Beautifully shot, brilliantly acted and packed with phenomenally well-realised, unapologetically philosophical ideas: Inception has a lot of hype to live up to, but it can take all the hyperbole and then some. This is a film that can’t fail to leave you breathless and exhilarated by the time you watch the credits roll. And then press play to see the whole thing again.
From reinventing the Dark Knight via the almost indecently good The Prestige, director Nolan’s is unrelentingly impressive, and there’s nothing else predictable about Inception. The set-up, the structure, the brain-straining visual effects – it all takes your expectations of what a film can do and explodes them into crafty ribbons of narrative.
At its core, Inception is a heist movie in a sci-fi world. But Leonardo DiCaprio and his gang don’t crack safes: they crack minds, sneaking into their victims’ dreams to retrieve precious information. However, for their one last job (always the way, isn’t it?), they’re not even stealing: they’re implanting. The eponymous Inception process involves leaving an idea within someone’s dreams without being traced – their victim, in this case, being Cillian Murphy, heir to a multimillion-dollar empire that his rivals would like to see broken up.
To undertake the mission, our thieving hero and his right-hand man, a surprisingly robust Joseph Gordon-Levitt, turn to DiCaprio’s father-in-law, Michael Caine (a Nolan regular). He recommends aspiring dream architect Ariadne (Ellen Page) to assist them with their cause, and Tom Hardy completes the squad. And they make a crack team when it comes to both dream sabotage and acting, for there’s not a line or gesture out of place.
During their planning process, the film reveals its incredible depth and intellect: layers of dreams distort time, and elaborate subterfuges are put in place both to trick the victim of the inception and ensure that the dream thieves maintain their contact with reality. It’s undoubtedly complex, but Nolan lays everything out with crystal clarity. In addition, a genuinely affecting human element comes in the form of DiCaprio’s lost love and desire to reconnect with his children.
From top to bottom, this is a monumentally well-made film. If you haven’t seen it, do so now. And if you have, you definitely won’t need telling to watch it again.
