Inception: is life but a dream?

Ladies and gentlemen, here we have the latest film from that far too smart to be merely human chap called Christopher Nolan. You know the guy, right? He made MEMENTO, INSOMNIA, BATMAN BEGINS and THE DARK KNIGHT. He is a certified modern filmmaking legend. A man who you know will always give you not just a good movie but a great movie.

And guess what? He’s done it again.

INCEPTION tells the story of Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), a guilt ridden man living in enforced exile after being accused of a heinous crime. Cobb is an expert in commercial espionage, but not just any old run of the mill spying. You see Cobb, along with his small team, has the ability to infiltrate other peoples dreams and rebuild those dreams how he wants in order to manipulate the dreamer so as to steal their deepest secrets, their ideas, or in this case to plant an idea, an all but impossible act known as inception. Cobb takes on this seemingly impossible challenge, one that everyone else thinks can’t be done, because if he succeeds, then his new client can pull enough strings with the US authorities to allow him to finally go back home and be with his estranged children.

There is a hell of a lot going on in INCEPTION. This is one densely plotted, intricately constructed film. The film's plot at its most basic is to plant an idea in the mind of a target individual so deeply that they fully believe it is their own idea, one that over time has grown organically out of their own personal thoughts and feelings. But the actual execution of this plot is hugely complex. It is operating (literally) on several levels at once. Dreams within dreams within dreams with every level having its own set of rules, all of which needing to be perfectly synchronised in order for Cobb and co. to complete their mission and get back to reality without falling in to an eternal limbo of nothingness. And if that weren’t hard enough there is a ‘ghost’ from Cobb’s past, living in his mind, who keeps on turning up and sabotaging his plans.

If none of this makes any sense then I apologise. If I try and explain the film’s plot in any more detail then blood might start leaking from my ears due to my brain beginning to melt.

This is a hard film to describe. It is so multilayered, densely plotted and full of ideas and thematic depth. Mere words can’t do it justice. Like a proper dream, INCEPTION needs to be experienced rather than described. Ideally more than once to be able to take it all in and to process all of its many precision parts. It is a film where you have to watch every single frame and listen to every single word in case you lose track of what is going on as well as to decode its many possible meanings. It demands you think on several different levels at once while it simultaneously asks questions about the nature of reality, human emotion, the effect our choices have on our psyche as well as how far we’d go and what we’d be prepared to do in order to stay close to those we love. Ideas based around spirituality are in there too, albeit in a sci fi context. Heaven and hell are evident but are very much places of our own personal creation - the deep down internal hell of guilt and regret and the aspirational heaven of love and hope. In the film, Cobb could also be seen as God, creating his own world and manipulating the lives of those within it. His ‘ghost’ could also be seen as the Devil, someone once close to him, a part of him, who now lives far below in subconscious hell. Someone who is always looking to create chaos and destruction in order to achieve their own ends. The identity of this ‘ghost’ is fundamental to the story and to what is going on in Cobb’s tortured mind. Within this quasi-spiritual context, faith and belief are also important. One character says to Cobb: “You keep telling yourself what you know, but what do you believe?” Part of the story hinges on what a certain character believes. And their belief – be it right or wrong - is unshakeable. Along with belief is the faith to act on that belief, to literally take a leap of faith, which happens at least twice.

“Do you want to take a leap of faith or become an old man filled with regret?” –Saito

