What in the name of almighty summer blockbusters is Inception? Is it a mind-warping science-fiction epic, a rebooted Matrix for Generation Z? A paranoid corporate thriller and one-last-job heist movie? An Odyssey of delayed homecoming? The greatest Philip K. Dick story that Dick never wrote? Or is it a grief-soaked ode to the Freudian subconscious — a layered, labyrinthine meditation on the seduction and impact of dreams?
It's all of the above. And I'll tell you what else it is: spellbinding. Transporting. Damn-near indescribable. What's more, it's only the latest indication that Christopher Nolan might be the slyest narrative tactician making movies today. Anything that can be said about the film (and I'll say some of it in a moment) will likely baffle viewers with a low tolerance for noodle-twisting sci-fi, computer-dazzled effects or Leonardo DiCaprio. But don't hold any of that against this extraordinary movie, a profoundly strange - and strangely profound - spelunking trip through the cavernous human psyche.
Inception is Nolan's follow-up to The Dark Knight, the Batman movie that was so much more. His newest is a head trip and so much more. It stars DiCaprio as Cobb, a corporate thief who specializes in "extracting" secrets from the minds of dreaming victims. Then he's hired by a Japanese businessman (Ken Watanabe) to do the opposite - i.e., to plant an idea rather than nick one away. To that end, he assembles a dream team to plan and launch his attack: Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a pragmatic researcher; Tom Hardy as the "forger," a cocky dream-world impersonator; Dileep Rao as the chemist who cooks up super-powered sedatives; and Ellen Page as the "architect," a talented rookie whose first try at dream manipulation folds a Paris neighborhood in half (wow).
If that sounds weird, just you wait; it gets weirder. I haven't loved a movie this bonkers since Waking Life, Richard Link-later's animated look at nesting dream states, or maybe The Fountain, Darren Aronofsky's rapturous oddity about a heartbroken cancer researcher-cum-conquistador. Nolan's screenplay (he wrote and produced as well as directed) spreads beyond the main conceit like ivy fingering a wall, moving up and out and down to embrace multiple levels of subconsciousness.
His plan is to "seed" a viral thought in the well-guarded subliminal depths of a corporate scion (Cillian Murphy), tunneling so far in they need a triple-stacked dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream just to get there. Complicating matters is Cobb's unresolved attachment to his wife, who shows up in dreams as a discombobulated Marion Cotillard. (In a lovely nod to Cotillard's La Vie En Rose, for which she won an Oscar, Edith Piaf appears on the soundtrack.) The sum effect is convoluted, to say the least, but all those fantastical plot twists are realized with surprising clarity, persuasive logic - and elemental human pain.
Wally Pfister, a repeat Nolan collaborator going back to Memento, does his usual dark magic behind the camera, conjuring a sleek look for shadowy doings. Hans Zimmer's fourth score for Nolan is bellowing and brilliant, the perfect, thudding backdrop to a film that moves from James Bond chase scenes (on skis, no less) and zero-G combat maneuvers to the disquieting mental landscape of obsession. "Dreams - they feel real while we're in them, right?" asks Cobb. Yes, they do. The same could be said for Inception.
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