Reel Look: Inception

Rating: 8/10 (16 July 2015)

"What do you want?" "Inception. Is it possible?" Written, produced and directed by Christopher Nolan, his 2010 action-drenched summer blockbuster science fiction heist thriller starred a large ensemble cast and, with and official budget of $160 million, went on to gross over $800 million worldwide, becoming the forty-fifth highest grossing film of all time. Nolan's reputation with 'The Dark Knight' helped secure the film's $100 million in advertising expenditure. So is the film as mind-bending as its title implies? Let's take a look.
Shortly after finishing 'Insomnia' (2002), Nolan wrote and eighty- page treatment about "dream stealers" envisioning a horror film inspired by lucid dreaming and presented the idea to Warner Bros. Feeling the need for more experience, he retired the project and instead worked on 'Batman Begins' (2005), 'The Prestige' (2006) and 'The Dark Knight' (2008). Spending half a year on the script, he purchased it from Warner Bros. in February 2009. Filmed in six countries and four continents, it began shooting in June 19, Tokyo 2009 and finished in Canada in November 22, 2009.
The film stars our two leading actors Leonardo DiCaprio as Dominick "Dom" Cobb and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Arthur, two "extractors", people who perform corporate espionage using an experimental military technology to infiltrate the subconscious of their targets to extract information while experiencing shared dreaming. This skill has made Dom a hot commodity for the world of corporate espionage The target of their latest project is Japanese business man Saito (Ken Wantanabe)caught forever in limbo as an aged man. The extraction is interrupted and the mission failed when sabotaged by a memory of Cobb's deceased wife Mal (Marion Cotillard). Saito reveals that he was actually auditioning the team to perform the difficult act of "inception": planting an idea into someone's subconscious. Their newest target: Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), the heir of an ailing competitor Maurice Fischer (Peter Postlethwaite) to break up the break up the energy conglomerate. He wants Cobb to plant the idea in Robert's head of dissolving his father's company. Should Cobb succeed, Saito tells him he will use his influence to clear Cobb of a murder charge, which will allow him to return home to his children. Arthur claims that inception is impossible as it is always possible to trace the origin of an idea. Cobb, claiming past experience, accepts the offer. After setting about assembling the rest of the team, including Eames (Tom Hardy), a conman and identity forger, Yusuf (Dileep Rao), a chemist who concocts a powerful sedative for a stable "dream within a dream", and a graduate student of architecture Ariadne (Ellen Page), (a name taken after the Greek princess mostly associated with mazes and labyrinths) tasked with designing the labyrinth of the dream landscapes recruited with the help of Professor Stephen Miles (Michael Caine), also a mentor and father-in-law to Cobb, they set out to perform the impossible. Though Cobb eventually gets this chance of a lifetime to redeem his life as a thief, a projection of his former wife anticipates Cobb's every move, a projection of which his subconscious created, appearing frequently in dreams/missions as a hostile force.
'Inception' not only falls into the category of a summer popcorn flick but also as a fresh approach of how CGI imagery can be beautifully used to incorporate its way into a story, disregarding showy explosions and alien monsters: objects exploding in slow- motion around a cafe, a city folding in half upon itself, good guys versus villain projections and duking it out amidst the hallway of a zero-gravity hotel. Visually and physically mind-bending in its stimulating high-tech grandeur, this fast-paced blockbuster offers a world where you are never sure where you are nor how you got there and will not let you awake until the film has run its adrenaline- fused course. Until Edith Piaf sings, what is real or unreal, what may be a dream within a dream...within a dream, 'Inception' offers edge-of-the-seat thrills and visual trickery, enlightening the eye and the mind with a bombardment consisting of a slew of special effects and labyrinthian storyline. As long as the top continues to spin, one can hardly want to dismiss the 'kick' when the end credits roll as it cuts to black as the viewer must now "awaken".