Sleep, Dreams … Espionage!

It’s been quite a treat following the career of one Christopher Nolan.  The real man behind the Bat mask.  Today we take a look at the well-deserved break he took from the D.C. Universe to make a small movie called Inception.  “Your mind is the scene of the crime”, blurts out the teaser trailer, and then it violently grips you and never lets go.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Cobb, an “extractor” extraordinaire. He can steal your deepest darkest secrets while you lie asleep in the comfort of your own home.  I know how it sounds but I assure you that this is no ordinary thief with an affinity for the forbidden fruit.  This man is a carnivore who will steal your secrets by penetrating your psyche while you’re dreaming and irrevocably take what’s yours.  Cobb is a brilliant thief, and like all brilliant men is emotionally conflicted, plagued by internal demons, and exudes unforgiving intensity in every single shot.  He is a notorious criminal and a wanted man, and all he now desires is to return home to his children.  And so begins a high stakes game, with a dangerous proposal by a powerful and mysterious business tycoon, Saito (Ken Watanabe), who wants to acquire the services of Cobb to perform the improbable task of Inception. In return, Cobb gets to have a new life with his family.  And Guess what?  Cobb takes the plunge!

DiCaprio does a great job capturing Cobb’s emotions, his motivations for his actions, and his own damaged psyche in lieu of the death of his wife Mal, played by the beautiful Marion Cotillard.  Mal has a bad habit of prancing into Cobb’s missions and deliberately sabotaging them.  Cobb, in all his infinite glory, is still helplessly in love and grieving for Mal but haplessly incapacitated to do anything about it. 

Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Arthur, Cobb’s partner and friend and as the movie progresses….admirable action buddy.  Gordon-Levitt nails the part of the confidante, the voice of reason, and at times the compass that guides Cobb.  Ellen Page is Ariadne, a University student recruited by Cobb to assist him in his unattainable task.  Our lovely cast rounds up with Tom Hardy and Dileep Rao joining in on this very volatile game where one’s mind can be used as a weapon in order to claim another’s mind as the prize.

In a cinematic landscape where the words original screenplay have been erased from the dictionary, Christopher Nolan comes forth and makes you believe.  There is fruit in innovation and the art of storytelling is not dead.  Inception is a recipe both delightfully complicated and ruthlessly ambiguous.  It leaves you content with a well narrated and clever storyline, razor sharp direction, supreme cinematography, and extraordinary editing.  However, you still experience an inkling of hunger within, which is swiftly accompanied by a realization. A shattering truth that there is still a momentous flow of un-seeming and untapped creative potential in this industry and it must be channeled properly.  It desperately needs an outlet to grow on, a platform to surge through, and I guarantee you that the results will be astounding.  The possibilities will be endless!  To quote Mickey Rourke in Iron Man 2, “There will be blood in the water, and the sharks will come.” 

With Inception, Nolan has declared to the entire cosmos, that the viewing audience is smart, and if you treat them as such, you will be rewarded in kind.  I wish with all my heart and a bit of careful optimism that the conception, arrival and subsequent reception of this movie will succeed in facilitating the revival of creativity.

I shall conclude my rant by saying this: some people make movies because they have a story to tell; others make movies simply for entertainment value and the commercial success they will inevitably garner, and a few rare people make movies for love of the art itself.  Nolan as yet does not completely fall into any one of these categories.  He hasn’t established his niche yet and that perhaps, in an equivocal way, is the secret to his ingenuity.  He has delivered exciting new entries in a diverse genre of movies ranging from Memento to Insomnia, and The Prestige to The Dark Knight, and I wish him tremendous success in the future.  But as of now, I demand that Christopher Jonathan James Nolan keep making movies only and only because he is just so damn good at it!