By: Lauren Cohen, The Campus Movie Guru (University of Miami)
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You know that feeling when you go to sleep…and the next thing you remember, you’re waking up? It feels like no time has passed, the hours separating you from the real world and dream world blurring together. That’s what the movie Inception is like. Mimicking the feeling of a dream itself, to me, Inception is a dream. In my own mind, I couldn’t possibly have imagined a more stunning, mind-blowing movie to catapult us out of the movie-rut we’ve been in the majority of this summer. But Inception is more than just the best movie of the summer…so far, it’s the best movie of the year.
Inception introduces us to a world where technology for dream invasion exists, and when it comes to dream invasion, Dom Cobbs (Leonardo DiCaprio) is the best out there. Cobbs is a skilled extractor: it’s his job to enter the dreams and steal the information he needs from the person’s subconscious. His skill has made him one of the go-to guys in the world of corporate espionage, but has also taken away the life he knew and loved. Now, he has a chance to get it all back, with one last job…Cobbs, along with his team of experts, have to achieve the seemingly impossible: Inception. Instead of stealing an idea, they need to plant one in the subject’s mind.
I went into Inception under two levels. I was both buzzing with excitement, but also a little fearful that I wouldn’t understand what was going on. After reading countless reviews saying how amazing…but also how confusing, the film is, I went in ready to concentrate as if I were going to be tested afterwards. I’ll tell you this: believe the hype!
Inception is everything you hoped it would be and more…and just as confusing as they say. Anyone who leaves the theater claiming to have understood it is either lying or superhuman. But that’s part of the fun of Nolan’s films. Like The Prestige and Memento, you take in more and more after each subsequent viewing. Even when you think you got everything the film had to offer, you see it again and there are more secrets and intricacies that freshly take hold in your mind.
However Inception is more than a story filled with twist and turns – it displays greatness in its every aspect. Forget 3D. If you want to see real imagery that pops, see Inception. The special effects, sound and cinematography were so phenomenal that that alone is worthy of the ticket price. Leonardo DiCaprio was incredible, proving he really doesn’t know how to give anything other than a perfect performance. Likewise, Ellen Page and Joseph Gordon-Levitt were fantastic as well playing the two other main members of Cobbs’s team. The person who impressed me the most though (other than Dicaprio) was Marion Cotillard. She blended beauty, cunning, sexy and scary seamlessly…all the ingredients for the perfect femme fatale.
Inception gives new meaning to the phrase “on the edge of your seat.” For the last 45 minutes of the film I was practically hyperventilating, and you could see and hear everyone else in the theater responding the same way. It toyed with your nerves, emotions, and way of thinking. It even had me excited to go to sleep and dream (I’m not even kidding) in the hopes of remembering what my dream was about and what my dreamscape looked like. I know I didn’t take it all in the first time around…and because of that, I can’t wait to see it again.
Rating: A
