TAG TEAM BLU RAY REVIEW: INCEPTION

AMAZON: CLICK

RENN NOW: …pretty hardcore accolades for a summer blockbuster. That’s the kind of effusive praise that will make you blush a few months down the line when you realize the movie was operating on an over-inflated sense of importance and that it deflates after a few viewings. Fortunately I have not found that to be the case with Inception, and my most recent viewing (at home, on a modest HDTV with only slightly better-than-average sound) proved it to still rank strongly among the best movies of the year, despite all of the great, smaller prestige flicks that are all trying to cram through the door in the last few weeks of 2010. After months and months of nearly constant speculation and deconstruction, the movie still works as a perfectly engineered piece of ambiguity that dodges any firm theory’s box in which you try to put it, while opening its arms to any interpretation you wish to consider. In other words: it is still great… a carefully chosen word.I do stand by my original hypothesis- Nolan is particularly adept at embroidering his films with the kind of sound design, imagery, and scale that make them immediately feel empyrean, whether they actually possess the substance of such a film or not. It’s this skill that made both The Dark Knight and Inception feel like grand cultural moments even before they ended fulfilling the prophecy of their own grandiosity. Inception though –and this is not a backhanded slight at The Dark Knight, which I find infinitely re-watchable– is the first to perfectly marry Nolan’s delightful left-brained creativity with budget, and scale. My god, I hope this wasn’t a fluke. Another 6 months of silly sequel announcements and greenlit projects based on board games had me striking another match. Yet even a third (or is it fourth?) viewing of Inception, at home, promised enough that I had to blow it out once again.

NICK THEN: Well, Piranha 3-D is as strong a case for continuing Hollywood as this, but you are correct in that this is a giant among men in 2010.There’s a cunning and a confidence to Inception that was present in smaller doses in every film Christopher Nolan has made (more people should love Insomnia by the way), but this truly is the purging of an incredible creative load unlike any we’ve seen from Nolan. What makes Inception special isn’t the many influences that inform it, and many have claimed that this is the next incarnation of The Matrix. It isn’t. It shares elements with the 1999 phenomenon but then so did that film with many which preceded it. Inception is a game changer; a new IP that delivers an epic entertaining experience while really challenging both the craft of modern filmmaking and reminding us that as generic and dire as the industry may seem at times, there’s still the ability for something new to make its way through the system.This is that project.

NICK NOW: It’s a different movie to me today than it was upon release. I’ve watched it several times now and it still is a massive creative success but it’s a different kind of creative success than it was. The whole “dream within a dream” motif is good but it’s not as compelling as it was the first time. It’s not the kind of story that lends itself to dozens of spinoffs and ancillary projects. It’s epic and beautiful and certainly shakes its fist as the standard mainstream Hollywood fare but it really is sort of a small story at its very core. Stripped of the artifice and effective presentation it’s a story about a man wanting to go home to his children. Respectable and easy to be swept up in but damaged a bit by ineffective work of Marion Cotillard and the many flaws in the execution of her character, Mal.

RENN NOW: Before glancing back over my original thoughts, I’ll acknowledge Nick’s points and offer a counter-point: that is, I have actually grown to appreciate Mol, and specifically Cotillard’s performance, more on every re-watch. From her first mysterious appearance to the heartbreaking final scene between her and Cobb, Mol always emanates a sense of unpredictable danger that is truly frightening. Her maddening conviction that no reality is true, and that Cobb has blinded himself tugs at me, and makes me as sad, frustrated, and powerless as Cobb must feel. I lay this squarely on the feet of Marion Cotillard, who weaves that familiar marital fury of a pissed off wife with feminine vulnerability so deftly that it was one of the striking elements to me during my home rewatch. As for Nolan’s use of the character- I could see where one might take issue with it, but I find way too much enjoyment in Nolan’s positioning of Mol as the sexy enemy spy who will show up unpredictably, yet always before a moment of triumph. She’s the one who fucks everything up, but is just too beautiful and exciting to get rid of. In this case she is summoned at moments most critical for Cobb psychologically and logistically, which is the most effective exploitation/re-imagining of a spy-movie trope I’ve found in the film.Looking back to this specific piece of the Tag-Team, I can still stand behind all of the casting endorsements- no performance has weakened with time, in my eyes. I will also stand by my assertion that Inception is the true and ultimate successor to The Matrix and the promise that film showed (certainly much more than that film’s own sequels). In addition to the similarities I spoke of originally, there are just too many other unique levels on which these films both find themselves working, too many neurons and portions of the brain they both spark. I think we’ll be able to look back long from now and quite clearly see the seeds planted by each of these films, and how those ideas/techniques/images/etc played out over the following decade. It’s a relationship I intend to look into deeper.

