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| Poster artwork for the drama fantasy thriller film Inception. |
Subconscious
Scenes by Linh
Director Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight, Memento)
has spent ten years creating the mind-bending thriller Inception and it is worth the wait. Inception delves into psychoanalytical and philosophical realms
that inhibit the human mind, where a person can extract or implant ideas,
memories or knowledge by entering into another person’s subconscious during a
dream. The special effects are spectacular and the performances from the
ensemble cast are excellent.
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MIND
MASTERS: Araidne (Ellen Page) and Dom (Leonardo Di Caprio) avoid
detection in the film Inception.
Image: Warner Brothers.
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The film’s plot is simple but the execution and
strategies involved in successfully completing the mission is complex and
requires highly sophisticated skills. A Japanese businessman, Saito (Ken
Watanabe) hires troubled dream thief Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) to perform
inception (insert an idea into someone’s subconscious while they are dreaming)
on his rival Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy). After successful completion of
the job, Saito will ensure Dom’s name is cleared of an alleged crime and he
will get to see his children again. Dom assembles a top-notch team including
mind-mapper Arthur (Joseph Gordon Levitt), famed forger Eames (Tom Hardy) and
dreamscape architect Ariadne (Ellen Page) to tunnel into the depths of
Fischer’s mind while they are all heavily sedated.
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MARITAL
MEMORIES: Mal (Marion Cotillard) and Dom (Leonardo Di Caprio)
share a dream together in the film Inception. Image: Warner Brothers.
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Cinematographer Wally Pfister creates a wildly believable
series of landscapes in reality and in dreams that implicitly become characters
of the film and are sometimes scene stealers. The visuals look familiar but
soon become unfamiliar thereby disrupting the viewers’ gaze as they are
presented with scenes that represent perceptions of realities belonging to more
than one character. There are dreams within dreams as well as distortions of
reality and perception to capture the complexities of the mind’s subconscious
during the dream-state. Numerous dream scenes mimic the characters’ actual
experience while they sleep, with gravity-defying stunts, disorientating
manoeuvres and clever dialogue that explains the technical workings behind the
art of inception and extraction (removal of information in a dream-state).
The
most intriguing aspect of entering another person’s subconscious is the
presence of ‘projections’ created by the dreamer to protect against any
emotional or physical harm. Projections can appear in any form and can sense
someone who is not supposed to be in the dream and destroy them, the way white
cells attack foreign substances as part of the immune system. Memories are the
bane of dream thieves because they overlap and blend the real world and dream
world, making it difficult to tell if you are dreaming or wide awake.
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DREAM
DEMONS: Saito (Ken Watanabe) and Mal (Marion Cotillard) disrupt a
dream invasion in the film Inception.
Image: Warner Brothers.
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The cast is led by Leonardo DiCaprio in his best
performance so far, as the guilt-ridden Dom Cobb, whose determination to
complete the job hides a darker secret; the beautiful and talented Ariadne,
whose curiosity makes her the bearer of Cobb’s secret, is wonderfully performed
by Ellen Page of Juno fame; Joseph
Gordon-Levitt has risen to fame from one indie film to the next and Inception enables him to utilise his
dramatic acting skills for the nerdy but nice dream navigator Arthur; Irish
actor Cillian Murphy is naturally attracted to the bizarre and otherworldliness
of films such as Inception, following
his extraordinary double performance in the psycho-drama Peacock, and brings his quiet and stoic charm to the unsuspecting
victim Robert Fischer; Ken Watanabe is superb as Saito, who features earlier in
the film as a decrepit “old man living with regrets” under copious layers of
prosthetic makeup, and holds the key to Cobb’s escape from a “prison of
memories”; Oscar winner Marion Cottilard is gorgeous and seductive as Cobb’s
deceased wife, Mal, who sabotages his missions; and Dileep Rao is fabulous as
the humourous and risk-taking Yusuf, the team’s sedative guru and driver.
The supporting cast includes the always reliable and
fantastic Michael Caine as Cobb’s father-in-law, Miles, who appears briefly in
a few scenes as the Professor who recommends Ariadne to help Cobb construct
dreamscapes; Tom Berenger as Robert Fischer’s godfather, Peter Browning and
Pete Postlethwaite as the bed-ridden Maurice Fischer, father of Robert Fischer.
Director Christopher Nolan chose the song ‘Non, je ne
regrette rien / No, I regret nothing’ sung in French by Edith Piaf, to be a
crucial part of the film’s plot and it explains the dream invaders’ outcome if
they are mortally wounded and cannot wake up in time. Composer Hans Zimmer
provides a myriad of sounds to mirror or lift the visuals making them seem more
compelling or sinister.
Inception is
a genre-busting thriller with intricately designed visuals to captivate and
confuse, with scenes including scaling down a mountain after speed skiing
through heavy snow, a car chase in heavy rain while dodging bullets or a zero-gravity
floating fight scene. Inception is a
fantasy film that needs to be seen more than once to fully appreciate the
infinite possibilities of the human mind and the architecture of dreams. Inception won four Academy Awards for
Best Cinematography, Best Sound Editing, Best Visual Effects and Best Sound
Mixing.
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SUBCONSCIOUS
SECURITY: Dom (Leonardo Di Caprio) covinces Robert (Cillian
Murphy) that he will protect him from inception in the film Inception. Image: Warner Brothers.
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Director:
Christopher Nolan
Writer: Christopher
Nolan (screenplay)
Cast:
Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy,
Cillian Murphy, Marion Cotillard, Dileep Rao, Tom Berenger, Michael Caine, Pete
Postlethwaite, Lukas Haas, Tai-Li Lee, Claire Geare, Taylor Geare, Magnus
Nolan, Johnathan Geare, Miranda Nolan, Earl Cameron, Tohoru Masamune, Ryan
Hayward, Yuji Okumoto
Producers:
Thomas Tull, Chris Brigham, Emma Thomas, Christopher Nolan, Thomas Hayslip,
Jordan Goldberg, Zakaria Alaoui
Cinematographer:
Wally Pfister
Original
Music Composer: Hans Zimmer
Film
Editor: Lee Smith
Production: Guy
Hendrix Dyas (Production Designer), Dean Wolcott, Luke Freeborn, Brad Ricker (Art
Directors), Douglas A. Mowat, Larry Dias (Set Decorators)
Costume
Designer: Jeffrey Kurtland
Languages:
English, Japanese with English subtitles
Running
Time: 2 hours and 28 minutes
