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Inception
Reviewed By: Chris J. Lawton
What is real? It’s a question
Inception asks multiple times and it’s a question you will ask yourself long after the film ends. And while it’s not going to be for everyone—a lot of people will probably look at this film and see nothing but pretentiousness—it does need to be seen by everyone, at least once. Because, this movie represents everything Science-Fiction should be, and everything recent Science-Fiction movies have failed to achieve.
At its absolute bare-bones core,
Inception is a heist movie, like
Ocean’s Eleven or
The Italian Job. It involves a leader—in this case Dom Cobb, played by
Leonardo DiCaprio—gathering a team of specialists together for one final job.
See, Cobb is an interesting type of thief. Using technology created by the government to train soldiers, he enters the world of the dreams to steal secrets planted deep within the subconscious. He’s approached by a potential client—Saito, played by
Ken Watanabe—who hires him to do the opposite. Saito wants Cobb and his partner, Arthur (Cobra Commander himself,
Joseph Gordon-Levitt) to go into someone’s dream and, rather than steal secrets, plant an idea. It’s a concept that gives our movie its title, “inception”.
The mark in this little venture is Robert Fisher, Jr. (
Cillian Murphy), the heir to a multi-national corporation. Saito wants Fisher to break up the company, and he thinks a dream-planted idea is the best way to do that.
Inception becomes even more of a heist movie, when we're introduced to the wide cast of experts needed for this final job. We’ve got Eames, the forger (
Tom Hardy), a master of disguise both in and out of the dream; Yusuf, the chemist (Dileep Rao), whose concoctions will hopefully be enough to keep everyone asleep long enough to complete the mission; and Ariadne, the architect (
Ellen Page), who will build the world of the dream that they will all inhabit.
Once all the players are gathered, a complicated plan is created and executed. But, there's a hiccup. Cobb can't seem to avoid the specter of his dead wife, who keeps popping into his dreams to complicate things.
At this point, the comparisons to a heist movie pretty much end and the true fun begins. Because while most heist movies involve robbing a bank or a casino,
Inception uses the infinite canvas of the mind as its setting. And director
Christopher Nolan does this to perfection, using computer imagery to wow us visually with every scene.
And it’s not just the CG scenes either. Overall, the direction in this movie is top-notch, something we’ve come to expect from
Nolan, even in his movies that don’t involve a flying rodent. He’s got a way of keeping characters grounded, despite the fantastic situations in which they find themselves. And
Inception is no exception.
Of course, that is also thanks to the wonderful cast, who nails each of their respective parts with perfection. As the star of the movie, and really the focus,
DiCaprio has the heaviest job on his shoulders, as his emotions basically set the tone for the entire movie. Thankfully,
DiCaprio turns in an excellent performance (something else many of us should come to expect, if we don’t already) as Cobb. He shifts seamlessly from broken soul to committed leader to brilliant strategist all without breaking a sweat.
Despite my constant stream of Cobra Commander jokes,
Gordon-Levitt actually gives a pretty solid performance. And
Page is excellent, as always. Basically put, no complaints at all, when it comes to the acting. Every single one of them is absolutely terrific.
But, great direction and great acting don’t necessarily make a great movie. No, there’s one more key component we’ve yet to look at and that’s the story. And, again, I’m gonna gush.
As I mentioned above, the main question the movie asks is “What is real?” It’s actually a concept that Cobb introduces pretty early in the movie, as he explains to Ariadne, “When we’re in a dream, we think it’s real. It’s only after we wake up that we realize something was off.” This is a concept that
Nolan plays ping-pong with, batting it from one side of the table to the other.
Even when they’re in a dream they constructed, it can feel so real, they might lose themselves in the world they created.
Nolan takes this concept even further as he deals with levels of dreams within dreams, and the concept of limbo, the deepest level of dreaming, in which you can live out years of your life, while hours pass in the real world.
And the story digs even deeper into the psyche of our main character, as Cobb struggles with the loss of his wife. I mentioned her up above and I can see that my description makes her sound kind of like a vaudeville villain, invading the dream, while twisting her moustache and going "ha ha HA!". But, it's not like that at all. She represents a part of his life that he struggles with constantly. And that struggle bleeds over into his dreams to raise hell. It's just one more point, in a long list, that
Nolan gets right in this film.
The greatest works of Science-Fiction ask some question of the human experience, which we are supposed to think about long after the credits roll. And I implore anyone, who has seen this movie, to ever look at a dream the same way again.
Here’s the thing, though.
Nolan presents these philosophical concepts, but he doesn’t beat you over the head with them. A trend we’ve seen in recent Science-Fiction involves the creator setting his agenda and then force-feeding it to you, telling you that you have to agree with him. This is usually done by making the villains of the movie the people who disagree with him (See:
Avatar).
Now, there’s nothing wrong with this. Quite the opposite, actually. This is a staple of the genre going back to at least 1927, with
Metropolis by Fritz Lang, and probably even further back in Science-Fiction literature, on the whole.
But the greatest works of Science-Fiction—
2001: A Space Odyssey,
The Forbidden Planet, etc., etc.—ask a question of the human existence and then leave it up to us to decide the correct answer.
This is what
Inception does, and that’s why it’s such a great Science-Fiction movie. I don’t think I’ve ever given a review a perfect score before. And spoiler alert: I do give this a perfect 5 out of 5.
And because of the perfect score, I have to justify it. So, here’s my attempt: I’m sure there were things wrong with this movie. I’m sure there were parts of the story that seemed choppy and unfinished. I’m sure there were some directorial cuts that seemed stark and out of place. But, I don’t remember them. I was so enamored with this film, while I watched it, that if there were shortcomings, I didn’t see them.
And, to me? That makes a perfect movie.