NICK THEN: It was nice seeing Page play a normal person who isn’t quirky and alternative. She’s the heart and soul of the movie and she’s subtle and a great compass for DiCaprio. Tom Hardy is an absolute chameleon and though I think Bronson is quite a bit overhyped, there’s no denying his skill and he shines here in a role I thought I knew the arc of and was absolutely wrong. Hardy and Levitt are legendary in this and pretty much everyone that surrounds them as well. Marion Cotillard on the surface may seem the weakest link but in the context of the story it makes all the sense in the world.Speaking of sense, one of the things I noticed a great deal from audience members was that they didn’t fully understand the plot. Which surprises me. Though the film jumps around and has several “dream within a dream” moments and never takes too much time to explain itself it all feels very organic. Plus, I think the point is to have the film unravel and bloom over repeat viewings. Not knowing every little piece of the puzzle is tantamount to enjoy films like this. It keeps the audience thinking and speculating, and had it been less of a cypher would cheapen it. And frankly, just watching the thing is jaw-dropping…

RENN NOW: There’s the scattered moment that’s lost some potency, but in general I didn’t find that any of the spectacle has diminished in power. The first shared dreaming sequence between Cobb and Adriadne is still a remarkable marriage of exposition, timing, and effects. The slow-mo is carefully exploited and consistently gorgeous. The city folding I’ve actually watched in a high-quality GIF and sat, mesmerized by the careful visualization that is explicit enough to create awe, but yet somehow –right in front of your face– smears over gaps of visual logic in the same way a dream would. The folded city just works- exactly how things just work in dreams. As for the hallway sequence- there’s not a moment of film this year that has affected me physiologically every time I’ve seen it, without fail. It’s stunning, and enough to make me feel the adrenaline pour into my system and raise the hairs on the back of my neck. It’s no exaggeration that when Arthur gets off that last headshot, I let out a breath I’ve been holding since the first hallway shift.That said, I could have used a more even distribution of images like the train- a more consistent reminder of how inconsistent Cobb’s grasp on reality is. As I said originally, I’m glad the film doesn’t take the train and run too far with it, but another image or two like it would have done a lot to amp up the threat of Cobb’s mental intrusions into the heist.And at this point, I’m so familiar with the structure of the film that, like The Matrix, it seems baffling that there was ever anything to figure out in the first place. It’s fun to watch the movie dole out information and rules, while at the same time blatantly questioning the main character about his understanding of reality.

NICK THEN: I think it’s also in a weird place where it has enough variety so that the typical spots where one could find dead air don’t exist. It isn’t a perfect movie but it has so much resonance that if there’s a moment not speaking to you visually, there’s a moment of really interesting characterization. When there’s not the emotional connect, there’s a moment that somehow manages to be new and interesting in a world where the FX budget for a cell phone ad could cover two great 80’s horror flicks. The moment in the cafe, for instance. Though it’s been shown nearly in its entirety in the commercials for the film it still blows the doors off the competition. You think about the big hyped scene in Swordfish where time stands still as the world comes apart. The entire scene is built as a “look at me” moment. This scene, the impeccable effects are used in a teaching sequence that is all about the narrative and immersing the audience in this idea.Funnily enough, in a film about stealing ideas and the sanctity of good ones, a filmmaker has delivered a cunning dose of nearly flawlessly executed ideas in a movie where they have been preserved right up to the end.Though thankfully, this is not a film about twist endings. It’s not even about a mindfuck. It’s actually old school at its core and while paying respect to many archetypes it emerges on the other end wholly its own.

RENN NOW: My mood hasn’t swung, my views haven’t changed- Inception is great. It’s Nolan’s current masterpiece, but the wonderful thing is that it promises so much more from the filmmaker. I expect virtually every element of this film to hold up in the long-term and it’s one I’m looking forward to enjoying for as long as I’m watching movies. Inception is highly unlikely to have any meaningful impact on the overall quality of the average blockbuster –we’ll mostly just have a ton of trailers cut to the recognizable cues, and most picture-edits will be done with an Inception temp-score for a while– but beyond the slight uptick in slow-motion and gravity-bending that we’ll see, there’s always the chance that it will open the door for one more big-budget film with a brain. If only one more filmmaker gets to bring his or her slightly unconventional idea to the screen with enough dollars to pull it off, then it will all be worth it. Anything like that is a bonus though- we’ve got this one. It’s in the can, it was in the theaters, and now it’s in our homes. The studio can re-release it in 3D, or push through some misguided sequel, but it won’t matter- Inception is ours now.

NICK THEN: Yep, it’s one big pile of Bravo. I hope they don’t do a sequel and I hope there’s not some dumb fanboy backlash.But either way, it’s a fucking stellar movie that has almost singlehandedly made 2010 a special year for film.

For the general population there’s a one disc offering with just the movie. The experience is preserved.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s dream documentary runs a little long but I like his approach and it’s good to see the attempt to diversify the content with interesting and inventive approaches.

The digital copy is a godsend and as I’ve said before it’s a vital part of my personal blu-ray experience. All discs should come with a digital copy because the ability to experience the film in the home theater needs to be balanced by the routine revisits I make on my various Apple products.