OnTheGOinTO

There’s a lot of great movies that are made, but there’s a select few that put me in awe. Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia, Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run, Alfonso Cuaron’s Children Of Men, and Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, Minority Report, and Saving Private Ryan are all recent films that made my jaw drop.  They are movie-making at its finest in that I couldn’t even comprehend how one could create such a sprawling, epic, and clever film while keeping it all cohesive for an audience.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m ready to add Christopher Nolan’s Inception to that list. Nolan already blew me away with the genius of Memento, and his reinvention of the Batman series, but he’s reached a new level with this excellent piece of mind-twisting realities.

I won’t give away too much about the film because I purposely stayed away from articles, reviews, and most trailers for the film prior to seeing it because I wanted to be surprised.  At its very basic level, Leonardo DiCaprio plays Cobb, a man who is hired to infiltrate people’s dreams and find out some secret that the paying party wants to know.  At the beginning of the film, Cobb meets Saito (Ken Watanabe) and the idea of an “inception” (planting an idea in someone’s head as opposed to finding something in someone’s head) is proposed.

I’ll leave the plot at that. DiCaprio is haunted by dreams of his wife, just like in this year’s Shutter Island, but this time his wife is played by Marion Cotillard.  In a hauntingly creepy and powerful performance, Cotillard might just be able to sneak into the Best Supporting Actress this year at the Oscars. I’m becoming quite impressed with Cotillard because, in her post-Oscar career, she has taken the “Rachel Weisz route” in giving consistently excellent performances in interesting supporting roles (Public Enemies, Nine, and now Inception) instead of selling out for a lead role in a crappy romantic comedy.  I had to chuckle at the first use of Edith Piaf’s “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien” on the soundtrack as Edith Piaf was the role that won Cotillard the Best Actress Oscar just a few years ago.  

I’d love to ask Christopher Nolan if the use of that song was scripted before Cotillard was cast or if it was a not-so-subtle nod to Cotillard.  If you really wanted to analyze it, it’s an interesting choice since the song is used as the characters’ link back to reality, and, in the film, Cotillard’s character is the exact opposite of that. Hidden meaning? Hmmm….

The rest of the cast is stellar including Joseph Gordon-Levitt (it’s fun seeing him in an action role), Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Dileep Rao, Tom Berenger, Pete Postlethwaite, and (along with Watanabe) Batman alum Cillian Murphy (Scarecrow) and Michael Caine (Alfred).  But this really isn’t an actor’s film. This is Nolan’s film and it’s incredible how he’s able to keep this complicated story so cohesive for his audience. There’s people that are going to hate Inception because the film challenges your intellect and asks you to stay alert the whole time.

By the time, the film has 4 levels of realities and there’s a simultaneous car roll and a hotel hallway fight going on, if you ain’t smiling at the genius of it all, then I suggest you go watch Grown Ups. I hear there’s a couple funny fart jokes.

After a widely publicized underwhelming first half of the year at the movies, quality films are back in a big way with the one-two-three punch of Toy Story 3, The Kids Are All Right, and Inception.  It’s obvious all 3 films will heavily appear on critics’ top 10 lists, and all have a very good chance of making Best Picture at the Oscars. After being snubbed for Memento and The Dark Knight, maybe this will be the film that gets Christopher Nolan to the podium.

This is a modern classic.

Grade: A+