Now, all of this could end up rather tiresome and intellectually dry if it were purely an exercise in psychology and spirituality. But in Nolan’s skilled hands, INCEPTION plays as a thrilling heist movie/high tech action thriller - albeit the most intensely complex and smart heist movie/action thriller you’re ever likely to see. The basic narrative backbone is tried and tested. A man with a troubled past must take on one last job, a job he believes can sort his life out. So he puts a team together and comes up with a plan and then executes that plan. But like all good heist films that plan soon starts to go wrong, badly wrong. Cue fleet of mind and foot adaptation involving thunderous, fast paced car chases, gunfights, huge explosions and some truly mind-bending gravity defying fights. So INCEPTION ends up far from dry and tiresome, it is an incredibly smart thought-provoking treatise on the nature of reality, free will and human emotion all wrapped up in a visually stunning, always thrilling sci fi action thriller. Sound familiar? The last movie to do something like this was THE MATRIX. But INCEPTION works on even more levels than the Wachowski Bros. classic. In fact, the Wachowski’s film comes across as rather simplistic compared to Nolan’s deep, deep mind twister. The Matrix works on two narrative levels – the real world and the Matrix. In the latter stages of INCEPTION, the story is working on five – count ‘em – five levels! And all of those five levels have to work in intricate conjunction to tell the story as well as to map the internal emotional journey that Cobb must complete in order to find his peace. And Christopher Nolan does a stunning job keeping everything moving along at pace in what is one of the most incredibly complex and delicate balancing acts I’ve ever seen in cinema. His script is a piece of art, full of ideas designed to lodge in your brain, take root, grow and make you think and question and wonder. An idea is like a virus, Nolan tells us. It can be transmitted from person to person spreading ever further and ever faster. This is what his film is. It is ideas as art, to be seen and to spread and to take root in your mind, to hopefully give birth to other ideas, other stories from other people. It is its own inception.

From a technical standpoint INCEPTION is top notch. Once again, regular Nolan cinematographer Wally Pfister’s lensing is gorgeous. It is crisp and moody with a widescreen elegance that utilises Nolan’s usual colour palette of deep blacks, cold blues and warm yellow/browns. Pfister proves yet again that he is one of the very best in the business. The editing is precise and perfect and the music by Hans Zimmer is some of his best in recent memory, a powerful, pulsing score full of blasting siren-like horns yet also being soft and intimate where needed. The cast is uniformly excellent with DiCaprio easily giving the best performance I’ve ever seen from him. Single minded yet conflicted, DiCaprio’s Cobb is also emotionally damaged and quite literally haunted. He is driven by one single goal but is more often than not held back by the deepest part of his own mind. The rest of Cobb’s team is made up of some of the best of modern film actors. The cute as can be Ellen Page is Ariadne, the emotionally insightful architect who designs the dream structure. Joseph Gordon Levitt is Arthur, Cobb’s cool and efficient right hand man. Tom Hardy is Eames, the smooth, wise cracking forger who can forge new identities in dreams. Ken Watanabe is Saito, the rich and powerful businessman who hired Cobb and who comes along on the mission. Meanwhile Cillian Murphy plays the mark, the target in whose mind the team needs to implant the idea. And then there is the legend who is Michael Caine in a small but classy role as Cobb’s father-in-law.

Some have accused INCEPTION of being cold and calculating and lacking in emotional depth, of not forging an emotional connection with its audience. They are wrong. The whole point of the film is an emotional journey by Cobb in order to resolve his deep seated issues and to get him to where he needs to be both emotionally, physically and psychologically. Mind you, where he actually does end up is totally up for debate. You’ll see what I mean when you see the film’s final shot. Also, the only way the mission of inception can be truly successful is by creating a genuine emotional response in the mark, a basis for belief in the implanted idea, a basis that lies in emotion rather than in intellect or reason. Okay, so it may be manipulative emotion, but it is emotion none the less. And who are we to question what’s real if someone genuinely feels something. It is real to them and that, in the end, is what is important.

INCEPTION is a work of utter genius that delves deep in to the workings of the human mind and looks at how it relates to perceived reality, how it copes with great emotional and psychological trauma. The film explores the architecture of the subconscious and asks questions about what makes us who we are and what makes things real, what makes thoughts and feelings and memories real. And it does this in a totally engrosing, always thrilling and often eye-popping way. Not since The Matrix has my brain and my testosterone and my emotions been equally engaged at such a high level. An instant classic. Christopher Nolan, you are a genius, sir.

