Your mind is the scene of the crime

I went to see Inception at the Vue cinema in Hamilton a week last Friday and it has taken me up until now to depchirer what it is actually about.

Basically the film involves Leonardo Di Caprio as Dom Cob. Terrible name I know, but he is an expert in ‘Deception’ This is where he can go into a persons dream and steal something. This could be a code to a safe or a plan for a new fighter jet engine. Anything basically. With him are a band of merry dream stealers who also have daft names. they include Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Arthur) and Lukas Haas (Nash).

In the first scene these three are trying to get access to a safe in a Japanese themed world, while outside the dream they seem to be in North Africa in the middle of a riot. What is revealed is that they are in a dream within a dream and are trying to steal a document from some rich Japanese business man. This man then asks the team to perform the impossible. Inception. This is the ability to plant an idea into a persons mind.

Lost yet? I was after the first twenty minutes, but then what Nolan does is very clever and also very slick.

A dream team is assembled: newbie world-designer Ariadne (Ellen Page), identity forger Eames (Tom Hardy, a dry gift here), pharmacist Yusuf (Dileep Rao) and Cobb’s regular point man Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). Their target is Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy, precise and valuable), the son of an ailing energy tycoon (Pete Postlethwaite) whose business empire Saito wants broken up after his death. Th rest of the film then centers on them trying to achieve this near impossible. Without wasting too much it basically involves four multi layered dreams and also that you concentrate fully for the next hour and a half or you will be lost.

Also as a side note. The story between Cobb and his wife Mal (I know another terrrible name) is excellent and even as almost a side story it still remains the beating heart of the film.

Very very rarely do movies draw me in as this movie did. I can tell now why this screenplay took Chris 8 to 10 years to perfect. There is so much care and attention to detail going on in almost every facet of this film. Chris, with this film in my opinion, has placed himself in the pantheon of some of the best modern architects of film and story in the last 20-30 years. He deserves it. What he has created with Inception is far beyond what most anyone is producing.

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