Inception

Got back from watching Inception.

Here’s my mother’s review: “No. It’s too crazy! This is why your generation is so crazy.”

Now I’m interested in directors. Christopher Nolan is a legend – he did Dark Knight, Prestige, and this? You have to be everything – smart, artistic, subtle, keen.

Here’s what I mean: He understands how to direct crises. Traumatic events, epiphanies, whatever. He knows that it’s not about the crucial moment, it’s not about the fact of. It’s the moment right before it, and right after it that matter. They make the movie.

In Prestige, it’s the moment after Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) finds out Alfred Borden’s (Christian Bale) secret. In the classic, Disney way of doing it, the villain is crushed, and he dies or loses his kingdom or in some way or other is kicked out of glory. All it means is that the villain loses. But not in this case. In this case, you see every single glass-paned box, and you realize what it means now. Now, everything has changed. Now, Angier looks back and realizes. And you, the viewer, feel immediately how much he has lost – it’s so much more than the competition. It is human, and terrible, loss. We are not super-villains, but we all fear death, and we can imagine the sentiment: “I have done something terrible beyond all description.” I’ve forgotten a lot of the movie, but I haven’t forgotten that scene.

And here in Inception, this is the scene I can’t forget: Mal commits suicide.

Only it’s not about the actual suicide. It’s the entire scene done spotlessly. DiCaprio’s face – he, watching her fall like he can’t take his eyes off her (there are a lot of ways to do it… sit paralyzed, look away… but what he did was totally in character, completely Cobb), and his “Jesus Christ” – I could watch that piece of acting over and over. Kudos to DiCaprio there, did I mention I think he’s great? And then the moment right before the fall. The shoe falls off her foot, and the camera watches it fall. The stakes, everything this suicide means, are all in that motion – they are all in that motion.

And we have to acknowledge that he assembles the greatest casts. They are always perfect.

So there, I’ve gushed. I don’t think the film is flawless, which I have to recognize (grudgingly) when my friends and I talk about it afterwards. But I think most of the mistakes are just the equivalent of typos in my mind. The development of the “limbo” idea is too weak considering its importance, and I am not a great fan of the ending. But I just thought the movie was strong, brilliant, challenging and new. I completely admire the independence he has – complete artistic control, as far as I know, from the writing all the way to the filming. A monolith. Amazing.