"Well, THIS was never mentioned in the travel guide."
If you’re expecting a mindfuck, kudos to you. You win. Here’s a biscuit. In fact, were I to try to explain the story to you, I have a suspicious inkling it would be about as beneficial as bra during Mardi Gras. To call Inception “high premise” is an understatement. I guarantee you will spend the first fifteen minutes of the film staring at the screen, soaking in its in cinematic beauty, grinning in anticipation, reveling in its delicious film noir-ishness, and wondering just what the hell is going on. Just think of the posters and you know the selling points – a mind-bending genre-bender with a cast to make Robert Altman proud and a writer-director credited with single-handedly making the superhero genre a moot point. (I honestly want to shake each cast members hand and thank them for choosing this project. Thank you, Ellen Page, for not being an acerbic hipster. Thank you, Cillian Murphy, for not being creepy. Thank you, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, for just being you. Aw, shucks.) Christopher Nolan, who I’m still thanking for (in case you frequent small, enclosed spaces with walls of granite) directing Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, presents the most-hyped, most-discussed film of the year, and it definitely does not disappoint.
"They were totally like this when I got here."
Nolan structures his story as a classic heist film, all noir-ish style and slicked-back hair intact. Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio, who I would thank if I still didn’t hold a grudge from Titanic) is a thief. Alas, it is not mere diamonds or small sacks with dollar signs he steals, but people’s secrets. By breaking into their subconscious through their dreams. Along with his partner-in-crime (Gordon-Levitt), and their crack team (Ken Watanabe, Tom Hardy, and Page – the newcomer, upon whom all much-needed exposition is foisted), he begins One. Last. Heist. But rather than steal a secret, they are implanting an idea… the titular “inception.” To get so deep into their subject’s (Murphy) subconscious, they need to “go deep” – as in a dream within a dream within a dream. Which is a matter of life and death. But, ALAS, the stakes are EVEN HIGHER. Because he’s gone in and out of reality more times than Hunter S. Thompson, Cobb’s mind is fracturing. Who is that slinky, sexy femme fatale / whisp of his imagination? All I’ll say is this: Marion Cotillard. That’s all you NEED to know. As we sink into this world – or worlds – the question of what is reality and what is a dream plays as heavily upon the characters as it does on us. We never really know do we? OH THE EXISTENTIAL WOE!
Married to HER? Yes, I'm definitely dreaming.
It seems, however, for a film as talked about as this one, finding the right words to say about Inception, or even the right thoughts to think about it proves… hm, problematic. It’s not a fault of the film – do not mistake me, it’s a compliment – it’s just that it runs rife with contradictions as subtle or blatant as those you see in any human being. For the complexities and layers within its story, it’s really just a simple plot with simple characters. We know what they want and how they can get it. We root for them. Their motivations are simple – for love and money, fear of pain and death. We might think we are following the plan – we are in a dream within a dream within a dream. Got it. What makes it so complex? Is it perhaps that somewhere under there is a nagging suspicion that no, it’s not so simple.
I feel I should make a joke about overreacting to someone peeing in your pool, but I'm sure it's been done.
I think of Arthur Dent in Douglas Adams’ classic The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, when he finds out the entire world is a giant computer created by someone on another planet: “All through my life I’ve had this strange unaccountable feeling that something was going on in the world, something big, even sinister, and no one would tell me what it was.” To which he’s told: “No, that’s just perfectly normal paranoia. Everyone in the universe has that.” If I can be so bold as to offer – what countless other bloggers and reviewers and reviewers of reviews have suggested and criticized and commented on – my opinion as to what it is about Inception that works, it’s that Nolan has tapped into this feeling universal to us all. That same feeling that plagued Descartes and made The Matrix a hit. But not only does he so perfectly trigger that feeling, he surrounds with a beautiful, entertaining film. Let come the bloggers with their pitchforks and flaming rags on sticks!
