I love Christopher Nolan. He is without doubt my favourite director. 'Memento' and 'The Prestige' certainly rate in my list of favourite films - I even own them on DVD (for those who know me, I have a very small, select DVD collection of movies I'd watch again and again). Another I'll be adding when it comes out is 'Inception', Nolan's latest blockbuster.
Now, the word 'blockbuster' is quite a deceptive word. It implies brainless action and a big budget. I'm going to take out 'brainless' from that inference because what you get from 'Inception' is something that has been thought out very carefully but shaped into a heist thriller entirely relevant for the medium. It is one of the very few movies around that has not come from a book, a graphic novel, a TV show, another movie, someone's life or an actual event, so it wins on originality.
The second area it excels in is the narrative style. Nolan focuses on the protagonist, Dom Cobb (Leonardo di Caprio), such that during the film we discover more about him than any other character. This is his film. Essentially it's the story of Cobb, who specialises in stealing ideas when victims are in a dream state. After a job goes wrong, he is hired to complete a more difficult task - to plant an idea - to pay his way home.
Nolan is firm about the rules of the dream world: who is dreaming, who is populating the dream and how and what happens when you wake up. This means, when you watch carefully, everything actually makes sense no matter how confusing it may appear at first. This is very important because it allows the audience to suspend any disbelief despite the fact that you'd expect disbelief in a movie about dreams. There's no obscure reasoning hiding in trickery here.
Lastly, the casting is extraordinary in this film, which meant that the characters were quite vivid despite the fact that it is Cobb's film. And the reason it is Cobb's film becomes apparent in the ambiguous ending (no spoilers here), which is trademark Nolan. Never has sitting in a grey area been so comfortable.
'Inception' was style, substance, people who could act and authenticity all in the one film and deserves all the praise and hype it has been getting.
Film rating: 9/10
Enjoyment rating: 10/10
