"INCEPTION" ☆☆☆☆
I didn't expect anything out of "The Dark Knight" when it was released two summers ago. At least, not anything spectacular.
I was at work opening day, and my friend had phoned me vigorously until I finally picked up on break, in a bathroom stall. He said he had just seen it the night before, at Thursday midnight (breaking an arrangement we had to see it together), and excitedly stated that once I got off shift that we must go and see it, must, right then, not a second sooner. For him to bathe in movie honor again, for me to go to the best moviegoing experience of my life (for him, anyway). He also didn't leave out that it was the best, the best, movie he had ever seen. Several times, in fact. And several times more on the car ride over to the theater. Even then, sitting in what was a packed movie house at early morning, my expectations weren't all too high. I had wanted to see "The Dark Knight" - the new, then second and highly-anticipated Batman movie proclaimed a comic-book movie masterpiece after exploding reviews had stamped it, with a red-hot poker, "genius" and "masterful" - but wasn't as excited to see it as those critics were, and decided to wait, after my friend's dire persistence, until the following Saturday to finally watch it.
And, like every critic and movie fanboy, found "The Dark Knight" a fantastic entertainment. Not really a bat-masterpiece (as some have coined), but instead a well done, thoroughly cooked, genre crime film, and succeeding better as a full-out immersive experience. The cleverly layered, vigorous intercutting caper, captured in downtown Chicago/Gotham City in all it's architectural glory, with more wow-induced stunts, exploding car-chases, an involved (though not impressive) ensemble cast, and vamped-up script, then any smaller budgeted crime drama would get; and all-out villainy run by Heath Ledger's crazy/master madman Joker, a role that popularly proved his talent as a diverse actor, and prematurely after his sudden death only months before the movie's release. And director, co-screenwriter Christopher Nolan, who helmed the first franchise reboot "Batman Begins" (of which I didn't like as much), and turned the Batman legacy itself into the majestic noir fable of youthfully wronged millionaire/vigilante Bruce Wayne, and his caped alter-ego Batman, ridding Gotham City of evil tyranny, something far from the comic-books, or even Tim Burton's fun Goth spin, or even beyond the dreams of what executive producer Michael Uslan had dreamed, who had made it his sole goal to produce a "serious" Batman film.
And still, even after "The Dark Knight," going into Christopher Nolan's new massive-scale noir/science fiction blockbuster, "Inception," starring Leonardo DiCaprio and another array of popular actors, in the all-too-real world of ambit and limitless dreams, I didn't expect any type of greatness out of it. That Nolan could be the next Spielberg, or Lucas, or Kubrick, and that "The Dark Knight" was just a once-every-so-often success, possibly proving Nolan as the heir to Spielberg, and those others, as the king of popular, and mind-bending, movie entertainment.
And, still, I was wrong again. "Inception" is the type of mass-popular entertainment (or extravaganza), and quality film, with the level of complexity and depth, that so immerses us, like the world of dreams itself, that we can't possibly get out of it, or want to. A world of tangible dreams, of actual boundaries and mathematical sureness, that the dangers are all-too-real. If you get hurt in a dream, you feel the pain. If your body moves while you dream, your dream-self moves with it. Like Joseph Gorden-Levitt, fist-fighting in a classy hotel corridor as the space turns over and about like a fun-house circle, and Gordon-Levitt floats in the air like an astronaut, as if hovering on a shuttle in orbit, as his real body goes through free fall, all the while spinning out of control, and for us in agonizing/mesmerizing slow-motion, ticking down the time until all drastically ends. Ends into what? Into death. And when you die in a dream, you may not die in real life, but you go "in limbo," the dreaded unconscious hyper-sleep where dream and reality merge, and minutes seem like years, moments like life times, where whole cities are built from the ground up and crumble in front of your eyes, and where you may very well lose your sanity. These are the very real consequences of Leo DiCaprio and his skilled team of "extractors," dreamscape specialists who invade the minds of unsuspecting persons and steal their "secrets" and sell to the respected employer, and who here brave the mind of rising-up young business mogul Robert Fisher Jr. (Cillian Murphy) to instead "plant" an idea, called "inception," so he would believe it is his own, and by-and-large change the world, and cause the dismantle of his inherit conglomerate. "Inception" is a tricky business, to successfully and convincingly make believe the concept was the person's own, something that could easily be traced back to the dreamer, or "architect," of whom creates the actual physical world of the dream itself to bring the hapless subject in to make feel at home, or believe that his dream is his, is benign, while these extractors go about inhabiting and manipulating like a virus, a comparison DiCaprio's master extractor Cobb believes is similar to what ideas actually are. But it's also dangerous, with "projections" that come in with the dreamer's emotionally compromised subconscious as skilled assassins or deadly loved ones as guilty memories; and delving into layers, dreams within dreams, to further deepen the sleep of Fisher, and to subject him to the weaknesses of his own subconscious, in order to successfully plant the idea. But it could mean for Cobb and his team, as well as Fisher himself, to fall into limbo, and never wake again.
