Inception is its own bastille; a thick coat of expository syntax is crystallized around an inner citadel, a hollowed out globe in which to engage the infinite dynamic of the imagination… What better canvas for this than a dream? And one may find it a shell that needs cracking, but rather than indomitable glyphs, our given information feels like free form cooking, an interplay between director Christopher Nolan’s teeming conceptual breadth and our own reading(s). What has been mostly mistaken for insecure exposition (the media’s biggest slights against Nolan’s phenom revolve around its ever untangling illumination on the mechanics of dream-spelunking) are more conceptual gifts, rewarding an engaged mind’s curiosity – Nolan masterfully (and lovingly) imparts and engages in his structures, drawing on popular dream pseudo-science and forming them into Inception‘s own science-fiction tropes; yes, its breathless and demands an agency in its audience, but once the procession of narrative toys lessens, the film’s later acts waste no time in putting them to use. Often in every way a conventional thriller’s length would allow. In this sense, Inception is the first true science fiction film we’ve had since Encounters At The End Of The World (last year’s Moon was strong but rarely this exploratory), ever more miraculous that it comes from such an immense budget and wide release; Inception is universal in its familiar territory of perception and reality, trumping the recent topical-muckraking that was Splice.
The film’s self surgery results in a few established “rules”, lingo that creates perpendicular conflicts in a seemingly limitless dream-scape. So ingrained and carefully monitored are these tropes that they feel warranted, and often even intuitive – It is difficult to expand on this without depriving you of the revelatory joys during the film’s progress, but lets just say that a zero-gravity hallway fight scene feels more natural than being right side up… I’ll leave it at that. There are many flourishes of inspiration that disguise themselves as the conventional action sequence, and the film shamelessly exploits its dreams to allow for punctuated firefights and melee intimacy. Are our own subconsciousness’s instinctively this violent? Feeling less a claustrophobic death trap than the big brothers in The Matrix, big brother himself (Cillian Murphy) is an engaged and emotionally affecting core of Inception - where agents were mere computer programs in days past, these threats are but the nagging and immense instances of self-loathing, doubt, and ultimate forgiveness. Profound fare for a backdrop of mountaintop sniper duels.
Initial discomforts reveal themselves as strengths after a good mull; the lack of a stable “real world” in conjunction with the various dream-depths of reality at first seems to lack a safe dichotomy – but thus is the film’s genius, they are urgent products of the moment, and often converging upon each other at higher depths. The threat of mortality is not so absolute as one would expect in a film majorly populated by gunfights, but the constant pursuit of quests, ideologies, and absolution gives an immediacy to the current states of being, regardless of its experiential distinction. Try to tell any of these characters that their pain is any less real at the center of an Escher nightmare. Credit should also be given for the film’s avoidance of the mystical (although a lavish Japanese pagoda is too gorgeous to deny) – dream worlds are urban, and consistently inalienable, empirical realities that the sleeping draw from; it is their ever descending psyche that holds the chaotic. A deep “limbo” layer of the dream is impressive for its more subtracted aesthetic, composed and base rather than fantastical… As if the clutter of “reality” is less intruding upon the hearts of the matter. Again, a considerable genius.
Unsurprisingly a film’s film, rotating easily between a multitude of different cameras (between VistaVision, 70mm formats), in which incremental dolly shots shift to a rough handheld within the same sequence. Nolan and Wally Pfister’s eye derives more from Alphaville and Chinatown than the oft cited work of the former’s hero Kubrick. Nolan does not imitate despite his exposed sleeve, but uses these impetuses as malleable templates, building an eclectic frame that is far more expressive than his earlier work. Doubtlessly, Inception is his most assured and yet dubiously made offering as far as aesthetic goes. Hans Zimmer pummels with a majestic score, and when not underlining with sympathetic Blade Runner-esque melancholy, he simply explodes with extravaganza – audacious horns echo in digital halls, accompanying the film’s most jaw dropping moment (you’ll be able to recognize it). With a secure construction that warrants the use of dreams, it is Inception‘s details and prioritization of character and motivation that produce an unremittingly supreme film.
(9.5/10)
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