Inception premier draws big crowds.
Photo courtesy of imdb.com
What is reality?
One of the first movies to ever make viewers ponder the very fabric of the world around them was The Matrix, where good ol’ Keeanu Reeves found out that reality was a giant computer using humans as batteries. Since then, the question posed by Queen’s song Bohemian Rhapsody remains: Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Well fasten your seatbelts kiddos, because director Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight) has decided to reopen the book on skepticism by delving into that wacky world that hides in your subconscious: dreams. And to make things better, no red pills or emotionless actors named Keeanu are needed!
Not since the last Twilight craze has a movie theater been packed so tightly. I’ve never been in a theater where absolutely every single seat was filled, but it was premier night, so perhaps it was to be expected. Regardless, the crowd was buzzing with excitement when the lights went down at midnight for the first showing of what I expect will become one of the most talked about movies of the year. Though the rowdy crowd laughed its way through previews like Piranha 3D, the theater fell deathly silent the second the movie started. The sound of a pin drop would have echoed like a thunderclap. From the opening scene to the end credits, every moviegoer had their rears glued to their seats and their eyes affixed to the screen, and for good reason. Inception is, without any doubt, the best movie I’ve seen all year, and probably the best I’ve seen for a couple of years.
It’s incredibly hard to get into the story without spoiling anything, but the central story of the plot focuses around a man named Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio, Shutter Island) and his group of thieves. However, these men are not your typical black-ski-masks-and-gun kind of thieves. Dom’s job is to infiltrate the dreams of their target and steal their secrets from their subconscious. After botching a job, the group splits up to avoid being hunted down by their employers. However, the corporate CEO who they failed to steal from has a different solution: he can make Dom’s problems go away and let him finally see his family again, if they do one more job. The job, you ask? Inception. Instead of stealing an idea from their adversary so that the rival company can act on it first, the dream thieves must plant an idea that would make the victim do something wrong.
Dom’s partner claims it’s impossible, as the subject’s subconscious always rejects the planted idea as foreign, but Dom says it is possible. With that, Dom and his partner recruit a ragtag team of dream architects, con men, and sleeping-drug experts to pull off the most dangerous job of all. Using fancy technology, amusing musical alarms, and complex layering of dreams within dreams within dreams, Dom and the gang draw up an elaborate scheme that had me wondering how anyone could ever come up with something so intricate. Though nothing ever goes exactly according to plan, the events that follow had me wide eyed and short of breath, clinging to the edge of my seat like it was the edge of a cliff.
The best part of the movie is not the impressive special effects that have the city of Paris literally folding up on top of itself, nor the witty dialogue, nor the superb acting by DiCaprio and the rest of the cast, nor the intriguing plot twist with Dom and his own dark past with his wife. No, the best part of the movie is that the complex storyline that Christopher Nolan has woven is told so masterfully that anyone can understand it without too much trouble. And the ending is so satisfying and disappointing at the same time that it fits perfectly. This movie is a masterpiece, filled with mystery, action, suspense, and excitement. After seeing it, I wanted to watch it again to see what I had missed the first time around.
Nolan has joined the list of my favorite directors thanks to his great re-imaginings of Batman and now his brilliant tour de force, Inception. If I could give this movie ten stars out of five, I would without hesitation. There are enough thrills in Inception to last a lifetime, or perhaps, a dream.
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
