Watched Inception the other day at PVR Cinemas, Chennai :P
The most impressive thing about the movie is that it’s one of those films, which respects your intelligence n doesnt go explaining every bit. At the same time it challenges you too. You can’t just recline and wait for this movie to happen. You have to focus n solve the jigsaw piece by piece. So if u watch this movie chatting with your friend nearby or texting, you will feel that a lot went over your head in the end. It’s 2-n-a-half-hours long, but never had one dull moment n keeps us on the edge of the seat.
I have seen sci-fi movies, heist films n psychological thrillers, but this one was all 3 combined. Well, not that I expected any less from the visionary who gave us the delicately poised Memento, my favourite superhero movie Batman Begins and its jaw-dropping sequel The Dark Knight.
Inception doesn’t need multiple viewings for us to fathom; same was the case with Memento. I feel Chris Nolan movies do not require us to see it 3-4 times to understand it, unlike David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (a mind-blowing movie that left me devastated; had to watch it twice to even make head or tail of it.
The casting deserves some applause, with Ken Watanabe as the Tourist- the selfish and ambitious businessman; the highly talented Marion Cotillard as the Shade- the hero’s dead wife- who keeps on bugging us by always showing up at the right place at the wrong time; one of my favourite actors Cillian Murphy as the Mark- the team’s target for inception; the young genius Ellen Page, as the Architect- who constructs the inception mazes; Tom Hardy as the Forger- a person with the ability to take the others’ form in dreams & Dileep Rao as the Chemist (what a time he is having! Avatar n now Inception). Then there are cameos by the good old Pete Postlethwaite n Nolan’s mascot, the legendary Michael Caine.
Leo DiCaprio, one of the finest actors of this generation, fits in perfectly as the Extractor. He provides true emotion to the tender scenes n is also marvellous as the action hero avatar in the dream sequences. But what put me off was the fact that DiCaprio has already played as similar role in Marty Scorsese’s psychological puzzle Shutter Island, another 2010 movie. Similar in the sense that there also he is a widower at the disposal of his shady illusions. May be he should have avoided two alike roles from two great filmmakers in the same year.
Anyway to me, it was Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who stole the show by playing the Point Man- the calm and smart friend of DiCaprio, who is the researcher in the Extractor’s team.
However, I don’t think Inception is the perfect movie. I did find flaws here n there. For example, after enlightening us about the dangers of layering elaborate dreams within dreams and the limbo concept, Murphy dies in the 3rd layer of the dream and is brought back easily by DiCaprio and Page by travelling to a 4th layer or in this case- the limbo. And Watanabe, who dies in the 1st layer, also gets his life back, when he shoots himself in the limbo. DiCaprio, who never made it back before the kick, also comes back to reality, instead getting lost in the limbo. We were earlier informed that none of it was possible. And if all this was possible, then what was the risk involved?
Plus, many explanations in the last parts of the plot, which twists n turns to create the dramatic effect, didn’t sound that convincing to me, compared to the beginning stages, where even the smallest detail was given due attention.
As far as the idea is concerned, I didn’t find it spanking new as well. This whole concept of dreams/memories, planting/extracting ideas or thoughts in dreams n many of the dream/memory sequences reminded me of a few movies, especially the beautiful Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, starring Jim Carrey, Tom Wilkinson and two of my favourite actors Kate Winslet and Mark Ruffalo.
And personally, when I came out of the hall my heart went out more to Cillian Murphy, who suffers heavily without doing anything than to DiCaprio, who appears as nothing more than a messed up thief with selfish motives. Murphy was wrongly made to believe that he should to break up his father's multibillion-dollar empire n his godfather is the bad guy. So my feelings took a U-turn n Murphy became the tragic hero n DiCaprio, the villain.
But let’s face it. All these trivial faults can be neglected when you evaluate the movie as a whole. It’s a spectacular film which introduces us to a world of virtual reality in which dream time competes with real time n there r dreams within dreams within dreams. Inception is a visual marvel n so you might wanna watch it at least a second time. Watch out for that scene in which Ellen Page makes Paris city fold on to itself like a newspaper or that zero-gravity fight in the hotel corridor. The best part is they have only used minimal CGI to make these amazing scenes.
A line for the ones who still haven’t watched this film: It's for watching films like these that reclining seats and monster screens were built. Watch Inception from the cinemas itself ;)
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