Tell me a story

Viewed on March 2, 2013 on TNT

I forgot just how brilliant this movie is. This was my fourth viewing of Inception, and I swear it just keeps getting better. Christopher Nolan is so damned good at crafting a damned interesting story. Damn. I’m just amazed at how he was able to come up with such a complex story and then tell it in a way that is compelling from beginning to end. His talent gives me chills.

In case you forgot, or if you haven’t seen it (and if you haven’t seen it, you really should stop reading this right now, buy a copy and then watch it twice. It’s not even that I’m going to spoil anything, but just that you just need to see it. Like as soon as possible. Like right now. Click on one of the links below to buy or rent it. Go on. Hurry. The rest of this sentence can wait), Inception is about a team of thieves that is able to enter a person’s dream and seek out what whatever private or personal information they’ve been hired to pilfer. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Dom Cobb, the leader of the team. He’s been employed by a business man named Saito (played by Ken Watanabe) to commit one last job, and this time it’s not a theft he’s wanted for but an inception: the implanting of an idea into a subject’s subconscious through his dreams.

What really impressed me the first time I saw this Inception and continues to impress me now is the pacing. Nolan creates no less than five layers of reality in this movie: we have a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream (I’m treating limbo as another dream). As the movie progresses we get deeper into the nested dream layers, and when we reach the story’s climax, the narrative starts jumping between layers, and that’s where the magic is.  The events taking place in each dream layer have such high stakes that when we switch to another dream, we’re just as riveted as we were a moment ago, and thus Nolan is able to keep the dramatic tension of each layer just as high as the others. It’s an amazing feat in both storytelling and editing. Lee Smith was the editor on Inception. He’s worked with Nolan on all the Batman movies as well as The Prestige. He also worked on one of my favorite movies of all time: The Truman Show, and what a clean movie that was. The dude has got chops.

Inception is fairly long, but I did not want it to end as I watched it this last time. I wanted to stay in this fantastic dream world and go on more adventures. I love the whole idea of shared dreams, especially the manipulation of the dreams. I love everything about this movie, including how the characters dressed and just the sheen and gloss and polish the film possesses. Inception doesn’t capture how I dream, but Nolan’s idea of dreams works perfectly for the story he’s trying to tell.

And now, since I’ve said absolutely nothing new about the movie, here are some fun resources you may or may not have already discovered. First, have a listen to the audio review of the film by the guys at Slash Filmcast (They do great movie review podcasts. Check out their other ones if you get a chance), which you’ll find right beneath the trailer below. Then feel free to buy the haunting score by Hans Zimmer, which I’ll link to at the bottom of this post, and which will take you immediately back into the world of Inception. Then go ahead and watch the “Honest Trailer – Inception” video, the “Everything Wrong With Inception In 4 Minutes or Less” video, and finally the “How Inception Should Have Ended” video, all posted below. And then don’t be surprised if you feel like watching the movie again after all that. I know I already do.

My Rating

Inception
Writer/Director: Christopher Nolan (Following, Memento,  Batman Begins, The Prestige, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises)

/Filmcast Ep. 109 – Inception (Guest: Armond White from New York Press)

Original Link: /Filmcast Episode 109

Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack for Inception:

“Honest Trailer – Inception”

“Everything Wrong With Inception In 4 Minutes or Less”

“How Inception Should Have Ended”

Purchase Inception from Amazon: