Here’s the quick and dirty review of Inception: go see it. It’s a phenomenal movie. Go. NOW.
You’re still here. Why are you still here?
Go.
NOW, I SAID.
Okay, fine, click the jump to read more words from me about it.
I’m not going to go very in depth about the plot and story of the movie, as that’s better served by you discovering it yourself while watching it. As such, this may not be the longest of reviews. Live with it and go see the movie.
Having come up with the idea when he was 16, director Christopher Nolan wrote the first draft of Inception eight years ago and in the interim his great success with Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, not to mention the earlier Memento, put him in a position to cast Leonardo DiCaprio and six other Oscar-nominated actors and spend a reported $160 million in a most daring way.
Aesthetically, Inception is beautiful. Before being called a visionary, Nolan obtains strongly the title of an astute and well respected aesthete. His creation of a multi-layered dream world is breathtakingly immense, even usurping the immensity of The Dark Knight. The architecture of a particular dream world is bristling with fascinating detail that, in a cinematic way, proves to be indispensable. When we see Parisian buildings being folded on top of each other, trains traveling recklessly through congested streets, and men fist fighting in a hotel corridor where gravity is obsolete one realizes these miraculous violations of natural law and we dare not question them because we are embedded within a world of no limitations; a world of dreams. It is not impossible for us to revel in this surreal atmosphere.
The selection of Oscar-winning French actress Marion Cotillard as Mal typifies the care Nolan has taken to cast these thriller roles for emotional connection, a move which pays off in the scenes she shares with DiCaprio. In addition to the impeccably professional Batman veterans Caine and Murphy, the film is also on the money with the smaller roles, including Pete Postlethwaite as Fischer’s ailing tycoon father and Tom Berenger as one of his key associates.
The reason all these diverse elements successfully come together is Nolan’s meticulous grasp of the details necessary to achieve his bravura ambitions. A filmmaker so committed he does his own second unit direction, Nolan is one of the few people able to keep the whole equation of pictures in their heads. Because he’s been so successful, Nolan, like Clint Eastwood, has been able to return again and again to the same creative team, which includes exceptional director of photography Wally Pfister, sharp-eyed editor Lee Smith and composer Hans Zimmer, whose propulsive score helps compel the action forward. Incapable of making even standard exposition look ordinary, Nolan is especially strong in creating the stunts, effects and out-of-the-ordinary elements whose believability characterizes this film as they did his previous Batman efforts.
Movies are created much like the dreams in Inception. They start as simple concepts in one individual’s head. Yet to wind up on the screen at your local megaplex, they require a team of hundreds, if not thousands, to put together. Getting things absolutely right requires a bit of magic – “Inception” has that quality. I can’t imagine how Nolan and his team felt the first time they screened the final cut. It had to feel like……
Wait for it…
A dream.