Inception Kicks Audiences from Sleepy Season

To paraphrase a line from Christopher Nolan’s Inception, an idea is the most infectious thing in the world. Inception is the first imaginative, original idea to hit theaters this year. It is the sort of thing that will infect pop culture and be parodied and talked about for months. Ditch those Twilight boys. Blow off that bender of air. Lay down arms with those relentless Predators. Heck, even Toy Story 3, with all its poignant adolescent melancholy, suffers from familiarity by comparison. Inception is not a sequel, remake, or adaptation of some bestseller’s list series of novels or iconic TV show. It is an idea that is derived from nothing but Nolan’s brilliant mind.

In the movie, Leonardo DiCaprio and Joseph Gordon-Levitt recruit Ellen Page into a world of dream theft and carefully crafted ideas manifested as physical forms in the subconscious. While, as seasoned actors who started their careers during adolescence, they are also apparently guiding this relatively new actress, who’s transitioning into adulthood, into a world of creative and imaginative filmmaking. With this casting, Nolan seems to be making a statement about young Hollywood and who can be relied on to bring us first-rate characters or star in films with substance. We know Nolan to be very particular about his actors, only casting the side of young Hollywood with the utmost credibility, including Maggie Gyllenhaal and Scarlett Johansson. Even Katie Holmes from Batman Begins had more good movies than bad at that time.

Regardless, Inception is, to be sure, some sort of commentary on filmmaking that goes deeper than casting; it’s just up to interpretation what is being said. To paraphrase from the film again, to do this job you need to have a lot of imagination. You certainly don’t need imagination to make a financially successful movie, as evidenced by all the forgettable trifles that hit the top spot at the box office each week. Nolan’s work is among the few these days that is indispensable entertainment; they have lasting appeal because they are often creatively above and beyond the norm. In an age when Hollywood seems creatively bankrupt, Nolan is among the few with the richest ideas.

However, there are some critics with a coolly apprehensive view of Inception who feel it is too expository – that Nolan explains the rules of shared dreams too much. To complain about the exposition is to bite the hand that’s feeding you the best meal you’ve had all year. Without the exposition, which happens to avoid stalling the film, a movie like this would too easily unravel and lose coherence.

Inception is a heist movie and a tragic love story dressed up as a mind-bender. Not since The Matrix has a film blurred the lines between reality and imagination with such clear execution. This is a film that will overwhelm you in nearly every sense possible – visually, aurally, and intellectually. It is escapist entertainment at its most artistic; a popcorn movie for intelligent audiences - the only movie this summer worth the $8 ticket price. With The Dark Knight, Nolan created the best superhero film in history. With Inception, Nolan has created the best film of his career.

If only every filmmaker dreamed so big.


9/10

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Inception is now in theaters and IMAX.