“INCEPTION”…If you see something, say something.

I am not a film critic and I don’t want to be. But I am doing what the Bush administration told me to do. There are signs in the subway that read, “If you see something, say something.” Well I saw something.

I sat in a sold out theater in Manhattan with a few hundred other people but it felt like we were all sitting there alone…hypnotized. Christopher Nolan did something right. I am not sure exactly what it was, but he did. He is sick when it comes to writing and directing. Very few come close.

As we walked out of the theater someone said, “This is a new genre of film making.” I responded, “No, this is just a bold exploration of what is actually possible in the art of film making.” Very few artistic mediums have the ability of controlling time the way film does. INCEPTION exemplified this. The film took us to layers and depths only possible in novels. In fact, it was a cinematic novel, not because of the 2hour and 22minute length but because the audience was still allowed to imagine possibilities, characters, their own dreams, and their own ‘inceptions’ while going on the journey of Nolan’s characters.

It was a strong ensemble cast led by Leonardo DiCaprio, who bares the name Cobb a character in Nolan’s first feature film FOLLOWING. Joseph Gordon-Levitt was solid. It’s cool to watch him grow and develop as an actor. I’ve been sweating Tom Hardy since LAYER CAKE and it was nice to see him and Ken Watanabe do their thing. Ellen Page (HARD CANDY baby!) although a solid actress was one of the wholes in this film for me however. Her character’s motivations were ‘Hollywood’ corny and so too were some of her lines. I don’t watch movies to find fault. I want to be take be taken away from reality too but if you slap me in the face and take me out of the journey then hey…

In the midst of this cinematic beast, some of the shoot-out and fight scenes were highly far-fetched and not in a good way. If you establish rules and create a world where people can get ‘hurt’ ‘killed’ and there are deadly specially trained guards all around then you can’t have shootouts where people don’t get hit when they clearly should. (Unless it’s a dream, right?…See the movie.) Audiences let this stuff go but they still feel cheated when these things go down. (Yeah, Nolan should probably smack me in the face.)

All in all, I think the audience last night got their money’s worth. Like Nolan has done with all of his previous films, he seems to really respect our intelligence. INCEPTION made us walk out of the theater in a kind of good silence, like we were a part of a dream as well. The embodiment of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “willing suspension of disbelief.” It made me walk out wanting to make films. It made me love my craft. It made me dream. It made me want to write. It planted new seeds. From the marketing of the film to it’s final shot, the INCEPTION worked.