Amanda FooDirector Christopher Nolan challenges in his new film, Inception. Much like his previous work, The Dark Knight, it’s not a movie that you forget as soon as it’s over.
It’s something you take seriously and something that you watch again and again, simply because you want to, that and the fact that you spot something new every time.
Dominic Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a thief, earning his keep by stealing ideas from the minds of corporate giants to give their competition an upper hand.
He’s a tortured man, with a dead wife and separated from his kids due to a murder charge (related to dead wife).
This is the heart of the movie, Cobb’s burning desire to get home to his kids and that’s constantly featured through the movie. However, when the tragedy is paired with the broken realities of Inception, comparisons to Shutter Island are inevitable.
Cobb does get a chance at his happy ending when Saito (Ken Watanabe) hires him to plant an idea into his rival, Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy) to destroy the latter’s company, promising a reunion with his children as payment.
Cobb then assembles the Ocean’s Eleven of Inception; Eames (Tom Hardy), a shapeshifter capable of switching identities within a dream, Yusuf (Dileep Rao), a chemist to develop sedatives and Ariadne (Ellen Page), a dream architect who constructs the worlds the dreams take place in.
They then embark on a heist that has 3 layers of dreams wrapped around each other, into each other. The visual effects are the stars here, with Paris folding into itself, exploding streets, water tilting at 45 degrees, people running on ceilings, suspended in mid-air, the list goes on.
To understand this movie with just one viewing is a tall order. With a dream within a dream within yet another dream, it’s not hard to get confused, to get lost, so rarely does a filmmaker give you a creation that makes you work to enjoy it.
Although it seems like that Ariadne is planted in the movie by Nolan to be a learning aid for the audience. She, like the moviegoers, slowly untangles the layers and knots of this film.
Nevertheless, this is a brilliant movie and it’s easy to see why it’s the most anticipated movie of the year, provided you can understand it.
Title: Inception
Opening: Jul 15
Duration: 148 Minutes
Language: English
Genre: Sci-fi, Action
Directed by: Christopher Nolan
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe
Rating: ★★★★☆