The first half of 2010 hasn’t provided the public with a plethora of quality cinema. It has been a strong contrast to recent years in that there hasn’t been very much I found worth spending $10 of my hard-earned cash on. Toy Story 3 was the exception, but besides that little gem, I have been overwhelmed with disappointment over what has been offered at the Cineplex. You can typically count on the summer to unload several blockbusters that are at least a blast to see. But after Prince of Persia, Knight and Day and many others bombed, I began to lose hope that this summer would bring us anything worth remembering.
Finally that changed.
Christopher Nolan, director of some the best films over the last decade (Memento and The Dark Knight), changed this summer’s landscape in a singe weekend with Inception. With a brilliant marketing campaign that left much of the plot out of the trailers, TV spots and posters, Inception wowed America and the world on day one.
It is no wonder almst every detail was left out of the ads. Two and half hours were barely enough to explain every detail, I can’t imagine trying to present a general idea into a few seconds. But I am going to try.
Leonardo DiCaprio plays Dom Cobb, a man with the ability to enter someone’s subconscious as he sleeps and extract ideas for whomever happens to be paying him (this method is known as extraction). He has a team that consists of Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) Ariadne (Ellen Page), Eames (Tom Hardy), Yusuf (Dileep Rao) and Saito (Ken Watanabe). Saito, after being one of Cobb’s targets, hires Cobb and his team to infiltrate the mind of his business competitor Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy) and instead of extracting an idea, he wants Cobb to plant one (known as inception).
Ariadne is the newest member of the team, and as she learns more, so does the viewer. As the audience is thrust deeper and deeper into this extremely complex story we learn more about Cobb and his past, including his wife Mal (Marion Cotillard). We are thrown into trippy scenes where the city of Paris folds on top of itself, where walkways and mirrors appear out of nowhere. Out of context, none of these events would make sense but in the world of Inception, it makes perfect sense.
The dream sequences are more than just random happenings. It would have been easy to throw in a pink elephant or a talking dog, but everything that happens in the dreams happens for a reason. Without giving too much away, there is a scene where Arthur is having to fight a villain in a hotel hallway while it spins over and over again, and the reason for its spinning is nothing short of genius. This scene is easily one of the best scene put to celluloid in recent memory. It will remain a pivotal part of cinema’s pop-culture as much as when Neo slowed down the speeding bullets in The Matrix or the first time we met Hal 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The performances by the entire cast are extraordinary most notably that of Cotillard who has the task of taking on the most complex character in the film. But what is most incredible about Inception is its screenplay. The story is complex, and can be confusing at times (don’t listen to anyone who says it’s not), but when the film comes to an end everything fits into place. There is a reason for every sentence and every action, and missing just one could render the viewer in a state of utter confusion by the time the credits roll. But if you commit fully to what Inception brings to the screen, your patience will be greatly rewarded.
Hollywood doesn’t make this kind of movie anymore, which can easily be seen when you look at what has come out in the last six months. Audiences are looking for sequels and shoot-em-up fare that are fun, but lack the intelligence more films used to have.
It has been a while since I left a theater in awe of a director, and Inception left me in awe. What Nolan accomplishes is nothing short of astounding. This is the kind of movie that will be just as worthwhile and illuminating the tenth time as it is the first. And for that, Nolan has cemented himself as our generation’s Stanley Kubrick.