Inception. (12A.)
Directed by Christopher Nolan.
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Marion Cotillard, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, and Michael Caine. 141 mins
In an era where we are force-fed the idea that what audiences want is something to turn their brains off to, here’s a movie that demands you wake up and pay attention. The latest from the director of Memento and The Dark Knight is like the Mission Impossible film of your dreams, an espionage tale set in the subconscious that thrills, enthrals and mystifies.
There are any numbers of influences that may have shaped Inception: The Matrix, Charlie Kaufman, William S Burroughs, William Gibson, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. The early scenes though give the distinct impression that at one time in his childhood Mr Nolan may have been obsessed with the cover of the Mastermind board game that was popular in the seventies. His film has that same air of a sophisticated puzzle.
The script lays down a few standard narrative ideas – gathering a team to go on a mission, a flawed hero with a secret, a search for redemption - as guide ropes for viewers to cling to. Keeping track of the rest of it involves some considerable mental plate spinning.
Remember in Star Trek, crew members would sometimes be seen playing a multi layered version of chess with three boards stacked on top of each other and moves on any one level having an effect on all the others? The last hour of Inception is just like that.
Nolan is quite the fuddy duddy visionary. Most of Inception takes place in people’s dreams but thought the trailer features some mind-bending sequences don’t go in expecting an onslaught of CGI. It’s outlandish, but sensibly outlandish. He sticks to the familiar Nolan formula – male contests, densely layered plots, fractured narratives, little twists to throw audiences off balance.
He also has the ability to make two and half hour films that are dense with plot and exposition yet hurtle along with the unstoppable momentum of the boulder at the beginning on Raiders of the Lost Ark. (The score by Hans Zimmer does a lot of work here with its discreet but insistent suggestion of excitement.)
Every time Nolan makes a film you have a sense of him having gotten away with something, of slipping one past the studios. Yet however challenging they are, they all find audiences. If Nolan can get audiences that are conditioned to being comfortably three or four steps ahead of a film (indeed frequently crossing the finishing line as the film is stumbling out of the starting blocks) to respond to a film that bombards them with ideas and images and dares them to keep up it will be his greatest trick yet.
Directed by Christopher Nolan.
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Marion Cotillard, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, and Michael Caine. 141 mins
In an era where we are force-fed the idea that what audiences want is something to turn their brains off to, here’s a movie that demands you wake up and pay attention. The latest from the director of Memento and The Dark Knight is like the Mission Impossible film of your dreams, an espionage tale set in the subconscious that thrills, enthrals and mystifies.
There are any numbers of influences that may have shaped Inception: The Matrix, Charlie Kaufman, William S Burroughs, William Gibson, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. The early scenes though give the distinct impression that at one time in his childhood Mr Nolan may have been obsessed with the cover of the Mastermind board game that was popular in the seventies. His film has that same air of a sophisticated puzzle.
The script lays down a few standard narrative ideas – gathering a team to go on a mission, a flawed hero with a secret, a search for redemption - as guide ropes for viewers to cling to. Keeping track of the rest of it involves some considerable mental plate spinning.
Remember in Star Trek, crew members would sometimes be seen playing a multi layered version of chess with three boards stacked on top of each other and moves on any one level having an effect on all the others? The last hour of Inception is just like that.
Nolan is quite the fuddy duddy visionary. Most of Inception takes place in people’s dreams but thought the trailer features some mind-bending sequences don’t go in expecting an onslaught of CGI. It’s outlandish, but sensibly outlandish. He sticks to the familiar Nolan formula – male contests, densely layered plots, fractured narratives, little twists to throw audiences off balance.
He also has the ability to make two and half hour films that are dense with plot and exposition yet hurtle along with the unstoppable momentum of the boulder at the beginning on Raiders of the Lost Ark. (The score by Hans Zimmer does a lot of work here with its discreet but insistent suggestion of excitement.)
Every time Nolan makes a film you have a sense of him having gotten away with something, of slipping one past the studios. Yet however challenging they are, they all find audiences. If Nolan can get audiences that are conditioned to being comfortably three or four steps ahead of a film (indeed frequently crossing the finishing line as the film is stumbling out of the starting blocks) to respond to a film that bombards them with ideas and images and dares them to keep up it will be his greatest trick yet.
