Inception

Director: Christopher Nolan.

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ken Watanabe, Marion Cotillard, Michael Caine.

Reviewed By: Ben Carey.

Christopher Nolan is a genius, one of the great directors of our time. In my eyes he hasn’t put a foot wrong in the last ten years; in fact, he has an almost unblemished resume. Even my other favourite directors, Quentin Tarantino and Clint Eastwood, have made some errors of judgment  -  Tarantino with Jackie Brown and Eastwood with Space Cowboys -  the same, it seems, cannot be said about Nolan.

Nolan’s breakthrough was Memento, one of my all time favourite films and an undeniably masterful display of direction, especially considering it was just the second film he directed. After Memento he made Insomnia, an intriguing murder mystery with a star-studded cast. Then he completely re-invented the Batman franchise with Batman Begins and followed it up with a remarkable sequel, The Dark Knight, which against all odds, was better than the first. Oh and The Prestige was a pretty damn good movie also.

It seems that once a year, in some cases twice, there is a movie which receives a phenomenal amount of hype and has everyone talking about it: last year it was Avatar; the year before that it was The Dark Knight; and the year before that it was No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood. There is no doubt in my mind that Inception is the big news of 2010 and it deserves all the praise it gets.

The film revolves around Cobb (DiCaprio) who is a skilled extractor  -  one who through the use of technological aide is able to enter people’s dreams and extract information. This skill has become in high demand, and because Cobb is, by his own claim, ‘the most skilled extractor’ in the business, he deals with the more difficult assignments. Businessman Seito (Ken Watanabe) has hired Cobb and his team to infiltrate a rival’s mind and perform an inception, the tricky task of planting an idea in someone’s head and making them think it is their own.

Most of the team believes that inception is impossible, but Cobb is confident they can pull it off. However, it is one of the trickiest assignments he’s ever had and he decides to recruit Ariadne (Ellen Page), a highly gifted young woman, to help him out in the delicate art of creating the dream worlds, which he and the team will occupy whilst performing the inception.

The team develops an extensive plan to perform the inception and although carefully deliberated and executed, all does not go as intended. Cobb is plagued by the ‘ghost’ of his ex-wife Mal, who appears in his dreams and sabotages them, something that he hasn’t got round to telling his team, and when the inception starts, all hell breaks loose.

Inception is an exceptional film and flawless in almost every way. One of its greatest strengths is its ideas and concepts and the script, which synthesises them all. The concept of ‘dream-walking’ has been around for a long time, but never has it been imagined in such a vivid, intelligent, and mind-blowing way. The film is bursting at the seams with fresh ideas and concepts and is a truly groundbreaking piece of cinema. If films could procreate, Inception would be the lovechild of The Matrix and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, both of which were groundbreaking in their day and are still considered among the best films of all time.  

As mentioned previously, the script is wonderful, which is absolutely necessary with a film like this where the audience has to believe that this could really happen; maybe not in our reality, but in some reality. The script is masterfully penned by Nolan himself; intriguingly Inception is the first entirely original work he has done since his first film, Following, in 1998. And where would a great script be without great actors? I hate to say it, but Leonardo DiCaprio is a pretty fine actor, I guess I’ve just never been able to admit it, but he has truly proved his worth as an actor in the last couple of years and I think that this might be his best performance so far. There aren’t really any other ‘stand-out’ actors because the whole cast is rock solid, however, Marion Cotillard does do a fantastic job of playing Cobb’s disturbed ex-wife Mal.

Another massive success of the film is its mind-blowing CGI. Bridges forming out of thin air; streets folding in on themselves; and gravity defying fight-sequences all help perpetuate the credibility and believability of this amazing world. It’s more important now than ever that audiences believe that this could actually happen, in the context of a film, far too often sloppy CGI work jolts the audience out of the viewing experience because they just don’t believe it or the special effects have been used in a cheap way. This is not the case here: this film is an absolute visual feast.

Finally, I’d like to note that Lee Smith does a fantastic job of editing throughout this film, especially during the last half-hour where a number of different dreams are cut together to astonishing effect. If he doesn’t get the Oscar for best editing I’ll be extremely surprised and disappointed.

I only had two gripes with the film, and they were really very small. The first was that I felt like I was thrown into the action a bit quickly, not that I’m questioning Nolan’s masterful direction; I just think it could have eased into it a little more. The second thing was that I didn’t feel like he explored the concept of dream building and alteration enough; oh well, my fingers are crossed for an extended DVD edition.

Inception is a remarkable piece of cinema and deserving of all the hype surrounding it. It is without a doubt a must see film and if you only see one film at the cinemas this year, make sure it’s this one!

Inception in cinemas now.

ENDS