A modern-day masterpiece crafted by Nolan's hands that leaves the audience amazed

Rating: 10/10 (29 July 2010)

You can't really talk about Inception without understanding the complexity of the message you're about to send to the reader. What is Inception's idea? What's the point of the arranged literature on multiple layers? What's the defining moment in Inception? Was it the beginning, was it the hallway scene or the challenging ending? I guess it was the design of the delivery of the story which was pure gold. The storyline was not that complicated to follow as many said, actually it was quite linear and easy to comprehend, easier than Memento's even if it's spread on 4 levels of reality. Dreaming in dreams is an awesome concept that had been approached before but Nolan managed to insert the common sense in our heads that his movie portrayed the best what a complex dream world could offer. It succeeded? Yes it did. And what helped the story to elevate inside our brains was the perfect stratification of the story which let no flaws and no big questions about it. From the beginning of the movie you're wondering what's happening but every answer you're looking for will be revealed sooner than you think thanks to the incredible pacing of these 148 minutes of a grand scale blockbuster movie. The ending was not quite a shock but still managed to pop some heads in the theater while others were not moved at all. What I loved about Inception besides the great delivery of the story which was pretty linear in terms of imagination was the emotional factor which few people said it doesn't hit the chords as hard as The Dark Knight did. Well this ain't The Dark Knight and besides that, this movie really raises the bar as far as the emotional background to the story. In The Dark Knight there was more a psychological background than an emotional one simply because of the main focus on the Joker character. Here, the focus is on Cobb's own search of redemption and feeling of guilt. Here, the focus is on Cobb's children and desire to return home. Therefore, his motivations were so high. What was Arthur's or Eames's motivations? Besides money? Well for one thing it was their friendship, second of all let's not forget that they all knew each other as being professionals in their branch, so their relationship was more than suggestive as far as revealing the motivation behind their actions. The movie set the bar pretty high for this new age of filmmaking, where sequels, prequels and adaptations are what seems that everything spins around to. But don't get fooled and think that Inception is an original idea because it's not. It's not a new one but the originality sits, like I said, in the unique delivery of this concept which was left behind a few years ago.
Besides the strong storyline, the movie hit very well the acting chord, making no mistakes in casting young talents like Ellen Page or Joseph Gordon Levitt who managed to make the transition from indie movies to Hollywood summer blockbuster type of movies. Tom Hardy was the badass in the movie, portraying a really cool and charming guy that it's pretty much impossible to dislike. Leonardo DiCaprio showed us once again that the kid from Titanic is so far away from what he became. A true actor that can reveal true emotions and that could find the deepest fear in a character and bring them into the film stage. He looked good on camera but it's not that specific type of acting that the Academy is looking for. Cillian Murphy, Tom Berenger, Ken Wantanabe and Michael Caine, all filled the holes in the movie perfectly but the most dazzling appearance in the movie was Marion Cotillard's Mal which is a flat character portrayed so good by Marion. Why flat? Well because Mal wasn't in fact a real character from the reality but was Cobb's own projection of her and Marion's talent succeeded to offer us exactly that. The acting was there, the story was there but what about the "simple" execution of the movie? Well Nolan gathered the same formula from The Dark Knight: mainly Wally Pfister as the guy behind the great camera work and the beautiful cinematography and Hans Zimmer who gave wings to the movie by playing a gigantic beautiful score. The tension in the movie was so rough that you could not take your eyes off the screen, and that was in a big part thanks to Zimmer's work. But not only the cinematography and the score were top notch but also the sound editing, the visual effects which were stunning and so realistic capturing the essence of the dream world imagined by Nolan. There's no questions regarding Inception's chances to win every technical award this year at the Oscars.
In the end, Inception is the first large scale blockbuster movie since the Matrix that managed to keep the audience both entertained but thoughtful at the same time. You need brains to watch Inception but also to not get caught in the spiderweb that critics launched about Inception being too hard for the audience to get because it really isn't. If it's a masterpiece? Well I think it's Nolan's best work to date, I think it's by far one of the best Hollywood movies of the last decade and I think it's a modern-day masterpiece because of the puzzle delivery of the script which was not meant to be complex just for the sake of it. Inception deserves it's praising and is truly a great film, entertaining, though-provoking, mind-blowing as far as the concept goes and strong executed. It will remain in time as a classic and especially as a classic of the genre and I wish that Hollywood would make more movies like this and leave alone all these cheap imitations and remakes that they manage to promote so well to the dumbed-down audience of these last years.