Posts tagged movie

Inception is a myriad of tales: a heist caper; a story of love and loss; a journey through realms of fantasy and reality, the lines in-between blurred beyond belief. It is ambitious and, even better, it is successful.

The viewer is taken under the film’s spell from the opening scene, tumbling down the tiers of Nolan’s dream world and ending up in a limbo far removed from reality. When the film is over, you find yourself wondering, “What is real?”.

Unanswerable existential questions aside, the film is a total mindfuck; a heist film to see twice to both understand the story and appreciate the cinematography. The team behind the dream world of steel, brick and sand includes cinematographer Wally Pfister who, in an interview with Cinematical, said, his job was “50 percent technician and 50 percent artist”. One sees this balance in Inception, a movie that never forgets the little details yet remembers to push the boundaries – to dream “a little bigger”, as Eames would say. Here the dream world is realistic – not surreal – and the setting is a normal cityscape filled with glass and metal that can be manipulated and moulded at will. A city block can fold over onto itself and mirror doors can be moved to create never-ending reflections until the Architect becomes bored and shatters them. This dream world is an entirely modern affair.

So, too, is the balance of CGI and old-fashioned legwork. The hallway scene in which Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) fights in zero gravity was not created through use of a green screen – it was a spinning set with wires.

“All of those moments where it looks like I’m off-balance? That’s because I was off-balance. I was doing my best to keep my balance and fight this guy when the floor was becoming the wall and the ceiling was becoming the floor,” said Gordon-Levitt to MTV News.

Though certain action sequences are tedious (the snow fortress fight anybody?) and they never approach the realism found in other back to basics flicks i.e. the Bourne series, I think this level of realism would be inappropriate. Nolan sought to restrict the use of CGI, not to shun it altogether. The central theme of the movie is control and it appears this extends beyond the film to Nolan and his directorial style.

Few filmmakers tread this fine line as carefully as Nolan but a select few will surely be inspired by his work. Inception is that rare breed of 21st century film that makes use out of modern computer-generated imagery without abusing it – a new cinema where substance and style are in perfect harmony.

I just hope future CGI films can maintain this spinning top’s balance.