Any well-executed story should feel like a vivid dream. After all, dreams are surrealistic images and stories our subconscious creates each night. The only difference between getting sucked into a story and dreaming, besides the fact that we are awake, is that when we get caught in a story we are escaping into someone else’s dream. We are captivated by someone else’s creation. Inventing stories really is an art.
Enter “Inception,” the decade-long dream child (literally) of writer and director Christopher Nolan. Nolan is Hollywood’s hottest director right now. Ever since arriving on the scene with 2000’s “Memento,” another head-trip of a movie, Nolan has directed film after film with precision, heart, three-dimensional characters and mind-bending plot points. All of these directorial abilities of Nolan’s culminated in 2008’s “The Dark Knight,” which went on to become the second highest grossing film of all time (Now the third highest behind James Cameron’s “Avatar” and “Titanic”).
People wondered if future Nolan projects would suffer due to being in the shadow of ‘Knight,’ if they would always be compared to it as Francis Ford Coppola films have always been compared to the first two Godfather films.
Well, with “Inception,” those concerns may be put to rest. The movie, which has been praised by critics and audiences alike, just finished its second straight week at number one in the box office, and with good reason.
By now, most people are aware of the plot or have seen the film so I will try to keep its summation brief. Dom Cobb, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, is a dream extractor. In the world of “Inception,” technology is advanced to the point where people can create an architectural design inside someone’s subconscious, infiltrate their dreams while they sleep and extract information from them.
Cobb can even set it up so that the mark is in a dream within a dream, or maybe three dreams, or maybe four. Sounds complicated right? It’s not, intense for sure, but complicated, not so much. Nolan wrote a screenplay and directed a film that is extremely original, not entirely linear, includes multiple storylines, delves into flashbacks, dives into the world of dreams and somehow all makes perfect sense.
Towards the beginning Cobb reluctantly takes a dangerous job where he will, instead of extracting an idea, actually plant an idea into someone’s subconscious. This task is called “Inception,” hence the movie’s title.
The whole film is top-notch and borderline flawless, including the cast. DiCaprio just keeps evolving as an actor. He continuously aligns himself with proven and talented directors and probably most important, knows a good screenplay when he reads one. For instance, audiences will never see DiCaprio in “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past 2” or anything like that.
Still, without taking anything away from DiCaprio, it is Joseph Gordon-Levitt that is the scene-stealer in this film. He plays Cobb’s partner Arthur, who is strictly business. Who would have thought the kid from “3rd Rock from the Sun” would become such a talented actor? I have always thought actors that do their own stunts is a good indicator of how hard an actor works at their craft and from what I understand, Gordon-Levitt did nearly all of his own stunts in a film with a lot of action and very little CGI.
The audience also gets to see a matured Ellen Page, who fits her character well as a recent college graduate hired to design the dreams. Instead of being some type of love interest for DiCaprio, Nolan uses her as an observer to the story and she watches it, and the demons that haunt Cobb, unfold along with the audience.
Overall, “Inception” is a mind-blowing film that blends multiple genres, gets excellent performances from its actors, will be talked about for years to come and was helmed by the best director working today.
Nolan has developed a reputation to the point where audiences will demand greatness from him. Because of this, I truly believe that Christopher Nolan’s name will soon be alongside elite directors such as Kubrick, Spielberg, Coppola and Scorsese.