Went and caught Inception on its first day of screening here in Hong Kong. I went to a 9.20pm show and the theatre was about 70% full. Now to be honest, I’ve read many tweets beforehand that says it takes probably 5-6 viewings before one can fully understand the film. I am very surprised because I didn’t find it that hard to understand… In fact, the plot is pretty straightforward and there aren’t really that many twists and turns except for the final showdown, so I guess some of the younger audiences on Twitter are a bit too naive(?) or inexperienced in films like Inception to grasp it easily?I have to admit that I am really a nerd who love sci-fi and action and crazy exploration of the human minds and cyber punk kinda plot like this. I can’t even count how many times I’ve seen the Matrix since it came out when I was 16.
Anyway… it was quite an interesting film (nothing close to the Matrix and the intricacies of the Matrix universe, Nolan is no Wachowski), action sequences, while frustrating at times but there are a couple of really cool scenes that I really liked with Joseph Gordon-Levitt (my personal favourite since Third Rock from the Sun).His gravity-defying fight scenes are beautifully done though his movements crawling across walls and ceilings reminded me a lot of Nightcrawler in the second X-Men film adaptation, X2. Nonetheless, Arthur’s (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) character pretty much had the best action scenes in the film, I think.
Leo DiCaprio, I’ve like a few of his performances over the years, but this one seems to me a bit underwhelmed. His past few roles since Blood Diamond and The Departed, while solid, have seemed a bit repetitive to me. The same damaged man seeking for redemption. So I am a bit disappointed with him. Marion Cottilard, never quite the brilliant actress that she was with her Oscar-winning role as Edith Piaf. Her role in this film was interesting though, but could use a bit more fire. Ellen Page… now, she’s cute and it wasn’t as her performance wasn’t good, but somehow she annoys me in this one. All in all, the cast has a few gems but I think Nolan didn’t really used the great talents that he has on his hands like Ken Watanabe and Marion Cottilard.
As for the film, a lot of CGI as expected with pretty good pacing and editing, I like it well enough but I don’t think it merits repeated viewings. The script, sometimes convoluted with ideas and concepts, is effective enough and some lines memorable.
What’s the most resilient parasite? An Idea. A single idea from the human mind can build cities. An idea can transform the world and rewrite all the rules. (Cobb)
My personal favourite would have to be the way they frame concept of idea and how an idea can cause you to question reality, as per the premise of the movie, how do you know you are living in reality instead of being in a dream… Familiar though it is for the concept of reality vs the world that you think is reality (Matrix, anyone?), the rendering of the concept into the movie is neatly done.
I guess what makes this movie popular is the idea of the deconstruction of reality and the possibility of reconstructing reality that appeals to people the same way of Hollywood escapism did during the 30s and 40s with the fantastical sets and movie plots. To me, sometimes the movie looked like an extension of an MMORPG (Massively multiplayer online role-playing game) with the team of players (Cobb, Arthur and the rest of the gang) going into the subconscious of a target with the mission of planting a seed of an idea. Multi-levels of subconscious are like the different game levels that one has to go through in order to complete the mission.
Another tidbit with regard to the score for the movie is apparently, according to the composer Hans Zimmer, the entire soundtrack was different renditions of Edith Piaf’s (whose life story was brought to life by Marion Cottilard a few years back) Non, je ne Regrette Rien. Zimmer used some sort of complicated mathematical system to reconstruct different musical themes for the movie, by extracting “subdivisions and multiplications of the tempo of the Edith Piaf track”.
Interesting, no?
