Inception - 10th Anniversary
warner brosAfter months of upheaval, Christopher Nolan has, intentionally or not, positioned himself as the saviour of the film industry, with the looming release of TENET being viewed as a pivotal point for post-Covid cinema life. As chains have been scrabbling for listings to fill the schedule, classics and anniversaries have been the order of the day, often playing in the larger screens in favour of the new, albeit small-budget, features. The re-release of Nolan’s Inception, whilst undoubtedly a promotional ploy for his upcoming film, speaks volumes of his status within the industry; it’s hard to imagine another director having a 10-year-old film being showcased as part of a classics season.
For the uninitiated, the plot follows Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), a mercenary who specialises in infiltrating the subconscious of his targets. Whilst navigating the dreamspace, he extracts sensitive information – ranging from personal affairs to corporate documents – which makes him a valuable asset in industrial espionage. After impressing a potential suitor in the form of Ken Watanabe’s Saito, Cobb is tasked with implanting an idea in the mind of the Japanese businessman’s main rival, Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), one which would dissolve the company and give Saito a chance to succeed in a competitive industry; in return, Cobb is promised that criminal charges in his homeland will be dropped.
Even with the sci-fi furnishings, Inception, at its core, is a heist film, with a sizable chunk of time devoted to recruiting the personnel and planning the stages of the job. Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Arthur oversees the projects, Ariadne (Ellen Page), an architecture student based in Paris, is enlisted to construct and design the dreamscapes, whilst Yusuf (Dileep Rao) is the chemist tasked with concocting a sedative powerful enough to facilitate a layer of dreams. The most charismatic figure is Tom Hardy’s Eames, a quick-talking and cocksure forger who specialises in identity theft, combat and sarcastic remarks.
Naturally, with a labyrinthian plot such as this, there’s a healthy amount of exposition to be unraveled, but it never feels like a chore to learn. Even a decade on, this is terrain that is still largely untouched, but the genius of the screenplay lies in how it manages to keep these concepts rooted in logic, whether it be in how shifts in gravity echo down each layer of the dream or how a full bladder can lead to extreme weather in another. With Ariadne, the novice in the team, serving as a conduit, the lengthy explanations make contextual sense whilst also ensuring the audience isn’t alienated whilst the heist takes place.
To bolster this, Nolan, along with cinematographer Wally Pfister, conjures spectacular settings and images to make each facet of the heist unique. Whether it’s an exhilarating car-chase in a sodden Los Angeles, a ski chase in a snowy mountainside resort or the now iconic fist-fight in a revolving hotel corridor, each segment possesses a sense of dynamism whilst also adhering to the rules of the world. With the accompaniment of Hans Zimmer’s booming score, a sense of scale is created in each action sequence, which neatly juxtaposes the core ideals of the film.
At the risk of being swamped by the sheer magnitude of its concepts and set-pieces, there is thankfully an emotional core to marry all these elements. On the one hand, there is Cobb’s tumultuous marriage with his recently deceased wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard), with his guilt manifesting itself in dangerous, subconscious projections of her. Simultaneously, Robert’s fractured relationship with his father (Pete Postlethwaite) serves as the genesis for the entire plan, resulting in a confident and heartwarming final message. Nolan has long been considered by some as a cold filmmaker, but there is real power and weight to be found in these arcs which give the film a purpose beyond its concepts.
In a specially-recorded interview which precedes the film, the director himself talks of these ideas, stating how the film capitalised on a growing public interest in technology. Frankly, this seems like something of a disservice, for Inception is still the pinnacle for high-concept blockbuster filmmaking. Whether a ten-year-old film can be deemed a classic is, in this case, moot, for it already feels like a film from a bygone era; even Nolan himself, with Interstellar and Dunkirk, has returned to more traditional grounds. Without wanting to dismiss the current state of affairs, it feels like we could all take some friendly advice from Eames when he says “you mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.”