I am ready.
I have so many thoughts about how I want this movie to play out, but ultimately I trust the Nolan will deliver something pretty incredible.
Listening to two of this generation’s greatest filmmakers discussing Malick’s influence on their own work is a must see for film fans.
Posted June 17, 2011 at 11:20pm in movies terrence malick christopher nolan david fincher tree of life
INCEPTION review
Over the past twelve years Christopher Nolan has cemented himself as one of the most versatile and interesting directors in Hollywood today, continually playing on the theme of obsession in a fashion that has proven to work with both minimal (Following, Memento) and big (The Dark Knight) budgets. With his latest, Inception, Nolan proves yet again why he has gotten where he is, as he shows us “how deep the rabbit hole goes”. I chose that particular quote from 1999’s The Matrix because that’s the movie I would liken this one most closely to, though Inception has a more “real-world” vibe to it. Like The Matrix, the film explores the notion of constructed reality, this time through the world of dreams. For such a fascinating and easily-relatable subject as the experience of the dream world, it’s a wonder more filmmakers have not explored it in depth. Inception is comparable to Richard Linklater’s Waking Life as a film that does it really well.
The premise is that Dominic Cobb (DiCaprio), who is essentially a psycho-cyber criminal, assembles a specialized team (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy, Ken Watanabe, Dileep Rao, and Ellen Page) in order to enter the dreams of an enterprise mogul in order to perform “inception” (i.e., to implant an idea). If it sounds like a heist movie, it is; the members of the team even have special qualifications (e.g., architect, chemist, investor, etc). It’s also a “one last big job” heist movie, as Cobb hopes to earn his freedom by squaring a deal with one of his clients. That Nolan manages to narratively hold this all together while creating a science-fiction world so believable is truly a marvelous feat. The visual aesthetic and the storytelling really go hand in hand here, as each scene builds toward the next elaborate set piece. It is remarkable how he creates a world governed by clear and strict rules and slavishly adheres to them while never writing himself into a corner. The increasing depth of dreaming (i.e., “how deep the rabbit hole goes”) allows for the sense of time and consequences to increase with each subsequent level, which is important considering that early in the film the notion that “when you die in a dream you wake up” could have been the end of the film’s sense of urgency. For what is worse than death, but being stuck in a dream forever?
Minor quibbles aside — sometimes we get told more than we need and the dialog thus comes of as too expository — Inception is an inventive, awe-inspiring piece of visual storytelling that ranks not only as one of Nolan’s best films, but one of the year’s best films as well. This is a movie that, much like The Matrix, I will watch again and again over the years.
