Inception's brazen complicatedness can work against it, however, with numerous conversations devolving into jargon-laden wedges of ungainly sentences. If the cast wasn't so unfailingly excellent, the script would seem leaden; fortunately, they handle it with almost effortless ease. As protagonist Cobb, DiCaprio, in one of his most challenging and successful roles yet (with some echoes of Shutter Island), is surrounded by faces that seem unlikely to populate a blockbuster but work precisely because of that fact. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is his sidekick, Michael Caine his little-seen father, Tom Hardy his dream engineer, and Ellen Paige his fresh-faced apprentice. It's Paige who provides the necessary window for the viewer: as a neophyte in the world of dream-stealing she has to be taught the rules of the game, thereby explaining it to the audience too.
The sequence in which Paige's Ariadne is introduced to dream space features many of the money shots from the trailer, including, most spectacularly, the streets of Paris folding back on themselves. It's something of a disappointment that such shattering of physics is then left mostly unemployed thereafter. The only major exception to this is Gordon-Levitt's zero-gravity corridor fight, the film's most entertaining and outlandish action sequence. Otherwise, the potential of the characters being in dreams remains largely unexplored. One of Nolan's central arguments though is that dreams feel real while we're in them, so his quest was for the appearance of reality in the dreamworld, with no visual markers like, say, The Matrix's green tint. That has led to much speculation and dissection regarding what within the film is actually a dream - is it all in Cobb's head? Such questions and ambiguities actually enhance the film in the long run, giving it a life well beyond its 150-minute runtime. This is no mere disposable entertainment. It may require some work to appreciate, but it's certainly worth it.
The film, like much of Nolan's oeuvre, and earning him comparisons with Kubrick, has been accused of emotional coldness, but the writer-director ensures that Cobb does have a personal motivation for his mission: haunted by visions of his wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard), he wants to get home to see his young children, but he is a fugitive on the run from the US authorities. Cotillard is a scene-stealer throughout, generating massive unease and unpredictability through simple glances and graceful movements. The involvement of Cobb's wife and children in proceedings adds immesurably to the stakes, as well as, ingeniously, making for a simultaneously cathartic and ambiguous ending. A second (and third) watch yields greater clarity and some answers, but the film's central mysteries remain both perplexing and compelling.
Country: UK / Region: Free / Version: Triple Play / Discs: 2 BD, 1 DVD / Distributor: Warner Bros.
Presentation
I have honestly never heard LFE (low-frequency effects) so deep or pervasive as in this monster of a soundtrack. I actually remember it overpowering the cinema's sound system on my first viewing; I was similarly concerned with my own lowly subwoofer, but it handled the workout. The bass is tremendous, particularly when transitioning between the real and dream worlds, or between dream levels. Similarly, use of the three-dimensional sound space is top notch. The film has just won two Oscars for its sound, and rarely have those awards been so deserved. This barnstormer of a track is ably accompanied by an altogether superb, yet largely naturalistic, image. Wally Pfister's cinematography - also Oscar-winning - is very well represented.
One little minus point. With no resume play or bookmarking function, 15 chapter stops for a 2-and-a-half-hour movie does seem unnecessarily skimpy. Incidentally, the picture quality of the enclosed DVD copy is below par - there's ugly aliasing all over the place. Blu is the only way to go here.
Extras
It's only in this department that the Blu-ray release falls slightly short, despite being a 2-BD set. The lack of commentary is as anticipated given Nolan's reluctance to provide definitive answers, but surely this is a film that would warrant a comprehensive documentary - perhaps that would be just too conventional? Instead, we get WB's so-called Extraction Mode: a fancy name for a simple branching pod feature. The featurettes offered are very interesting and last about 45 minutes in all, but watching them branched into the movie is pointless (you can select them separately).
Disc 2 is sadly quite sparse. The main piece is a rather intellectual look at the science of dreams, fronted by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, which is a bit dry to really engage (45 mins). "The Cobol Job" is a 15-minute Motion Comic-style piece offering a prologue to the events of the film; it's intriguing if not revelatory. Other than trailers and a promotional art archive, the final offering is 10 tracks from Hans Zimmer's score provided in lush 5.1 DTS-HD. It's very welcome and deserved but does have the whiff of simply filling space on the disc.
Summary
I was harsh to Inception on release - probably due to a combination of expectation and befuddlement - but on repeat viewings the film that everyone else has been raving about has emerged for me. That's viewings, plural - since I've had it on Blu-ray this has proved to be a film that has kept calling me back for more, and I just can't get enough. It's certainly a visual and aural tour de force (with Hans Zimmer's best score in years, perhaps ever), and, though the script can be clunky and too verbose, the momentum generated by the editing, music, and sheer bravado pulls it through. It's cinema of real ambition, which should be applauded.
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