INCEPTION (Spoiler free reaction)

There it is again…
That moment after the credits start rolling and you sit in your chair.
Motionless, just trapped in your own thoughts.
And the only sentence you are able to mumble is “I gotta think about this movie for a little while”

There are few times when entertainment and philosophy clash together in a way that is both thrilling and intellectually stimulating, when great concepts are the foundation of a gripping story. Where car chases and explosions are not just pasted onto the product for the sake of being there – Inception combines the ideas of dreams with fascinating action spread across different storylayers, slowly unveiling the structure of Nolan’s big idea.

I’m uncertain if I’m able to write a coherent review about Inception because this is one of those movies we shouldn’t know anything about when we are entering the cinema. Seriously, just watch the movie before everyone on facebook spoils the final scene to you (which has happened the minute the movie was over here) and enjoy an original, complex yet never boring ride.

Inception proves that you don’t need the current 3D gimmick, the studios try to desperately sell us as “immersive experience” – in old-school 2D a movie unfolds so breath-taking that you might be feeling like actually entering new worlds. Worlds so complex it’s no wonder that Christopher Nolan spent over 10 years writing this movie. Every detail fits, possible plot holes are addressed and explained with internal clockwork logic.

At the heart of this movie stands first and foremost Christopher Nolan’s screenplay, the actors are bringing it to life, but Nolan’s dream world remains the star of the movie. This doesn’t mean that the actors are not giving their best possible performance. It’s just in a movie that is so heavy on explaining the rules and setting the stakes, the characters sometimes run danger of becoming mere vessels for the ideas to unfold. Yet the same ideas are so intriguing and captivating that we immediately root for those characters, the heist they are planning is fascinating enough to keep our interest in them and at the centre of the story we have Leonardo DiCaprio, great as usual with secret past and inner demons which become the main obstacle to overcome.
Both DiCaprio’s journey and Nolan’s world offer more than enough food for our thoughts so that we can forgive Nolan letting some other characters fall a little flat.

Not enough that Inception’s concepts about invading dreams are bolder than most of the things we have seen in recent years, but over this already interesting core the filmmakers orchestrate a symphony of audio-visual achievement.
Few movies, no matter how overly complex their CGI-effects are, can compete with the action sequences in this film, which tries to use miniatures and set pieces whenever possible and uses CGI like it should be used – as an addition, not as the main thing that is going on at the screen.

The usual suspects who have worked behind the screen for most of Nolan’s movies are back to deliver their A-list work:
Lee Smith’s editing never lets us lose the orientation in this 4 dimensional tale
Wally Pfister’s cinematography is top notch as usual and I bet that he will again get nominated come Oscar season
And of course Hans Zimmer guides us through this movie with his dreamlike score

Back in 2008 Christopher Nolan brought us The Dark Knight a movie so haunting that one scene in this movie became synonymous to me for exceptional entertainment.
Now he is back, trying to do it again… to flip the truck, to create movie that is both high art and a blockbuster.

Did he do it again?
It’s hard to say. At the end of The Dark Knight my fanboy heart was jumping around like hell, everything seemed so perfect, to only be summoned in a collective “Fuck yeah!” as soon as the credits rolled.
Inception is not that type of movie experience. Inception is the slow movie that might not hit all the notes perfectly, but while not a perfect film it is that rare kind of film where I don’t care about its flaws. The sheer ambition of this movie breaks boundaries and makes it impossible to really describe this movie to an unaware moviegoer.

Even if this movie is not a total truck flip – it pushes moviemaking and twists and turns said truck (or train) in at least 4 dream dimensions I know of.

P.S.: Damn, it’s already 3 am here and I still can’t stop thinking about this movie.