Movie Review: Inception

Inception, the latest film from Oscar winning director Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight) is something entirely new and creative in a year that has churned out sequels and remakes. It's also very difficult to discuss.

Or rather, it's a movie you want to discuss, at length, over a few beers or a cup of tea (depending on your preference) late into the night. While being unbelievably gripping, it is also a "thinking movie" and utterly profound.

However, I can't say much because the film unfolds like a finely written novel, slowly revealing more and more of the situation, characters, and plot. The fine unveiling provides much of the pleasure of the film and I have no desire to rob my readers of that pleasure.

The story revolves around dreams, but isn't dreamy at all. Instead, the film has the tenor of a dream when you are inside it, intense, passionate, strangely frightening, oddly familiar. It's irrational at times, as dreams are, fed by deep secrets and unnamed desires that knock on the edge of our conscious minds and control more of our behavior and emotions than we want to admit.

It dares to ask how we define reality.

Leonard DiCaprio gives a worthy performance as a man of powerful longings who may or may not be dreaming. He's joined by Marion Cotillard as his wife Mal, Joseph-Gordon Levitt as a co-worker, and Ellen Page as another co-worker.

I may have said too much already.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that because "Inception" delves such deep waters as philosophy or such nebulous territory as dreams that it is boring. Far from it. The film catches the audience in the first few minutes and carries them along easily. Nolan has created special effects that we have never seen before, not so much subverting gravity as redefining it. There are moments of awe at the sheer beauty and creativity of the cinematography, a collective drawing of the breath of the audience.

To say that this film will be in the running for the Best Picture Oscar is simply stating the obvious. I expect it to win handily.

Just as a sleeper awakes from a dream unsure what it meant although the experience lingers, the audience leaves "Inception" a bit puzzled, but profoundly moved. It's the kind of film you'll find yourself mulling over for days and weeks. The message is there, but needs a while to be teased out and recognized by the waking mind.

So go see "Inception" and we'll sit down over a metahopical cup of tea (I'll have beer) and talk it over. I'm eager to hear what you think.