the re-vitalization of a genre

Rating: 9/10 (22 January 2011)

Finally, a mega-budget Hollywood blockbuster worth raving about!
Christopher Nolan, the genius behind the last two "Batman" movies, hits new heights of creativity and imagination with "Inception," a sci-fi masterpiece about a technology that allows people to enter into the dreams of others with the express purpose of planting ideas into their subconscious. The concept is dealt with on such a complex level that, for a large portion of the movie, the characters are floating around in a dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream. Yet, so intelligent is the writing and so meticulously thought-out the premise that the audience almost never gets confused about what's happening and, thus, can just sit back, relax and go along for the ride.
And what a ride it turns out to be! Without getting too deep into the nuts-and-bolts aspects of the plotting itself, suffice it to say that the story involves a group of "dream manipulation experts" - Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Ellen Page, among others - who employ the technology known as Inception to enter into the pre-programmed dream of a young man (Cilliam Murphy) whose ailing father owns a giant energy firm. Their goal is to convince the son to break up the company after the old man (the late Pete Postlethwaite in one of his final performances) dies, so that a wealthy competitor (Ken Watanabe) will be able to pick up the pieces for himself. It's a tribute to Nolan's astuteness as a storyteller that he gives us this rather mundane overarching plot device rather than having the mission be about convincing someone to blow up half the civilized world or something equally over-the-top. This simpler motivation keeps the movie from sliding over into cautionary-tale territory - where most serious sci-fi works seem to eventually wind up - and allows us to concentrate more fully on the content and style of the dreams themselves.
Another triumph for the genre is that the movie gives us a central character who's actually worth caring about. DiCaprio, the head of the team that goes into the dream, is a generally reformed "corporate espionage thief" who lost his wife (Marion Cotillard) as a result of a dream-traveling scenario gone awry and who has been wracked with grief and guilt over the incident ever since. As if that weren't bad enough, he's been forbidden to return to the United States, where his two small children reside, because the authorities mistakenly believe he was responsible for her death. It is only when Watanabe promises to get the murder charges dropped if DiCaprio does this one last job for him that he agrees to take on the mission. As embodied by DiCaprio, who, by the way, has never been better, Dom Cobb becomes the heart and soul of a movie that, given the genre's track record in that regard, could easily have had neither a heart nor a soul. Instead, Nolan and DiCaprio draw us into the picture with an emotional force rarely found in even the most intimate indie drama, let alone an effects-laden super-spectacular such as this one.
And spectacular is certainly the word for the cornucopia of visual delights the movie offers up to its audience, as a team of FX wizards creates dream worlds of eye-popping complexity and design.
Like even the best of films, "Inception" is not without its flaws. I could certainly have done without some of those skiing scenes near the end, and I'm sure there are enough holes in the plot line to keep perfection-seekers nitpicking and carping for years to come. However, I also imagine that "Inception" will be dissected and studied over by film students and film lovers alike in endless fashion, and that their efforts will lead to the discovery of themes, motifs, symbols etc., that are not readily apparent on a single viewing, when we're just dazzled by all the brilliance and ingenuity that's gone into the work.
That's all the more reason for movie watchers to return to this cinematic treat regularly and often.