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Visually stunning ‘Inception’ a big-screen brainteaser by James Verniere, published on Saturday, July 17, 2010 The summer movie everyone has been waiting for is here, and it’s a 148-minute, brainteasing thumbsucker. In “Inception,” a man named Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio, last seen shooting bolt upright from a sleeping position in “Shutter Island”) has the ability to link people into the same dream, enter into the dream, steal secrets from people’s subconscious and even plant a powerful idea there. But where are the “monsters from the id?” And why do the jacked dreams all look like James Bond or Jason Bourne movies, full of screeching cars and people shooting at one another? I don’t know about you, but my dreams more closely resemble “Mulholland Dr.” than “Casino Royale.” That said, “Inception” is hugely accomplished, visually stunning and mostly original (if you’ve never read Philip K. Dick), attributes in short supply in most current films. “Extractor” Cobb leads a team of “Mission: Impossible”-like dream warriors - weightily named architect and maze-maker Ariadne (Ellen Page), chemist and driver Yusuf (Dileep Rao), point man Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and forger (i.e., master of disguise) Eames (a Bond-like Tom Hardy). Also tagging along is Mal (Marion Cotillard, which explains why an Edith Piaf song is used to awaken dreamers), who is the “projection” of Cobb’s dead wife, and Saito (Ken Watanabe), a daring corporate mogul. I realize that la vida es sueno, and movies are shared dreams. But the dreams in “Inception” look like outtakes from “The Dark Knight” minus Batman. Cillian Murphy, who plays Robert Fischer Jr., heir apparent to a dying, Lear-like father (Pete Postlethwaite), was director Christopher Nolan’s Scarecrow. Michael Caine, who plays Cobb’s father-in-law, was Alfred, the butler. Tom Berenger shows up as a kind of corporate Macbeth. The fiery action takes us all over the world. The special-effects feature literally collapsing dreams and a sequence in which Gordon-Levitt battles armed adversaries sans gravity in the halls of a hotel. It’s tres “Matrix”-y. In the movie’s centerpiece, Cobb and his team go “three levels deep,” a dream within a dream within a dream, something requiring a heavy sedative and, probably, GPS and crumbs. The danger in such an extreme case is that if you are killed you don’t wake up. You go to “limbo,” where you might never come back, sort of like having to watch “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” over and over again. With its cityscapes hinged like drawbridges, “Inception” resembles something Dutch illusionist M.C. Escher might have conceived. At other moments, the film invokes the great Stanley Kubrick, another artist specializing in chilly mind-mazes. Cobb is a lot like the haunted cop DiCaprio played in “Shutter Island,” another film about people haunted by visions. But Cobb’s obsession with his dead wife notably lacks a sexual component. At one point, Gordon-Levitt and Page kiss and a spark passes between them, and you think: What this pointy-headed beast needs is more kisses and fewer pounding subwoofers. Grade: B+ Source: news.bostonherald.com |
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© 2006-2010 Dominik Keppner
© 2006-2010 Dominik Keppner
