Inception (2010)

Chances are you've heard of Inception. If not, you've heard the countless internet references. I have a problem with these though, and this is time to be pedantic. People keep talking about something inside something. That's not Inception. Inception is the act of PLACING an idea within the dream. OK, rant over.



PLOT:
Make no mistake about it. This movie is intelligent. I usually do a bit of reading on movies after I watch them so that I can better understand things, but sometimes I just enjoy learning random facts about it. This movie has a ton of them.

The movie consists of Dom Cobb, played by Leonard DiCaprio, being approached by Mr. Saito, played by Ken Watanabe, to perform an inception on a rival businessman, played by Cillian Murphy. Saito wants to break up an energy conglomerate so that he can control everything himself. Kind of like Hitler...with less death and without that lame mustache thing. It's a win-win. Dom then proceeds to hire a group of the best dream molesters (I might be paraphrasing a little) to carry out the mission. Without giving too much away, they find themselves in one of the best original stories to come out of the past few decades. Christopher Nolan does go out of his way to mind-rape us with this. There are so many hidden things in this movie. Such as:

• The slow, gloomy, blaring trombones in the main theme of the film score are actually based on an extremely slowed down version of the fast, high pitched trumpets in the beginning of the Édith Piaf song "Non, je ne regrette rien," which is used as a plot device in the film. Furthermore, when music is heard by someone who is currently within a dream, the music is perceived as slowed down. Thus, the main theme of the film score is almost exactly what the beginning of "Non, je ne regrette rien" would sound like to a dreamer. This thematic device is brought to its logical conclusion when the song plays at the end of the credits, signaling that the audience is about to 'wake up' from the film. 
• The running time of 2 hours 28 min is a reference to the original length of Édith Piaf's song "Non, je ne regrette rien", which lasts (on its first recorded edition) 2 minutes 28 seconds. 
• The first letter of each of the main character's first names - Dom, Robert, Eames, Arthur/Ariadne, Mal, Sato - spell the word DREAMS. 

Thanks to the folks at iMDB for writing those trivia's.

Now, the bad. This movie is LONG. Longer than most other movies. While the movie never really gets boring, unless you like to sit and think about a movie, this will seem like a LONG time. There aren't any scenes that should have been left on the cutting room floor, which is rare. Christopher Nolan really knew what he was doing in this film. But it doesn't surprise me that many people don't feel like watching this. Because, honestly, I put off watching this movie for a long time for that reason...and because everyone was raving about it but they were mostly Twilight fans, and I can't take them seriously. Who can?

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT:
Every actor/actress cast in this movie was a great cast. The character of Ariadne, played by Ellen Page, was originally supposed to be played by Evan Rachel Wood. And to me, while this would have been a bad idea. Dom Cobb, gives us the exasperated, last ditch effort, vibe that the movie is trying to give us. Which is great. We see him do everything possible to see his kids again. And we see him as a tortured soul who never actually becomes an overbearing man that everyone wants to punch in the face. So, yay, another win. All the characters give us some comedic relief every now and then to break up the tension (unless the tension is absolutely needed.) We start to feel for the characters. And by the end of the movie, I was gripping my seat, hoping for the best.

END SUMMARY:
While it may seem like I'm raving about this movie, I can assure you I am. If you love to think about movies this is the movie for you. And in reverse the same is true, if you don't, don't bother watching this movie. There is a reason it's in the top 250 on iMDB and has a 74/100 on Metacritic. It's cinematic genius. The only reason I'm not giving this an almost perfect score is the length and that might throw more than a few people off.


RATING: 9.1/10