One of the most anticipated films of the year Inception was a spectacle, a psychological thriller and a thinking man's action movie. At the helm is veteran storyteller Christopher Nolan and he has lured audiences again into a dream world only he could imagine. In his cunning style of starting the film with the ending, he taunts viewers by taking them for a ride to which they already know the outcome and still pull the rug from underneath them with a plot twist.
Like any mastermind he only works with the best in the business, he has rounded up the usual suspects, actors with whom he has worked in the past Michael Caine is Miles, the mentor of Leonardo Di Caprio's Cobb and the mark, Cillian Murphy who played The Scarecrow in Nolan's Batman Begins.
The cast includes veteran Ken Watanabe as Saito, the overseer and employer, he is joined by some new faces Ellen "Juno" Paige as Adriane the dream world architect, Joseph Gordon-Levitt (500 days of summer) who plays Arthur the point man, here he makes his debut as an action star. Excellent support was provided by Dileep Rao as Yusuf the Chemist who concocts the drugs that allow them access to the mind's innermost workings and much needed wit and humor came from Tom Hardy playing Eames, the Forger who could impersonate anyone in the world of the unconscious. Marrion Cotillard is Mallorie, Cobb's dead fiancé whose ethereal beauty complicates the already convoluted plot with her control over Cobb's psyche.
Nolan is at his best, his ability to tell an engaging heist story with such attention to detail in a completely plausible manner shows how much he respects his audience's intelligence. And in that respect Inception is his most ambitious film yet, it's a masterpiece told in multiple-layers of reality whose characters and plot propels the story forward at breathtaking speed. Whole worlds of illusion are created, structures which cannot exist in reality are created and blown up in such glorious detail that one is left mesmerized. And to keep the viewers at the edge of their seats action sequences of immense proportions, are masterfully edited so as to flow with the tiered plot. Finally, the audience is cued to experience the appropriate emotions such as; anticipation, fear, and excitement at key instances by Hans Zimmer's brilliant musical score.
As far as films which play mind tricks go, Inception is up there with David Fincher's Fight Club, the Wachowski brothers' Matrix Trilogy and Nolan's Memento. Indeed he is creating a body of work that will cement his name in the pantheon of the greatest directors, with unforgettable titles such as The Dark Knight Franchise, The Prestige and Memento he is proving himself to be a master at telling stories in an engaging yet non-linear fashion. His treatment of his films is in stark contrast to the Hollywood formula, he expects his audience to keep up with the myriad details in his films, with the motives of his characters and to the consequences of their actions to the ensuing dénouement. One gets a sense that he really takes great pains into his filmmaking and his dedication and sincerity shines through his every production.
This generation has a debt of gratitude to storytellers like Nolan because his films are the true shared experiences, they are the modern campfires wherein we gather and take in the new mythology, with heroes like his which speak to us because they are just as psychologically messed up as we are. Nolan invites us to look at the nobility and heroism of the human spirit in the face of adversity and when we watch films like Inception we are struggling right there in that labyrinth with his characters, such that when the conflict is resolved we feel their satisfaction.
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