You are looking at the poster of the best Sci-Fi film in 40 years.
I'm not going to put forth a tired tract treatise on what makes for good sci-fi. Suffice it to say, Christopher Nolan's Inception is without a doubt the most human, terrifying, realistic, and improbable science fiction film to come out since Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. And whereas, from my point of view, Kubrick's vision of future exploration and rebirth in the Cosmos had a particularly human component, Nolan's Inception is an even more striking exposition into the human construct of the entire world in which we live.
It's possible that this is the closest mainstream film has come to trying to explain string theory. Don't get me wrong, the film does not try to fill your head with new age techno-religious mumbo-jumbo. The Matrix this isn't, instead, this is a brilliantly conceived Reutersvärd staircase of a film has no beginning and no end. As the dream worlds reveal themselves one by one (and yes, it is my opinion that the entire film takes place in the midst of dreaming) you discover increasingly larger puzzles as the details disappear into whisper. By the time the film arrives at its great crescendo- in the midst of a crumbling, faceless water world of a city known as Limbo, we've had our M.C. Escher moments, our great moments of weightlessness, freightening glimpses into our darker selves, and haunting visits of our ghostly past. Think of it as the most awesome dream you ever had projected onto a 300 foot screen with booming surround sound.
Casually, one may consider this film to be a heist movie. I leaned over to my wife and said at one point that the film reminded me of the mindfuck version of Ocean's Eleven. This aside- aside, I do not think of Inception as a heist movie at all. I do not believe that Dom Cobb (DiCaprio) ever leaves his dream state- the premise of his adventures are all technicolor chemical creations of his multi-layered dream world.
Everything's going to be alright. It's only a dream.
Inception is such a multi-layered and multi-dimensional film, that I think it will be impossible to sort out every detail. Christopher Nolan, it is said, worked on the script for ten years. I can say that the pay off was worth the effort. In fact, Inception is so good, that it made me immediately wonder about another recent Leonardo DiCaprio vehicle, Shutter Island, where DiCaprio delves into the realm of surrealism and questionable narative trustworthyness. Compared side by side, Shutter Island comes across as amateur hour, which is big praise for Nolan.
Inception's special effects are a marvel, but the true star is the culmination of well conceived story, believable acting, and a director that dreams big.
Inception's special effects are a marvel, but the true star is the culmination of well conceived story, believable acting, and a director that dreams big.
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