The movie "Inception" is like the various layers of the dream, well-constructed, diligently detailed, and wholly convincing. A movie that once it gets further into the dreams with Cobb, into the various levels and depthless pits of the psyche, drags us along with it, drenching us in it's complexity and network of catacombs and mazes. In "Inception's" ultimate payoff climax, where it excitingly careens us on the edge of our seats, Cobb's crew goes deeper than they ever imagined, having to get out not just three layers, but four; a van-free fall, a death-spinning hallway, a snow-glad mountain fortress shootout, and Cobb's own memories, his dead wife Mal's fatal lair of hate and despair. Like "The Dark Knight," Nolan, with his swift editor Lee Smith and Hans Zimmer's booming music cues, madly intercut between it all, and by this point the movie becomes so engrossing that by the end of it you might feel walking out of the theater you were in an unescapable dream, living in a virtual hell, and that the only way to get out is death, or worse.
"Inception's" main architect is Chris Nolan, the writer/director, who knows the world he is creating, loves it to death (he spent years writing the screenplay), and stylishly takes us through it like this were a cool "Ocean's Eleven" heist, and Dicaprio and team, Gordon-Levitt, Murphy, Ellen Page, Ken Wantanbe, Tom Hardy, Dileep Rao, and a group of other well known actors, are the George Clooney's, Brad Pitt's, and Matt Damon's. And with Lee Smith's rapid editing, Hans Zimmer's ferocious synthetic/orchestral score, Wally Pfister's steely photography, and Guy Hendrick Dyas ironclad production design, puts us into this brazen and bold world just as well. And for Nolan personally, "Inception" is a much bolder, bigger, and hugely imagined film than even "The Dark Knight," and far better than "Batman Begins" and his "The Prestige," another mind-cruncher about merciless rival magicians, and their highly sought after secrets, in early 1900's London. And you'll all have to tell me about "Memento," a supposed mind-boggler masterpiece (other than maybe "Inception," no doubt), by a novice Nolan, I haven't seen (I'll get around to it).
While it has a cleverly structured script and deft directing from Nolan, I still feel there were flaws in "Inception." The characters, even DiCaprio's Cobb with his visual representation of his guilt ridden conscious as Marion Cotillard's tragic Mal, are all pretty weak, and aren't as deep as the dreams they so immensely dive into. And the first half of the film, before the movie takes us into Fisher's mind with Cobb and team, and so entrapping us, was a bit slow-paced with insipid exposition (just not as cool or satisfying as "Ocean Eleven" expositional planning). Not a bad first half at all, but put "Inception" off to a less-than-fantastic start.
And the ending, even with how clever and perfectly whole an idea that brings all of the thing full circle, was too predictable, and I saw coming even before the movie started. It could have been how discreetly the film was marketed that I was looking for something to be a little off, or maybe I was more clever than the idea itself. Anyway, the ending is perfect, and beautifully symbolized. You couldn't go wrong.
Many critics will see this film again, and many moviegoers, too, and I certainly will. Not really to catch anything I've missed (actually, "Inception" isn't as mind-bending or twisty-turny as most have said it is, at least not in the film's plot), but just to experience it again, and see a film that is a true movie lover's delight. Chris Nolan I don't think is the next great pop director, but loves the movies just as much as we do. He knows what we want to see.
To submerge us in ecstatic movie dreams. Go see it. Go see it twice. "Inception" is a marvel of a movie.
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