almost anyone Hollywood today.  All his films are examples of this, from the revamped Gotham City to the brilliant way of capturing Leonard’s short-term memory loss in Memento.  Even in The Prestige, which was one of his weaker efforts, he was still able to create an intricate environment and world that few others could.  Inception is definitely Nolan at his best in this aspect.  He creates an environment like nothing we have seen before.  He builds a dream-like world that seems so real yet so surreal.  Part of the beauty of this is it is sometimes hard to determine what is a dream and what is reality, which becomes a theme of the film.  He creates this complex, detailed world, yet makes it fairly easy to understand and grasp.  The environment draws you in immediately from the first scene until the dramatic last shot as you try to discover and dream along with the characters.  It is definitely an experience film that no doubt will reveal deeper and deeper layers with each additional viewing.  This is all due to the brilliant mind of Christopher Nolan.  With his last few films, he has been successful in making the anti-blockbuster summer blockbuster in that it is more than just senseless violence and action.  They are films with great heart, immense intricacies, and an intense intellectual and psychological presence in the setting and storyline.

This film is one that can be enjoyed on so many levels by so many different audiences.  If you are a fan of the senseless violence action summer blockbuster, there are breathtaking visual effects with good action sequences and a storyline that all can understand at least on a very simplistic level.  If you are a fan of a psychological thriller, you will be hard pressed to find a film the dives deeper into the human mind and psyche.  If you are simply a fan of an adventure and experience film that will draw you in and let you escape for two and a half hours, nothing will do it better than a Christopher Nolan created world.  Basically, there is something in this film for everyone on every level, and it will have you talking for days as you discover it all means as you dive into the minds of the characters, and ultimately the mind of the brilliant Christopher Nolan.

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