Inception Review

SPOILER ALERT!

It was a badass movie. But yes, it does have it's flaws.

Christopher Nolan is one of my favourite film makers of all time and he could be considered the Kubrick of our generation. Now all his previous films have been something of a spectacle. Everything from Memento to The Prestige and the comic-book masterpiece The Dark Knight. Inception is no different.

It is a spectacle of pure cinema. The concept of the story is simple. Dom Cobb (DiCaprio) and Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) are two paid agents who are paid my giant corporations to go inside the dreams of their rivals, enter their sub-concious and steal vital information. Until Ken Watanabe comes up with an offer for the two duo to return home. (an impossibility after Cobb was framed for the murder of his wife.) The job requires inception, or planting an idea inside the heir of a corporation to break up his dad's empire. Naturally Cobb and Arthur take this job and all hell breaks loose.

The very concept itself is brilliant, dream manipulation as industrial espionage and the possibilities that exist within one's dream. One of the most memorable sequences for me personally was the montage where Cobb goes to hire an architect who will create the world of the dream where the inception takes place. Cobb is explaining the concept of shared dream and subconcious to Ariadne (Ellen Page) and thus we get an insight into the 'rules' that Chris Nolan has created for this whacky concept. Even though he doesn't fully explain why or how one can share a dream and not just that, but later on how 6 people can have a shared dream all because of a device that Nolan doesn't care to explain. But it's ohk, because that is not the important thing. What is important is that we are on a journey through the subconcious of the corporate heir called Fischer (Cillian Murphy)

Now this journey which makes up pretty much the last half of the movie is one that is filled with magic and mayhem. Ariadne the architect has created three layers of dreams within a dream, to reach Fischer's inner most subconcious. This is where the plot gets at it's most complex. There are four layers of existence, for Cobb and his team. The first is in a warehouse(First Layer) The second is in an expensive hotel and the third is in a ski field god-knows-where, all they way through they are trying to plant this idea inside this guy Fischer's head about breaking up his father's company. Now the last half an hour or so is hard to keep up with definitely because all three of the layers have a lot of action going on and our main characters are in peril throughout all three layers of dreaming.

But I kept up with it, I was there through the entire sequence, even during the parts where Cobb shared all those melodramatic moments with his dead wife, that he keeps alive in his sub-concious. But by the end of the film I was not attached emotionally all that was left was intellect. I could follow the movie intellectually, but emotionally I was out of it, right when they reached level 2 of the dreamworld.

Now, the movie is a mind fuck, no doubt. It has been dubbed 'the new matrix'. It sure requires intellect and thinking beyond the box. I still think it is a very powerful piece of cinema that deserves recognition for what it has accomplished with its complex storytelling. Maybe I need another viewing to fully grasp the film emotionally, as is always the case with films of this nature.

But, as always check it out for yourself. The film is a fucking ride!