INCEPTION Review d: Christopher Nolan

INCEPTION (2010)

Direction: Christopher Nolan

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Michael Caine, Tom Hardy, Ken Watanabe, Cillian Murphy, Tom Berenger, Pete Postlethwaite, Dileep Rao, Lukas Haas

Screenplay: Christopher Nolan

Ken Watanabe, Leonardo DiCaprio, Inception

Christopher Nolan's Inception is a summer blockbuster that doesn't act like one. Unlike so many of the tedious, one-note Big Movies that get released year after year, Inception has not only brains, but a heart and soul as well. The fact that this sci-fier/thriller also offers fascinating special effects is like icing on the cake. They're not necessary, but having them makes the whole thing that much better.
Leonardo DiCaprio plays Cobb, a man who steals information for high-priced clients; his method is to enter people's dreams to extract data hidden in their subconscious. When the powerful businessman Saito (Ken Watanabe) offers him a new job, Cobb sees an offer he can't refuse for it will allow him to return home to his children in America, where he is a fugitive of the law.
The catch is this: rather than extract an idea, Saito requests that Cobb perform an inception, that is, plant a brand new idea from within someone's mind. Specifically, the job entails planting an idea in the mind of the son (Cillian Murphy) of the CEO of his largest competitor. The CEO (Pete Postlethwaite) is dying, and Saito wants the company broken up so as
to prevent it from becoming a monopoly.
Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), one of Cobb's associates, claims it can't be done. Cobb disagrees. "I've done it," he proclaims. But he won't say how or to whom.
Cobb is a man full of secrets, one of which is Mal (Marion Cotillard), his dead wife who invades his dreams with a mix of glaring rage and deep sadness. Cotillard's brilliant performance creates Mal as a figure that is both scary and tragic; and the more we see the two of them together, the better we understand both her and his pain.
Essentially, Saito's job offer sets up Inception as a classic heist movie, but with one twist: they're not trying to break into a vault to get something, but to put it in there. This twist alone imbues freshness to a genre that sorely needs it. That director-screenwriter Christopher Nolan goes much beyond the genre's basic formula makes Inception all the more gripping.
The way dreams operate in Inception is best explained by the film itself; having said that, as far as I can see the mechanics perform flawlessly within the film's framework — and I've now seen Inception three times. Nolan reportedly spent over a decade working on the script, and his care is evident. The way he constructs and then maneuvers through each dream, and then through dreams within dreams, is mesmerizing.
On a personal level, Inception has compelled me to think about my own dreams and how they work. How often do we actually know that we're dreaming? I'm reminded of Richard Linklater's Waking Life, which discusses the idea of lucid dreaming: dreaming with the knowledge that you're dreaming. Nolan takes this concept one step further, asking the question, "What if we could share lucid dreams with someone else? Or many other people?"