Inception (2010, Dir: Christopher Nolan)
There is very little to say here other than "wow". That’s all, just "wow".
Okay, that’s not all. This is a movie which actually is worth the hype. It’s a thoughtful investigation into the realms of the conscious and subconscious, determining between dream and reality, the power of suggestion and memory, and the power/powerlessness of the mind to reject or accept that suggestion or memory, while at the same time being an edge-of-the-seat action thriller.
At its core it is essentially a cross between an espionage thriller and a heist movie. The premise is that dreams can be manipulated, and a clever manipulator can take information from the dream that has some real-world use (such as a computer password, a bank safe combination, the hotel room a politician always meets his favourite hooker in). But if something can be taken from a dream, can something also be put into a dream? A thought or idea? Cobb (Di Caprio) postulates that such a thing is very difficult, saying that a target has to be made to think the thought or idea came from their own subconscious rather than be implanted from somewhere else, and that adds huge levels of complexity to the task. Thus the set up where Cobb puts together a team of dream manipulators for the heist, which is a dream within a dream within a dream.
This set up works extremely well in a movie, as the simple fact that much of what we are seeing is within a dream instantly means that if we spot something which in other movies could be seen as continuity errors, here it may be a continuity error, or it could be entirely intentional. The ambiguity makes the audience have to think about what is going on and just who is in control (as a different member of the team is “in charge” of each level of the dream, but the sub-conscious of the dreamer is present in all levels).
The dream sequences during the heist are deftly handled, the complexity of the three (or is it four?) dream levels carefully interwoven around each other, with multiple cuts between levels. Essentially, it is no more complex than a heist movie where you are cutting between the computer guy monitoring the security systems, the lookout on the street corners watching for passing cops, the muscle taking care of internal security, and the brains in the vault figuring out the safe combination. However, because nearly every member of the team is present in each level of the dream it means that we have to match each level to the conscious team member and their location (van, hotel, secret mountain fortress,) which forces us to pay a little bit more attention and think a little bit harder than most other movies. And this I think is where it really succeeds, in that it forces us to think just a little bit harder, pay just a little more attention. We are not forced to think so much that we get confused and lose track of what is happening, we can still sit back, follow the story and enjoy the action.
The visuals are lush without being overpowering, and there is a wonderful mixture of hugely complex CGI and hugely simple mechanical and camera effects, using the entire repertoire of tricks to make the unreality of the dream sequences seem real. My only complaint is that after so much was made in the lead up to the dream sequence of how much reality could be warped and twisted in dreams, the actual dream sequences themselves were surprisingly mundane. Still exciting and clever, but I couldn’t help feeling just a tad disappointed that the dream sequences weren't more ... other.
There are strong performances from the entire cast. Di Caprio's Cobb has the air of a man being barely held together by failing willpower; Ellen Page's Ariadne is smart, intuitive and quick to cotton on to the greatest risk to the mission; Cillian Murphy does a great turn as the bereaved angry young Fischer; Ken Watanabe is wonderful as ever; Tom Hardy looks to have finally matured as an excellent character actor; and Joseph Gordon-Levitt now seems ready to take on the role of Hollywood's newest golden boy. I'm not familiar with Dileep Rao other than in Avatar, but he managed to give his character (possibly the least fleshed-out of the entire team) a sense of self-assuredness and vulnerability at the same time that made him feel more real. The only downside to the casting is that Michael Caine and Pete Postlethwaite didn't have more screen time. But then, Pete Postlethwaite seems to be in everything at the moment, which to my mind can only be a good thing.
Inception is easily as intriguing a movie as Nolan’s breakthrough piece, Memento , but adds in action sequences worthy of James Bond or Jason Bourne (hey, both JB, I never noticed that before ;)). It questions our concept of existence and reality, but more in a sitting-in-a-pub-chatting-over-a-pint way rather than in the 2nd-Year-Philosophy-Finals-Exam sort of way that some other movies do. It raises the concepts and then runs with them rather than hitting you over the head with them. And it's yet another movie where Leonardo Di Caprio proves that he is a hugely talented and capable actor who did Titanic for the money and to be in the scene where Kate Winslett gets her kit off. ;)
9/10. Superb.