Talk about movies of scope! Chris Nolan wrote and directed this brilliant labyrinth of a movie mind game that is wonderfully acted, highly suspenseful and downright confounding to the audience — and to the characters, too. He directed Memento, The Prestige and Dark Knight and he uses all three to present this 2 hour and 18 minute film, best watched in IMAX.
Inception (Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe, Tom Hardy, Marion Cotillard, Cillian Murphy, Tom Berenger, Michael Caine) – Mind games. Mind games in the future. Dark Knight, The Prestige and Memento Director Christopher Nolan combines his special effects expertise from two Batman movies and his backwards murder thriller to craft the So-Far Movie of the Year. The film takes place in a future where technology allows trips (literally) into the mind: specifically dreams. Leo plays Cobb, an “extractor,” a person who “steals dreams” of others. He is facing his greatest task ever: to infiltrate the mind of the son, Robert Fisher, Jr. (Cillian Murphy), of a industrialist with designs to rule the energy needs of the world. Cobb wants to implant an idea into the son’s mind when it is most “open,” which is during his dreams: when the mind has no filters, no logical start or end.
It is all very complicated. We move from the present consciousness through three levels of dreams, each of which operates at different speeds in different times. While the characters and the audience never know whether we’re in a dream or in reality (well, the characters can know from the “totems” they carry with them), we can follow which dream level we’re in since we’re watching three different intersecting stories. The only things they seem to have in common is Cobb; his sidekick/partner, Arthur (played by (500 Days of Summer) star Joseph Gordon-Levitt; and a college student/”dream architect” played by Ellen Page). Are you confused? So is the audience most of the time.
But it doesn’t matter to the watcher. We are engulfed by the plot, the special effects, the suspense, the gunplay, the soundtrack, and the sheer magnitude of Nolan’s film. The well over two hours fly by and the plot unfolds relatively slowly. But, as I said before, it doesn’t matter. It is the journey that counts. There is even a subplot that governs Cobb’s every action. His beloved wife (Marion Cotillard) is dead but she keeps popping up, appearing in his dreams, of course. He is desperately trying to get back to his kids but she tries to seduce him back, which would doom him to “limbo,” where, unlike most dreams, if you die, you don’t wake up.
Nolan also wrote this script, which works here because he knows exactly what he was trying to do. Good for him. Not so good for the audience. I wondered how he was going to extract the audience from this web of dreams. So he wraps it all up: the son and father come together; the three dreams converge (as they must); Cobb and his wife face the moment of truth; and the protagonists face death and possible limbo. It’s a race to the finish. As an audience, you care about these characters; you want them to return to the real world; and you figure there will be mysteries unsolved. You are right. Now see the movie to see how it all resolves.
Incidentally, see it in IMAX if you can. The picture is amazing and the music enhances the movie on the big, big screen.