A little indulgent but who cares!

Rating: 8/10 (16 July 2010)

Nolan does it again and this time he knows he can get away with it! Inception is one of those mind numbing movies that demand a lot from the viewer and pushes the boundary of imagination. Dealing with dreams and memories is not something new for Hollywood(read matrix, esotsm, what dreams may come, cell etc) but where inception stands out is the brilliance that only Nolan can lend to the story and the execution.
The visual effects, the acting, the cinematography, the story telling and more has just keen kicked up a notch! In many of his movies, the characters or say the protagonist is shown with a shortcoming or a secret that he/she needs to overcome and inception is no different! Di Caprio plays Cobb; a thief of a different kind who specializes in entering peoples dreams and extracting secrets. Fate has it that to overcome his fears and get back to his family, he is forced to perform inception, a dangerous process that involves planting new ideas into a subject after entering his/her dream. What follows is a complex and twisted story of dreams within dreams, blurred visions and powerful imagination.
It is always important to weave a story no matter how complex around simple realities that are "more" human than what the story highlights. Nolan does it by focusing on Cobb and his psychological challenges of dealing with simple emotions like love, guilt and redemption. This is where the story becomes indulgent when we see the director trying hard to keep the audience rooted to the story but not often able to do so.
Any artist can only go as far as his imagination takes him and cannot possibly predict the depths that the mind of his audience can reach. Nolan certainly pushes his imagination with Inception and teases his audience to do better. Inception might need more than one viewing to comprehend the hidden nuances but whatever be the case, the movie certainly leaves you grappling with your own dreams and realities.
Surely a little self-indulgent but somehow, nobody seems to bother!
ps: the movie ends in typical Nolan style but somehow one knows how it ends in "his" mind!