Seeing Leonardo DiCaprio, equipped with furrowed brow and an expression of typical puzzlement, you might think you were being forced to watch Shutter Island again. Good news. This film is Christopher Nolan’s Inception, a better, brainier film. Nolan, the man behind 2008’s The Dark Knight, tackles blockbuster with ambition. Is it possible to make a summer film entertaining and smart, he asks? The answer is yes.
The subject of the film is dreams and ideas. DiCaprio is Dominic Cobb, a suitably intense Extractor, someone who enters the dreams of others and steals their secrets. After a prolonged dream-within-a-dream sequence in which Cobb and his crew, Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levvit) and Nash (Lukas Haas), attempt to steal the secrets of Saito (Ken Wanatabe), the actual act of inception comes into play. Saito wants to plant an idea in the brain of his corporate rival’s son, Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), so the boy will destroy his father’s empire, thereby preventing a “worldwide energy monopoly.” As you might have guessed, there are some complications. Cobb must enlist the help of dream architect Ariadne (Ellen Page, as reliable as ever), to create an authentic dream world. They begin deliberation but outside forces threaten the operation’s success. Robert’s brain is programmed to fight the foreign presence. Cobb’s dead wife, who still exists in his own mind and who enters dreams alongside him, threatens to undermine their entire operation.
Nolan toys with the idea that the whole film may be a dream within a dream. This notion is amiable but underutilized. The script is clever and efficient, even if the film runs about 2 and ½ hours. For a film about ideas, however, the presence of Cobb’s wife (Marion Cotillard) feels surprisingly generic. It’s an interesting sub-plot without being a very refreshing one.
DiCaprio is given the thankless task of creating a character out of very little material. His performance essentially consists of some bereaved glances and his character pales in comparison to the personalities that surround him. Gordon-Levvit’s performance, on the other hand, is deliciously deadpan. He cracked a smile maybe once during the film.
The set pieces are, for the most part, wonderful. The highlight comes in the form of a zero gravity fight scene between Arthur and his opponents in a hotel hallway. It borrows some from The Matrix but is oddly more elegant.
The visuals are absolutely stunning and this is where Nolan whole-heartedly succeeds. He creates a world. The stark beauty of fluttering past old homes that Cobb and his wife lived in is surprising. Nolan does not merely rely on his special effects either. He uses them to grand effect, but never loses sight of the human story at heart.
Nolan may be such a successful writer/director because he uses blockbuster trappings to tell a story, rather than let expensive CGI dominate the film’s relevance (Avatar, anyone?). Inception may not be a perfect film, but at least it’s not mere cinematic lethargy.
