Inception
“You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, my darling.”
Time for another Nolan film, and Inception has been on my radar quite literally for as long as I can remember. What a cast, what a premise, what a director, what a budget. I won’t ramble, I just want to get watching.
Well, you’re assaulted with what seems can only be a very complex and intricate movie right away. It is Christopher Nolan I guess, he can only Memento me so many times. Anyway, you have this immense suspense building around who Dom is and why he has managed to be legally forbidden from his home country. You also have to ponder the circumstances of anything you’re seeing. You, as a viewer, have been rather harshly dropped with your pants down into a multi-layered deal. This is a world with technology to do unbelievable things, and yet of course it’s used for something like corporate espionage like it would undoubtedly be used for in this world we live in. You also, and you have to give credit to Nolan and his team for this, enter a world with well thought out and sensible terminology for things we simply don’t need here in this world. Things like totems, kicks, and projections are small examples of this film's explanations for things deep into this dystopian Earthly reality. Obviously, the stakes rise exponentially the second shit hits the fan during the first level of Fischer’s dream. That’s not the last time that can be said truthfully either. Inception is very much in the running for the most creative movie I have ever watched. I don’t want to say much more, because I’m going to rewatch this film many times over beyond a shadow of a doubt, so why waste my energy now?
I always adore the way Chris Nolan makes movies. A stupid little detail early that I may even be reaching on is when Dom is looking for his engineer. He asks her to make a maze for him that he can solve in a minute. The mazes aren’t very good, until she changes from square mazes to circular mazes. This movie is really predicated on circles. Everything circles back. Moving on from my nerd tangent, Inception is so fucking impressive to look at. The wow factor of that first time you see Paris bend like its plastic is mind boggling. Things never get any less stunning either, do they? Some of my favorite cinematic moments and photography take place in this movie. The scenes with Joseph Gordon-Levitt floating in low gravity around the hotel made me question reality, no pun intended. It’s one of those very rare moments where I have to wonder, “how the fuck did they do that?”. The locations match, from the cities featured to the sets like Yusuf’s basement where people are using his sedatives to basically lead new lives in their dreams. The narrative itself is centered in being an action movie, but it’s still a Chris Nolan movie. He loves nothing more than playing around with time, and I can’t blame him at all when you see how well he does it. Things always circle back, always. The math, the critical thinking, the ability to stay on task while putting layer on top of layer while adding meaningful substance to that math is generational. One of the best filmmaking jobs I’ve ever laid eyes upon. Oh, and just to add the cherry on top, Inception is FULL of some of the best performances I’ve ever seen. Everybody involved acted their god damn asses off.
I’ll be buying Inception physically as soon as I can. I can’t wait, and I mean that, to see it again and again and question reality each and every time. I have an opinion on the conclusion that I won’t share, because it doesn’t matter, and I wonder if it’ll evolve with my brain and my time with this movie. What a ride man.
Also, this movie being shot on film makes me so happy.