Christopher Nolan's Vision

Rating: 10/10 (24 July 2010)

Few careers are as remarkably unique as Christopher Nolan's: in only 12 years he's moved from the likes of Following, his debut feature which was shot during weekends for over a year, to Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, movies that transcend their "genre" roots and become great pieces of drama and cinema, conquering critics, awards and audiences (a billion dollars and counting for The Dark Knight). And in between these bigger projects, there are smart, compelling works like Memento and The Prestige, expert lessons in storytelling and filmmaking that, on some levels, are as much about Nolan himself as they are about the characters populating those fictional universes. And then there's Inception, a rarity among summer blockbusters in that it has a considerable budget (close to 200 million dollars), but also an intelligent, layered script which demands attention from the viewer (though not quite to the same degree as, say, The Matrix). It is also, arguably up to this point, Nolan's magnum opus.
Given the director's secretive attitude throughout production, the less said about the plot, the better, apart from some basic information: The main character, Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), is a man who specializes in stealing elements from other people's dreams, thanks to a technique he has perfected over the years and a team of accomplices (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page and Tom Hardy, among others). He's also haunted by visions of his dead wife (Marion Cotillard) and some dark secrets that prevent him from going back home. Then one day he is asked to do the opposite of his standard MO: this time, he has to plant an idea into the subject's mind. No longer extraction, but inception...
From the start, it is clear that Inception is far from the average sci-fi thriller: the opening act alone is a masterclass in narrative deception, thanks in no small part to Nolan's decision to avoid any visual gimmicks - color or format shifts - to separate the real world from the dream-scape. The truth is in the most minute details, and spotting them isn't easy. If The Prestige was a not-so-subtle metaphor for Nolan's filmmaking (the structure of the magic trick mirrored his handling of the plot), the concept is taken even further in Inception, where the maze (i.e. the layout of the dream) constructed by Page's Ariadne (a highly symbolic name, taken from Greek mythology), reflects the director's visual storytelling, with a masterful use of inter-cuts and music to guide us through his own cinematic labyrinth.
At the same time, the film also has to deliver on the action level, and it truly does: this is equal parts Memento (each scene clarifies or even contradicts the previous one) and Batman Begins (a fact that is slyly referenced in the casting of Ken Watanabe, Cillian Murphy and Michael Caine), with explosions, chases and shootouts that complete the story rather than being autonomous bits of film. From an impressive hotel set-piece that bears comparison with The Matrix (the big difference being that Nolan uses CGI as sparingly as possible) to the magnificent shot of a street defying the laws of physics, everything serves the story and its dream-like scope (the real reason Nolan waited almost a decade to actually make a film). As for the movie's human center, a necessary element to make the whole thing work on an emotional level, the doomed romance between Cobb (a superb DiCaprio who just keeps getting better) and his wife (kudos to Cotillard for giving such soul to a character that isn't, strictly speaking, real), is the summation of the director's filmography, from Memento to The Dark Knight via The Prestige: amidst all the spectacle and philosophy, it's the people that matter.
Inception is with no doubt one of the year's - heck, even the decade's - best films, complex but also hugely exciting and rewarding, a piece of work that stimulates eyes, brain and heart and also embodies the essence of Stanley Kubrick's famed view on cinema: watching a movie is like dreaming.