My Writings
Review - Inception
Christopher Nolan wrote and directed this wildly imaginative movie,
billed as a 'sci-fi actioner set within the architecture of the mind'
(courtesy 'The Hollywood Reporter') at a breakneck pace, and is
unafraid of asking us to keep up. Showing a complete trust in the
audience's appetite for complexity, Nolan's imaginative script and pace
of direction
leave us breathless and in awe. Setting a new benchmark for movies in
the same year as 'Avatar' is quite some achievement, and for this we
have to also thank John Papsidera for gathering a stellar cast led by
genius actor Leonardo di Caprio who effortlessly and brilliantly
portrays the central character Cobb. Cobb is a thief who invades the
subconscious mind to steal industrial secrets by extraction. When
compromised, he is given a chance at redemption by attempting inception
- planting ideas so deep within dreams that the subject becomes
convinced that the idea has come from within. Saito (Ken Wattanabe)
employs Cobb to persuade global rival Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy
and a nod to a 20th century chess master) to break up his dying
father's empire.
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...Cobb assembles his crew, including Arthur
(Joseph Gordon-Levitt)
and scene stealer Tom Hardy as Eames and sets about training protege
Ariadne (Ellen Page) in the kind of mind training that make the concept
of a 'glitch in the Matrix' seem dumbed down. There are some
amazing special effects as Ariadne learns how to build dream
architecture, with cities folding in on themselves. A neat concept in a
future world where industrial espionage through dream invasion is
becoming commonplace, is that Fischer has employed sentinels to guard
his mind from intrusion, and even more incredible is the idea that
inception must take place in the third level of dreams within dreams,
and that time slows down exponentially against real time as each new
dream state is entered.
Never afraid to tell part of the story
backwards, Nolan introduces
Marion Cotillard as Cobb's dead missus Mal, who haunts the movie
throughout along with the two kids she has left behind. Cobb must also
come to terms with
his past, and the circumstances behind his loss. Despite the amazing
special effects, the best scene of the movie occurs in flashback, when
Cobb desperately tries to persuade Mal that she is back in reality
after the journey back through their self induced dream states damages
her mind. This provides us with the emotional heart of the movie. Then,
just as the finale leaves us breathless, we are treated to a quite
brilliant ending that will have audiences analysing and interpreting it
for some time afterwards...
If anything di Caprio was even better in 'Shutter Island' and it is tricky to say which film is more likely to result in him getting a Best Actor Oscar nomination, but Inception is surely a shoe in for the Academy's Best Picture and Nolan may well also will win for directing and best original screenplay.
My Rating : 10/10 Astonishing
Review written by John Franklin : September 2010
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