Sunday, July 18, 2010

GET SMART:


A REVIEW: INCEPTION

Imagine those charming European streets packed with glued-together buildings, smooth brick roads and eco-friendly cars that you see on The Sartorialist folding up to form the sky and in between would be Ellen Page and Leonardo Di Caprio discussing the science of things...
It sounds like a dream, but it's not. It's a reality you see in a visual and plot-heavy masterpiece called Inception.
I sat through two hours of pure cinematic triumph, alone, jerking to brain damaging sound effects and clutching on to my poor bag for a grueling 30-something minute build up of an ending that'll surely win billions of reactions. Chris Nolan's latest project does not deserve that pretty high 84% grade on Rotten Tomato. Well, at least in my opinion. It deserves incredibly higher marks.

The last time I fell madly in love with a thriller was of Jake Gyllenhal's Zodiac. I promised myself after seeing that movie that I'd get me a DVD copy (an original) but I never got to. Now, if I don't get a copy of Inception I'd be damned! Basically, what makes it such a brilliant movie is that all the elements of a handsome film is there. The cast is a stunning story in itself: Leonardo Di Caprio takes the lead while an equally talented supporting group provide such wonderful chemistry. The way too dapper and glossy Joseph Gordon-Levitt had just solidified his star as one of Hollywood's next big thing (those non-gravity scenes are just haunting). Ellen Page plays an anti-Juno, anti-indie character perfectly that you would want to believe she's that girl in Inception instead of that girl shaking a burger phone. I have no words to describe Marion Cottilard cause she's like a goddess straight out of Hamilton's Mythology. A new favorite actor just has to be (well aside from Levitt) the British stunner, Tom Hardy who plays a role incredibly fitting for a man like him.

Chris Nolan is just superhuman. And I thought The Dark Knight was brilliant. Nolan, who almost single-handedly created the film plays director, producer and writer. That's most probably the reason why the movie's a success because he was able to keep his story as pure and as close to what he had written and envisioned in his head as possible. I was really blown away by how he's taken the power of technology to a whole new level of sophistication. The film spoils your senses, training it to believe that all other movies would be just as rich and fantastic as this one. The visuals are out of this world but strangely too realistic and that mastery over sound is amazing. Amazingly, for a film this serious you'd think that fashion would take a back seat, but it never did. Every single character in the film had amazing costumes that were strong on details, reflecting the movie itself. Of course, this movie's success would also lie heavily on its story. In the tradition of Renaissance literature, Nolan had indeed taken up on man's constant struggle between reality and fantasy, but what makes this movie special is how the age old theme takes place in new age cinema and story-telling.

I could go on raving about the sharp suits Di Caprio wore and Levitt's hair and the amazing aerial shots of Paris and those architectural masterpieces that they've shown 'till I lose energy, but if I di then I'd most probably be spoiling it. Bottom line is that this has been one of the best films I have seen in ages. It's so beautiful that it made me bite my tongue in pursuit of not crying (because the plot will hit everyone's hearts, even the coldest ones) and that RARELY happens. It'll leave you breathless and goosebumps would surely haunt you for a good ten to thirty minutes after the movie. As far as I am concerned Inception has marked a new beginning in film age and it would be incredibly difficult for the next films to topple this one giant down.

photo: Flickr

No comments:

Post a Comment