"Inception" starring Leonardo di Caprio

[Ed Augusts]

I n c e p t i o n : The Story-within-a-Story-within-a-Story-within-a-
Tale
Reviewed by Ed Augusts of www.edaugusts.com

This is a great action movie, which has great characters, including
the capaciously watchable, Orson Welles' like baby-faced youth,
Leonardo DiCaprio, who, like his sidekicks in this thriller, is 100%
"into" the story...No dull notes here! The dialogue is also crisp and
quick, leaving the impression of being filmed at about a 2 to 3%
faster "speed" than Real Life. Do you remember the snappy dialogue
in "Altered States", the movie that shows what happens when you couple
a series of lengthy isolation tank afternoons with a powerful acid
trip? Whooo-eee! No boredom, for sure, and conversations take place
at lightning-strike speeds, speeds that seem to speed-up your mind as
you watch... as happens when watching this movie,"Inception"!

The notion of r e v v i n g -- up from one, to two, to three... to
(finally!) no less than FOUR levels of action taking place at the same
time -- but in different time FRAMES -- different levels of one's
DREAM WORLD -- the action in each of which is absolutely necessary to
do successfully, perfectly, in the right order, or someone might die
or go into a "state of limbo",--- is a brilliant conception! The kind
of person who could build a very lengthy run-on sentence that
nevertheless comes out OK at the end is like the jugglers and
magicians who were the film-makers of "Inception".

The idea of a man being haunted by memories of his late wife, memories
which he has preserved for all time in a kind of prison in his mind,
hosted by that very same, now-long-gone wife, a world of memories
that is serviced by its own elevator, is clever. The guilt he feels
for her death is explained -- all in due time! It is quite a
sensitive and empathic part of an otherwise action-ratcheted film. Di
Caprio's love of his children and his unyielding desire to do whatever
it takes to buy entry into America so he can be with them again, is
poignant. Ellen Page is certainly a believable grad student...Marion
Cotilard makes a great, moody 'Mol'... if it is virtuous to look like
a woman who would, in fact, kill herself,... Joseph Gordon-Levitt
rounds out the most youthful among the company...and Cillian Murphy
has an incredible face... He will one day make a great Caligula. Here
he just plays the younger of the Fischers... the very Very RICH
Fischers...

Many of the scenes, both in "our" real "consensus reality" world, as
our characters fly into places like Mombasa, Kenya; Paris and Osaka,
and, in those just-as-romantic-and-dramatic dream worlds... cities
that have never and could never exist except in a dream... Like the
homes from childhood made to look like they've been transplanted to
wave-washed Venice... were great, whether a hundred percent fiction,
or filmed straight out of reality.

The idea of the "inception" of a thought which will change a person;s
life... the inception the movie was named after... the inception of a
dangerous world-shaking idea...a very simple idea, really.. such as:
"Son, now that your daddy's gone, why not break-up your corporate
empire into smaller chunks?" seems like it might be plausible. .. But
a huge and dangerous enterprise is built upon this smail sand-sized
grain of an idea., Jeepers! Why not just have several characters
suggest it to him in real life --- why all the histrionics and dangers
of dreams that can become unfathomable nightmares? Probably, because
THEN, we wouldn't have this movie!

I could endure a couple of levels of dreams which "Inception" brings
us. But when the 3rd level turned out to be a snow-swept mountainous
region that popped out of nowhere, and could have been in Colorado or
North Korea, I began to fidget a little. And soon after that --- a
4th level was made necessary! That was almost more dreams than I could
stand!

Although, as I admit, the action was very good, the idea that an
injection will almost immediately induce a state in which all parties
enter into the identical dream world -- is a bogus idea. I mean, come
on! The idea that people can be induced into a dreamworld which will
look identical to each of them, to ALL of them, in order for them to
work and act together, is a flawed and very nearly silly idea. It
exists in the imagination of visionary screen writers and
moviemakers; it could not POSSIBLY exist anywhere in the real world.
It COULD exist, however, in the Land of Dreams, if you could call it a
land... and by an hour or two has gone by in this movie, the viewer is
no longer quite sure WHAT consensus reality is, in his or her life,
anymore than what reality is, in this movie. And that's a bit
dangerous. That's an idea that sweeps us to places that maybe we
shouldn't be so happy to go to.

Little things stand out for possible review: The idea that a Mr. Big,
fifteen minutes before an international flight lands in Los Angeles,
can make a quick phone call that will make an arrest warrant in
Airport Customs just go away, just suddenly disappear... is not
believable. This and other factors all through the movie make me
wonder if even the consensus reality we see here is not really an
illusion...one step away from reality folding itself upon itself, as
happens to part of the city of Paris early-on in this movie.

Pretty good flick! But how did the sequence end with his (late)
wife? What was it he begged the old man to do? Why was there a
child's toy where the Last Will and Testament should have been? Did
DiCaprio's character survive and come back in the end? Maybe NOT. A
good case can be made for the fact that this film did NOT have the
happy ending most viewers think it did;

This may be a spoiler, so don't read this paragraph if you haven't
seen the movie: But listen! DiCaprio desperately wanted to be
reunited with his children. His first glimpse of them when he sees
them again, playing in the garden together, is identical to the last
glimpse which he REMEMBERED of them as they're playing in his garden
BEFORE he leaves on all his exploits in 4 levels of reality and
dream. The horrible fate which awaits those who fail, who die in the
dream, is a kind of LIMBO. A world which seemingly devolves, a
world which is inescapable, despite that devolution. Maybe he DOESN'T
survive, maybe he enters that limbo: Because --- the top kept spinning
and spinning and spinning.... if you;ve seen the movie, you know the
spinning top ...a top which we were told earlier, is, if it behaves
strangely, as if it would in a dream, is a clear indication that we're
in a dream-world, NOT consensus reality. Well, that's exactly what
happens two-and-a-half hours into this movie!

Finally, this movie almost inevitably makes a person watching the
movie wonder whether they are in reality or something that may not
quite be 100% reality in their daily lives. I kept feeling this
nagging at me during this movie. Well, that's okay. The mind will
play tricks on itself, after all! But the idea that people will
fixate on this idea and then go on to kill themselves, like a certain
special character did in this story: thinking suicide will take them
back to the REAL reality ---- as occurred in this movie --- wow,
that's a bad and very sad idea; it is too bad the idea of suicide is
perpetrated as one of the interesting ideas of this film, because it
is NOT an interesting idea, it is the most bogus and nefarious,
unhelpful things about this movie! ----------------Ed