IMDB Top 250 - Day 2: #9 - Inception
Image taken from Movie Web.
Sweet God Almighty, how do you start on a movie like this? The effects are amazing, if was up for best picture at the last Academy Awards, the direction is absolutely superb, and the acting is top-notch. This was my favorite film of last year (that I've seen so far, Black Swan and I think one other film are also on this list somewhere) and this was the film that showed me that Leonardo DiCaprio could actually act. I know that he's done other stuff since Titanic and The Man in the Iron Mask that he was really good in, but I hadn't seen any of those until this film. It's like Brad Pitt and Fight Club; you never really expected them to be able to act until you actually saw the film. As with the last entry, readers beware: there be spoilers here.
Image taken from Game Zone.
Inception is framed as a heist story, but instead of money, jewels, or something of physical monetary value, the thing stolen is information out of people's dreams. And then about fifteen or so minutes into the film that instead of extracting an idea an idea, we're putting one into place. Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), a man searching for a way back to his family, leads a team made up of his partner/researcher Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), the forger Eames (Tom Hardy), the chemical alchemist Yusuf (Dileep Rao), and their architect of dreams, Ariadne (Ellen Page) into the mind of Mr. Saito's (Ken Watanabe) chief rival, Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy) so that he will break up his father's vast energy empire. However, there are complications to all of this. Cobb is haunted by the specter of his late wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard), whom Cobb feels responsible for her death, as well as Fischer's subconscious, which has been trained against the invaders of the mind. Going within dreams within dreams to get deep enough into Fischer's subconscious while feeding him strategic information so that the idea to break up his father's empire seems organic while avoiding Mal proves difficult; so much so that towards the end of the film Cobb must rescue Fischer from Mal in Limbo, or unconstructed dream space. He succeeds and must then rescue Saito, who has died along the way and also fallen into Limbo. Cobb rescues Saito and reunites with his children as the viewer is left to wonder whether he is actually in reality or simply in another dream.
Image taken from DevonMclaren.com.
If it seems like I really breezed over the summary of this film, it's because I did. Inception is easy enough to summarize, but not to do so effectively. You can know the entire plot and still not really know what's going on and that's what I like about this film. On the one hand, the A-plot is all about the inverse of your standard heist, where we put something into place as opposed to taking something away while offering something the main character wants very much in return, namely, to go back to his family. Which leads us into the B-plot as Cobb struggles to come to terms with the death of his wife that he inadvertently caused when they traveled down to Limbo together by making her question the reality they had built for each other.
The first 40% or so of the film is all about atmosphere and telling the audience (through Ariadne) how the universe that we find ourselves in works. We are told that people can enter pre-constructed dreams so that others can come in and steal them. We are told that while anything can happen in a dream, the more you mess with it, the faster someone's subconscious catches on and tries to get you out. We are introduced to our cast of characters in believable ways. And all of this is done absolutely beautifully. It's an exposition dump, but it's told in such a way that it doesn't really matter to the viewer, who is sucked into the world that Nolan creates for us.
Image taken from Movie Photo Gallery.
The rest of the film is an action trip unlike what most people have seen before. People run around hallway walls, fight scenes in midair, the longest free-falling van ever put to film, and Eames being the most unlikely movie bad-ass I have ever come across. The ending is hotly debated among fans of the film as to whether or not Cobb is still dreaming and you know what? I don't really think it matters. Cobb certainly doesn't seem to care.
This movie is so chock full of stuff that I can't even begin to really talk about it, so I guess this will have to do for the moment. Just, if you haven't watched this film yet, DO SO. You will not be disappointed. As a side note, I've heard some people call it a rip-off of Satoshi Kon's Paprika in how it presents it's landscape and you know what? Screw those people, that does not detract from the fact that this is a well-made, well acted film with a concept you just don't see in movies all too often.
Next time: Nolan again, but this time he helps a certain superhero's journey begin.