My top 30 films - No.9

9. Inception (2010) - "Your mind is the scene of the crime."
"Avatar was never a great film; Inception is a masterpiece..." - Mark Kermode. No surprises that it was his favourite film of 2010.
Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio (Titanic and Catch Me If You Can)) and his partner Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt ((500) Days of Summer)) are specialists in the art of extraction, capable of stealing people's darkest secrets from their subconscious. This has, however, made them international fugitives. They are hired by Saito (Ken Watanabe (Letters from Iwo Jima)), who wants them to do an "inception" rather than an extraction. This means planting an idea in somebody's mind which they believe to be their own. Their target - Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy (28 Days Later... and Batman Begins)), who is to inherit a business empire from his dead father Maurice (Pete Postlethwaite (Brassed Off)) and Saito wants to break up. Cobb's team also consists of Eames (Tom Hardy (Warrior and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy)) and Ariadne (Ellen Page (Juno)). However, he is constantly haunted by his past, especially his dead wife Mal (Marion Cotillard (La Vie en Rose and Public Enemies)).
I hope I have done my best to simplify the plot of this film. Apologies if I am wrong in anyway or if your opinions differ. This is my interpretation of it. I once tried to explain the plot of this film to six people who only started watching this about halfway through. Don't do that. "Like Woody Allen in Annie Hall, you're supposed to watch movies from the very beginning to the very end. If you turn up late, tough: go and see something else - The Sorrow and the Pity, perhaps" (That's not a quote from the film, but I think it is relevant). The rule was, when it was released, you had to see Inception the whole way through without pauses. If you had to go to the toilet, you would come back and you would not know what was now happening. But that's great about it. It wants the audience to try and keep up with it. The one quote that best sums it up is when Ariadne says "Wait, whose subconscious are we going through, exactly?" I was unfortunate not to see Inception at the cinema; I instead watched it on a plane coming back from Australia, where I had the luxury to pause it if I needed to. I didn't need to and yet, I felt that I needed to watch again when I got home. Inception is a film which has benefited greatly from repeat viewings, so people can understand it, similar to Nolan's film Memento. I've seen it again and it has become clearer to me. But, I would have loved to have asked somebody after the opening screenings "What's the plot?" and watched them go "It's about...Oh, hang on a minute." There was also a large amount of secrecy surrounding the film in the production. Trying to keep a secret about a film like this, especially in the era of the Internet and WikiLeaks is near impossible isn't it?
The film is famous for its amazing visual set pieces and the majority of them were not created using CGI. Christopher Nolan said "It's always very important to me to do as much as possible in-camera, and then, if necessary, computer graphics are very useful to build on or enhance what you have achieved physically." The first example of this is the scene where Cobb is standing in a room which rapidly fills up with water. There were water cannons outside the windows which fired off 3000-4000 gallons of water. Another is the fight scene in the hotel corridor featuring Arthur in zero gravity. A 100-foot-long rotating hallway was created and the camera was locked down so it would rotate with it. The scene with the exploding books was done using an air canon. These work really went together with the award winning cinematography of Wally Pfister. The two of them have worked together ever since Memento back in 2000.
Like with his other major films, mainly the Batman franchise, Christopher Nolan has put together a cast of many big name actors. Many of them have worked with him on previous and upcoming films; Tom Hardy of course plays Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, which will also feature Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Michael Caine. Ken Watanabe and Cillian Murphy both worked on Batman Begins as well. I'm sure it's just a coincidence that Marion Cotillard is in the film and they play "Non, je ne regrette rien".
Christopher Nolan received Academy award nominations for Best Original Screenplay and best Film, losing out on both occasions to The King's Speech. However, why wasn't he nominated for Best Director? No offence to Tom Hooper, David O'Russell, Darren Aronofsky, David Fincher and the Coen brothers. Still, that means a Kermode Award for Nolan instead. Which type of award would you prefer - one that looks like C-3P0 or one made from God only knows that looks like Richard Nixon?
It was the right decision not to release the film in 3D, even though Warner Bros. approached him about it. Nolan believed that it would "distract the storytelling experience", as well as the whole loss of foot candles of light. As we all know, 3D is annoying and just unnecessary. The only successful 3D film recently, as we all know, was Martin Scorsese's Hugo. Further good news, Nolan revealed early on that The Dark Knight Rises would be available in normal format and IMAX, not 3D. Thank you.
Inception is proof that you can spend a lot of money ($160 million) making a movie that make $800 million at the box office worldwide, but be smart and challenge the audience to think at the same time. That's the beauty of Christopher Nolan's films and long may he continue to make ones as intelligent as this...