Charlie Dorf
Arts and Entertainment Editor
Criminals and thieves have been robbing banks, casinos, and liquor stores since there were banks, casinos, and liquor stores to rob. But what if thieves could steal trade secrets, personal information, valuable data from the one place where we believe all our secrets are safe? What if criminals could access your dreams as you sleep, carefully searching for your most vital thoughts? Christopher Nolan’s Inception brings this idea to the silver screen, surpassing The Dark Knight as his most exciting and ambitious film to date.
The film follows Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), an extractor (basically a mind thief) who is hired to infiltrate peoples’ dreams and extract valuable information. However, mysterious employer Saito (Ken Watanabe) tasks Cobb with inception, where an idea must be placed in ones mind, opposed to simply taking one out. This is no easy task, as Cobb must venture into several “dreams within dreams” in the target’s mind (an rival executive played by Cillian Murphy). Cobb has some baggage of his own, however, in the form of his dead wife Mal (Marion Cottillard) who hinders him within the dreamscape as a projection of his own guilt-ridden mind.
The cast of characters is a definite strong suit for the film, with well-delivered supporting roles from Joseph Gordon Levitt (Brick, 500 Days of Summer), Tom Hardy (Rock ‘n Rolla), Ellen Page (Juno) and Michael Caine. DiCaprio’s performance as the damaged criminal is reminiscent of De Niro’s performance in Heat, as he serves as the reasonably badass yet somewhat tortured anti-hero, while Harvey and Levitt provide the almost James Bond-esque badassery that keeps the movie exciting. Nonetheless, DiCaprio’s humanity throughout the film makes this one of his strongest roles to date.
When we get down to it, Inception is, at its heart and soul, a heist movie, and a particularly action-packed one at that. I myself was surprised at the constant foot/car chases and gun fights with Murphy’s “mental security force” throughout the entirety of the film. However, it never felt over-done or excessive. The film’s narrative structure is another strong point, as Nolan managed to keep the film complex while not making it incomprehensible. As there is a time lapse between reality and the various dream layers, it was interesting to see how an elaborate gun fight in the 3rd layer only took several seconds within the 1st layer.
If we lose everything, the one thing we can definitively call our own is our mind. By placing the film within the one place we consider impenetrable creates another degree of interest within the story. As DiCaprio is confronted with questions of reality, so are we. Everything we do is done with the idea that this is indeed reality, but the scary thing is what if it isn’t? What if we are simply just another dream within a dream within a dream… Though this is a bit existential, it was an interesting thing to think about on a slow summer day.
The cinematography is, for the lack of a better word, jaw-dropping. Smooth transitions from one dream layer to the next, shifting cityscapes and effective weather imagery make the film as beautiful as it is interesting. The story itself is seamless, as it is always moving forward, giving you just the right amount of detail where Nolan could have gone overboard in excess explanation. It creates a situation where you truly care about the protagonists, even though they are, in fact, criminals. Hopefully, Inception will see the return of heist movies where the characters aren’t simply a vehicle for a cool car chase, but where the “job” serves as a developmental device for the characters.
For these reasons, I choose Inception as my movie of the summer, as it serves as a rare summer movie that doesn’t deviate to cheap laughs and excess action like most summer blockbusters (for an example see The Expendables, though I wouldn’t condone such a grotesque waste of money.)
