Here's a review by Josh Tyler: (
5 stars)
Watching
Inception is like striking a match and setting your brain on fire. The
movie’s
tagline, your mind is the scene of the crime, is so much more than a
reference to what happens in the film. Sure the plot involves a group
of dream-invading thieves, but in the process of telling that story,
something much bigger happens inside your own head. It’s as if
writer/director Chris Nolan has invaded your brain as well. As he
attempts to unlock the secrets of the human psyche, his movie implants
its own ideas in your subconscious. You’ll walk out of
Inception questioning your own reality. It’s a feeling I haven’t had since the first time I saw
The Matrix, only,
Inception pulls it off without fetish leather and kung fu.
Inception spends almost all of its running time
risking collapse as the plot becomes more and more complicated. It
never holds back. It dares to challenge its characters and its
audience.
Leonardo DiCaprio plays Cobb as a desperate man teetering on the edge. We learn he has
the technology to invade people’s dreams and he uses it to get inside
their head and steal secrets. Where this technology came from or
exactly how it works is never discussed, it’s accepted by everyone as a
matter of course. Is
Inception set in a near future? An
alternate universe? We don’t know it’s just one of the many layers
hidden inside Nolan’s film left for you to either unravel or accept as
the rules of this world. And as Cobb’s story unfolds, it’s riddled with
more unexplained complexity. We learn that he’s unable to return to
America to see his kids, but don’t know why. Are we even sure his kids
exist? Is Cobb mad? At some point you’ll have to decide, but
Inception won’t give you all the answers.
Cobb assembles a team and starts diving deeper and deeper into the
dreams of their target. His dream-thieves are like psychology
superheroes and their discussions of how to invade and alter the human
consciousness from the inside out are as fascinating as any fight
scene. But just in case you were wondering,
Inception has a few of those as well. Joseph-Gordon Levitt ends up with the
movie’s most physically demanding role as Cobb’s assistant Arthur and
the zero gravity combat sequence he pulls off towards the end of the
film may be one of the coolest things you’ll ever see on screen.
Cobb isn’t interested in the gritty details of how they’ll get their
mission done, though. He’s too wrapped up in himself, his private hell,
his all-consuming need to get home. He hopes that if he goes deep
enough, dreaming dreams within dreams, within dreams, within dreams,
he’ll be able to plant an idea in the mind of the dreamer and in the
process, earn himself a ticket back to his kids. But as the dreams pile
on top of each other, as Cobb throws himself in deeper, he risks losing
himself and in trying to unravel it, you may lose yourself along with
him.
Inception captures the inner workings of dreams in a way no
other movie has before: Realistically. How do you know when you’re
dreaming? You don’t, at least not until you wake up. The world of
Nolan’s dreams is almost real and you’ll have to look closely around
the edges for discontinuity, for the little places where things don’t
quite fit together. It’s all there in the way the movie’s filmed and as
Hans Zimmer’s brilliant, throbbing score swells around you in the
theater and Nolan’s carefully chosen images shine out from the screen
you may even find yourself wondering not if you’re watching a dream,
but if you’re actually in one.
As the dreams go deeper the complexity of what’s happening skews
dangerously close to becoming overwhelming and there are a million
moments in the film when it could have and maybe it all should have
collapsed under its own weight, buried beneath Nolan’s psychological
hubris. At times understanding it is almost like trying to hold four or
five different movies in your head all at once. Yet it never collapses.
Inception runs along a razor’s edge, layering worlds on top of each other and
pushing the audience’s ability to keep up right to the breaking point,
but never passing it. It holds together because even if you’re baffled
by the details,
Inception isn’t actually a movie about the
riddles of dreams. Though the plot’s ever deepening layers play out
with impossibly perfect precision, at its root this is the ultimate
heist film, what matters are ideas and
Inception has big ones.
It’s not the idea Cobb is trying to implant in his subject that
matters, it’s the ideas that Nolan’s movie quietly plants inside you.
Inception is about ideas; contagious, powerful, unstoppable
ideas and how they shape the way we live, breathe, and think. It
wonders how you became the person you are and explores how
the things you’ve experienced have affected the decisions you’ve made and will
make. It’s a blisteringly original and breathtakingly smart, a movie
willing to take every risk imaginable to create a significant work of
art using the power of cinema. That it does that while also
entertaining the hell out of everyone who buys a ticket to see it, is
an achievement beyond measure. You won’t just like
Inception, you’ll be a better person for having seen it.
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