Unless you’ve been living under a rock, the slowly building roar that’s been building throughout these past few months has been the intense, almost frazzled anticipation revolving around The Dark Knight and Memento auteur Christopher Nolan’s latest enterprise Inception. This is the movie that will save a disappointing summer we have been told, the type of sensational, thought-provoking, intelligent and mind-blowing piece of entertainment Hollywood just doesn’t have the guts to produce anymore.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Cillian Murphy in Inception © Warner Bros.

That’s a heavy cross to bear, to be the savior of an entire season at the multiple. But even heavier is the one saying the motion picture is the one that can save Hollywood from itself, that it will prove that audiences can handle original ideas and concepts and don’t need a steady diet of sequels, remakes and reboots.

On that first point, Inception isn’t necessarily the best film of the summer (I’d still put Winter’s Bone and Toy Story 3 ahead of it) but by golly if it isn’t it is still the most audacious and by far its most significant. This is a thought-provoking, absolutely mesmerizing piece of popular cinema, Nolan capturing my attentions completely during the very first frame and not letting go again until long after I’d left the theatre. This is a movie to ponder and question and ruminate on, one that almost requires multiple viewings to absorb completely. But it is also a picture to just sit back and euphorically enjoy and gorge yourself upon the first time you see it, and just as pure popcorn spectacle it’s right up there with 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars and The Matrix.

As for that second point I think it is safe to say the jury will be out on that question for some time. Hollywood likes to play it safe, and throwing Nolan a reported $200-million to take audiences on a world-beating head trip isn’t something major studios are usually keen on doing. Even if this film is a relative smash, and for the life of me I don’t see how it can’t be, I still doubt its grosses will come close to approaching the numbers for somewhat middling efforts like The Twilight Saga: Eclipse or Iron Man 2, and those thinking it will match the totals of The Dark Knight had better start drinking a different brand of Kool-Aid.

As to the movie itself I think it might already be a given that I find Inception to be Nolan’s most challenging, intriguing and original idea yet. If Memento put people over the moon and The Prestige kept them planted there with a smile than this film will blast them off into the far reaches of the universe. Pulling from features as diverse as Rififi, the James Bond catalog, Dreamscape, Heat and any number of early Ingmar Bergman titles, this is a filmmaker working at the height of his creative powers, paying homage to the past while cutting a decidedly original rug breaking new ground he can call entirely his own.

The plot? To say to much would spoil the surprise, but the basic thrust involves skilled dream extraction thief Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) putting together a team of experts to go inside the mind of industrialist Robert Fischer, Jr. (Cillian Murphy) to pull a bit of corporate espionage. Along the way he has to face-off against his own mysterious past, the visage of his dearly departed wife Mal (Marion Cotillard) popping up continually in order to thwart his best dream state plans.

That’s just the cake. The icing is watching how far Nolan and company are willing to push the envelope. This movie isn’t about dreaming, it’s about the dreams inside of the dreams inside of the dreams. It’s about how many layers there are to the human psyche, how the demons which haunt our subconscious can inflict a very conscious harm. It is about the line between fact and fiction and about how the two can blur to the point of nothingness.

It goes without saying that the film is a technical marvel. At this point, Nolan knows how to wow audiences, the sights and sounds of Inception certainly no exception on that front. The set pieces are beyond extraordinary, the trailers barely hinting at what marvels are thrown up there upon the screen. There are so many signature bits to single one above the other almost feels like a disservice to the movie as a whole. The bottom line is that there has been nothing like it this year, and not since Deckard dangled from a L.A. rooftop, Neo said, “whoa,” or Tom Creo climbed an interstellar tree to save a lost love have I been this visually blown away by the combination of images and ideas a director has chosen to construct.

I do have slight reservations here and there. An early chase sequence through crowded Middle Eastern streets feels overly chaotic and rushed, inserted to have another moment of action when one isn’t all that necessary. I also think a reasonable case could be made – emphasis on the “could” because depending on how you interpret the film as a whole this might not a problem – that Ellen Page’s character (a newbie dream architect in charge of the mental floor plans) picks things up too quickly, ready to succumb to a life of danger and espionage far faster then your normal bright-eyed college student probably would be.

Yet I am willing to dismiss these things. The acting, especially by DiCaprio, Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ken Watanabe and a scene-stealing Tom Hardy, is exceptional, and I just loved how Nolan explains the rules of his Rube Goldberg world during the first third with such effortless ease. The visual design is astonishing, Wally Pfister’s (Insomnia, Batman Begins) camerawork, Guy Hendrix Dyas’ (Agora) production design and Lee Smith’s (Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World) editing working in exquisite chemistry to create a look that is striking and immaculate. Hans Zimmer’s (Sherlock Holmes) superlative score echoes things brilliantly, the Oscar-winning composer layering theme upon theme upon theme in virtually the same way the director layers his dreamscape worlds one upon the other.

I’ve seen Inception twice. I have a feeling I will return to the theatre to see it at least a couple of more times before it ends its run. It is a movie I can’t stop thinking about and one I’m pretty darn sure I don’t really want to, either. Hopefully audience will do and feel the same, Nolan creating a distinctive piece of summertime entertainment deserving of all the acclaim, and the box office, it can hopefully get.

Film Rating: êêê1/2 (out of 4) 

Additional Links