What is Inception? It’s a question that’s intrigued fans since Chris Nolan began teasing us, once again, with a clever-clever viral campaign for the film.
A bit like The Matrix before it, Inception is that rare beast: a movie that mashes together many familiar elements from other media to deliver something that feels fresh and original. That’s where the similarities to the Wachowskis’ opus come to an end though, because Nolan’s brainchild is very much its own movie.
Obviously the plot mechanics of Inception have been clouded in mystery so I’m loathe to reveal too much here. What I will say is that its tagline “Your mind is the scene of the crime” tells you everything you need to know, while really telling you nothing until you’ve seen the film. In it Leonardo DiCaprio (in his second awards-worthy performance of the year after Scorsese’s masterful Shutter Island) plays Dom Cobb, a skilled thief and expert at extraction: the art of stealing valuable secrets from deep within the subconscious during dream states. His skill has made him a wanted man, constantly on the run and looking over his shoulder. Offered an enticing proposition by big businessman Saito (Ken Watanbe), Cobb is tasked with an impossible mission that, if pulled off, could make all his troubles go away. That mission is inception. Time to assemble the team.
The film is populated by an impressive international ensemble that go by various handles, which you will need to decipher when you watch the film. There’s the aforementioned Watanabe as The Tourist, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as The Point Man, Ellen Page as The Architect (don’t worry there’s no metaphysical waffle to be endured here), Tom Hardy as The Forger, Cillian Murphy as The Mark, Dileep Rao as The Chemist, Marion Cotillard as The Shade and Michael Caine as The Lucky Charm, each and every one acting up a storm alongside the ever-impressive Leo. If there’s one thing Nolan knows, it’s how to pull a performance out of his actors.
Nolan manages to deftly merge together mind-twisting, brain-challenging storytelling with large scale action set-pieces to create the closest thing yet to a perfect representation of his mind’s eye. In other words it’s a film that appeals on some level to all of us: challenging intellectual concepts, classic noir-ish mystery, scientific revelations, melodramatic character motivations, witty repartee and big action bangs – especially during the central “quadruple-layered” heist – un-be-liev-able! In other words it’s a movie miracle that seldom, if ever, graces our big screens.
Inception’s influences are there for all to see. From the Bondian globe-trotting spy shenanigans; to the “end-is-the-beginning-is-the-end” narrative structure so favoured by J.J. Abrams; to the Heat heist flick formula also pilfered for The Dark Knight; to the real/dream world cyberculture of The Matrix (or even Alex Proyas’s vastly underrated Dark City); to the mysterious story machinations of Lost; to the reality-bending geometric paintings of M.C. Escher; right the way up to last year’s cruelly overlooked sci-fi actioner Push. If ever there was the perfect embodiment of “there are no new stories to tell, just new ways to tell it” this is it.
So what is Inception? Inception is planting your own idea at the centre of someone’s brain so that they believe it was theirs in the first place. Just as Nolan keeps making us believe that the films he chooses to make are exactly the sort of flick we want to see right now. He is a man of incredible talent that keeps churning out masterpiece after masterpiece, truly marking himself out as the premier film-maker on the planet, well deserving of the Kubrick-meets-Mann title that I have chosen to bestow on him.
[etRating value=“ 5”]
A bit like The Matrix before it, Inception is that rare beast: a movie that mashes together many familiar elements from other media to deliver something that feels fresh and original. That’s where the similarities to the Wachowskis’ opus come to an end though, because Nolan’s brainchild is very much its own movie.
Obviously the plot mechanics of Inception have been clouded in mystery so I’m loathe to reveal too much here. What I will say is that its tagline “Your mind is the scene of the crime” tells you everything you need to know, while really telling you nothing until you’ve seen the film. In it Leonardo DiCaprio (in his second awards-worthy performance of the year after Scorsese’s masterful Shutter Island) plays Dom Cobb, a skilled thief and expert at extraction: the art of stealing valuable secrets from deep within the subconscious during dream states. His skill has made him a wanted man, constantly on the run and looking over his shoulder. Offered an enticing proposition by big businessman Saito (Ken Watanbe), Cobb is tasked with an impossible mission that, if pulled off, could make all his troubles go away. That mission is inception. Time to assemble the team.
The film is populated by an impressive international ensemble that go by various handles, which you will need to decipher when you watch the film. There’s the aforementioned Watanabe as The Tourist, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as The Point Man, Ellen Page as The Architect (don’t worry there’s no metaphysical waffle to be endured here), Tom Hardy as The Forger, Cillian Murphy as The Mark, Dileep Rao as The Chemist, Marion Cotillard as The Shade and Michael Caine as The Lucky Charm, each and every one acting up a storm alongside the ever-impressive Leo. If there’s one thing Nolan knows, it’s how to pull a performance out of his actors.
Nolan manages to deftly merge together mind-twisting, brain-challenging storytelling with large scale action set-pieces to create the closest thing yet to a perfect representation of his mind’s eye. In other words it’s a film that appeals on some level to all of us: challenging intellectual concepts, classic noir-ish mystery, scientific revelations, melodramatic character motivations, witty repartee and big action bangs – especially during the central “quadruple-layered” heist – un-be-liev-able! In other words it’s a movie miracle that seldom, if ever, graces our big screens.
Inception’s influences are there for all to see. From the Bondian globe-trotting spy shenanigans; to the “end-is-the-beginning-is-the-end” narrative structure so favoured by J.J. Abrams; to the Heat heist flick formula also pilfered for The Dark Knight; to the real/dream world cyberculture of The Matrix (or even Alex Proyas’s vastly underrated Dark City); to the mysterious story machinations of Lost; to the reality-bending geometric paintings of M.C. Escher; right the way up to last year’s cruelly overlooked sci-fi actioner Push. If ever there was the perfect embodiment of “there are no new stories to tell, just new ways to tell it” this is it.
So what is Inception? Inception is planting your own idea at the centre of someone’s brain so that they believe it was theirs in the first place. Just as Nolan keeps making us believe that the films he chooses to make are exactly the sort of flick we want to see right now. He is a man of incredible talent that keeps churning out masterpiece after masterpiece, truly marking himself out as the premier film-maker on the planet, well deserving of the Kubrick-meets-Mann title that I have chosen to bestow on him.
[etRating value=“ 5”]
