Inception
2010
Director: Christopher Nolan
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph
Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe, Marion Cotillard
Christopher
Nolan, I heart you so much. You walk
that line that so many other filmmakers don’t believe exists: that the American
public will actually pay to see intelligent, original ideas. Thank you, THANK YOU for proving that point
with Inception.
The
complex story of Inception is based on that most ineffable of ideas:
dreams. Cobb (DiCaprio) is an expert at
extraction, or breaking into someone else’s dream in order to plunder their
subconscious. The technology has been
developed to do this, and now corporate espionage is being taken to the
subliminal level. When international
energy businessman Saito (Watanabe) hires Cobb, though, he does not want Cobb
to steal an idea. Rather, he wants Cobb
to implant an idea in his enemy’s mind (the “inception” of the title). It’s never been done successfully, but Cobb
trusts in his partner Arthur (Gordon-Levitt) and the new girl on the team,
dream architect Ariadne (Page). Cobb’s
past and his own subconscious begin to get in the way of their dream work,
however, as manifested through Cobb’s dead wife Mal (Cotillard).
Inception made 300 million dollars US
domestic, and over 800 million dollars worldwide. I decided to start with this figure to make a
big fatty point. For as complex a
narrative as Inception has, and hoo boy does it get convoluted at the end,
people ate it up. Inception found an
audience, it was one of the biggest films of the 2010 summer, and it was an
international success. It is one of the
precious few films that appealed to both critics (it was nominated for Best
Picture at the Oscars) and the popcorn summer crowd. The divide between these two audiences is
growing ever greater with every passing year.
The Oscars is growing more and more out of touch with the rather lowbrow
tastes of the American public at large.
I do not solely blame the Academy for this; the “big” summer films are getting
bigger and stupider, and the “small” critical darlings are getting smaller and
holding less general appeal.
