Christopher Nolan has always been a brainier than average director. His first big film Memento, the story of a man with short-term memory loss, was told backwards in order to help the audience identify with the confused hero. His two Batman films finally did what their predecessors had failed to–translate Batman to a live-action medium without being embarrassed about it, resulting in the best adaptation of the comic book character to film. Inception is another bravura feature that makes audiences think hard about the meaning of the story and that demands multiple screenings to appreciate the complexity of its plot and execution.
The problem is, it’s almost impossible to offer a typical reviewer’s description of the plot in order to tell you if it is a good rendering of it without giving away too much. If you’ve seen the trailers, you know that it involves Leonard DeCaprio’s character entering a person’s dream in order to steal secrets buried deep in their minds. Based on this basic concept, I can say that it resembles Nolan’s other films that owe much to film noir in tone and in this case, the crime-themed capers in its structure and its protagonist motivated by something more than ill-gotten riches. The trailers show astonishing special effects that will make the eventual home video releases a must-sea for some indication of how the spectacular visions were achieved. What’s important is that, despite the highly complex plotting, this is a script that explains the rules of the game as you go along, but you have to pay very close attention; and that the convoluted plot never keeps the audience from caring about the characters. This is a film that will take some time to digest for its thrills, themes and significance and is bound to encourage much discussion afterward, so see it with someone who loves movies.
