Inception
I am obviously a movie fan. While there is the rare terrible movie, I enjoy most movies that I watch. Summer is obviously a big movie season and every year at some point during the Spring I spend some time online looking over what all the big and upcoming releases are. During my search I came across a movie I hadn’t heard of yet: Inception. There were a couple things that caught my attention, the first being Christopher Nolan. His name is synonymous with quality. I have always enjoyed his movies whether it was The Dark Knight, The Prestige, or even something like Insomnia.
The next thing that caught my attention was that it was starring Leonardo Dicaprio. His career has been kind of interesting. It seemed like for a long while he was in mostly chick-flick type films. He seemed to be doing fine and some of his movies including Catch Me If You Can I thought were quite good. However, since he began starring in movies that were more in the action/suspense type category I think he has been phenomenal and has become one of my favorite actors. Then the icing on the cake was somehow dreams, being an obvious area of interest, played an integral role on the movie.
A primary barrier that movies have to overcome is the plausibility barrier. Whether the movie is about slaying dragons, flying to distant galaxies, or entering people’s dreams you have to believe that what you are watching could happen. Even though deep down you know that something could be absolutely impossible, the film’s job is to make you believe, for at least a couple hours, that it could be possible. Inception excels in this area because you are never given a chance to question the most basic premise in the movie that you can enter another person’s dream. Questions such as what are dreams, why do we dream, what do dreams mean, and what kinds of things are possible with dreams never even come up because they don’t matter. Inception begins by thrusting you right into the the action of being inside of a dream. Never-mind asking if this can happen – it is happening and you are riveted to you seat watching it happen.
All of the actors deliver exceptional performances. The special effects were impeccable and the types of things they showed were ingenious. It’s one thing to try to create 3D models and animations for something which exists where you have examples to base your work on. It’s quite a different thing to have the type of imagination to come up with scenes such as the famous “folding city” scene.
The metered releases of pertinent information do a good job of pacing the plot development. The life of the main protagonist Cobb is both amazing and yet deeply, deeply tragic at the same time. Despite all of his flaws, you are drawn to him. You see what he’s been through and even though you know how truly messed up he is, and how he has jeopardized everyone else in the process, you still feel for him. He has lost everything in the worst way and is struggling to at least get a portion of his life back. That is something that is instantly relatable and very human.
The notion of layered dreams is quite a mental feat to wrap you head around. Then, add multiple layers and the idea of the slowed time when in the dream and how that layers and you are left trying to mentally figure out exactly how it all comes together. You know it works out and it makes sense, yet you still will end up going through some calculations in your head to make sure.
When the movie finished, and the credits rolled everyone remained silent as they tried to process everything that just happened. While they’re not exactly sure what all just happened, they know it was magnificent. Inception is a movie that starts strong and keeps you on your toes until the final second. It has been a long time since a movie this good came out, and it will be a long time yet before it is matched.
