Inception

Critic's Rating: 4.0
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, Marion Cottilard, Ken Watanbe
Direction: Christopher Nolan
Genre: Sci-fci
Duration: 2 hours 30 minutes


Movie Review: Christopher Nolan might just end up as the most alluring and enigmatic film maker of contemporary cinema. Memento, The Prestige, Dark Knight and now Inception: Nolan's oeuvre is definitely one of the most creative outpourings in commerce and cliche-ridden Hollywood. If you thought Memento teased your mind, try savouring Inception. It will leave you tortured, tormented, ticklish and tantalised with its mindplay. And if you think you can actually unravel this mind-boggler in one go, you're asking for the moon. It will leave you longing for one more dekko to get the picture straight....Too many levels of reality, too many things happening and too innovative an idea!

Refreshingly, Leonardo DiCaprio has only recently proved his skills at skating in and out of the inner recesses of the mind with unbridled felicity in Shutter Island. Once again, he walks into people's heads while they are asleep and walks out with their ideas, leaving them still asleep. But not satisfied with a mere extraction of ideas, he tries to push the limits of science still further. How about planting ideas, he asks himself and ends up burning up his own domestic idyll by using his beautiful wife (Marion Cottilard) as the gullible guinea pig. The experiment backfires and ends up as a tragedy that not only makes him a fugitive, it also tampers with his mind and creates a parallel reality that refuses to let go. So that, when the young Ellen Page joins him on his latest mission, she realises how dangerous it is going to be sharing the dreams of this troubled hero who must fight his own demons before he can play with other people's minds.

Inception is not only one of the most original films in recent months, it is absolutely riveting stuff. Like The Matrix, most of the action takes place in the realm of dreams, but they seem completely life-like: the chases, the crashes, the explosions, the extractions, the interrogations, the heartbreak, the longing, the despair. Leonardo is in stellar form, scoring another high after Shutter Island. A special word for cinematographer Wally Pfister who juxtaposes the real and the surreal with such finesse, you never do get confused and always remain aware of the slippery ground you are treading on. Go, get intrigued and push the boundaries of your mind.