So go see INCEPTION. And then go see it again. And after you have, don’t be afraid to dream a little bigger. (5+/5)

Juno: The Cautionary Whale

Juno is the film that made two people in to piping hot properties. Firstly, Ellen Page, the young actress who plays the title character. Secondly, Diablo Cody, the film’s writer and one time stripper lady who won an Oscar for her wordsmithing of Juno, a small, offbeat but immensely charming film told in a visually as well as a verbally creative way by director Jason (son of Ivan) Reitman.

But even though I really liked Juno, I can certainly see it being an acquired taste for many. Looking at the boards and reviews on IMDB some people really do dislike this film. And there was me thinking the venom was entirely reserved for Cody’s follow up, the much-maligned feminist horror flick Jennifer’s Body, a film I also really like despite the countless hostile naysayers.

I get where Cody is coming from as a writer. At least I like to think I do. But I also understand how a lot of people will just find her stuff glib, annoying and utterly unrealistic. It’s not for everyone. The witty, quippy, pop culturally enhanced teen speak she invents does really seem to bug those who say things like ‘Oh but teenagers never really speak like that.’ True, most teens or adults don’t. But Cody isn’t writing a documentary here. She’s doing creative writing. Emphasis on the creative. The truth is that each new generation uses language slightly differently. They invent new words or use old words to mean new things. To my mind Cody is doing the same thing Joss Whedon did with Buffy and then later with Firefly. Or what Tarantino always does. She plays with and orchestrates language. She has fun with it. She gives it a rhythm and a meaning it wouldn’t necessarily otherwise have. Just saying her stuff is bad is like saying Tarantino’s stuff is bad because people don’t really speak like he makes his characters speak. Newsflash! In real life people don’t speak how almost everyone in movies or TV speak. In reality people mangle words, use wrong words, use slang, swear, give fractured sentences, make Freudian slips, talk over each other, forget what they were gonna say etc. Movies aren’t reality. A movie is an artificially constructed narrative. It is a form of art and entertainment. At best movies are a heightened sense of reality. And I for one love the rhythmic witty flow of Cody’s words. Especially when wonderful actors as there are in Juno deliver those words.

So what’s the story of Juno? A very simple one really.

A sparky, witty, sixteen year old girl called Juno Macguff (Page) finds herself pregnant by her quiet, timid, rather bewildered track and field dedicated friend Pauly Bleeker (Michael Cera) after engaging in what seemed like some good-idea-at-the-time sex. Knowing she doesn’t want to keep the baby, as she’s far too young and unprepared to be a mommy, Juno decides on an abortion. However, the bleak and decidedly grim clinic, plus a great Emily (Ginger Snaps) Perkins as its punky, flavoured condom obsessed receptionist sends Juno running out pretty darn quick. Plan A scuppered, Juno resorts to Plan B. Together with her best friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby) she decides to find a suitable well-to-do couple to adopt the sprog when it finally pops out. Through some local small ads she finds Mark and Vanessa Loring (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner) a yuppyish couple in their thirties living in a big house in the ‘burbs who are desperate to adopt a baby. Meeting the couple along with her supportive dad (the always awesome J. K. Simmons), Juno likes the pair and agrees to hand junior over when he or she arrives. Over the next few weeks and months, as she gets ever bigger and is nicknamed the ‘Cautionary Whale’ by her fellow students, Juno starts working out and re-evaluating her friendship with Bleeker while also getting to better know the adopting parents of her forthcoming tyke. But as the big day of baby delivery becomes imminent, Juno’s plans begin to unravel in rather dramatic fashion. And the clock is ticking, counting down fast to B-day. Just what is she going to do now?

At heart Juno is a simple romantic comedy/drama. It’s the story of a young girl who gets herself in to a situation that countless young girls have in the past and will continue to in the future. But Juno Macguff is a great character. Tough and strong willed, she takes charge from the get go. She is in control. She makes big decisions and doesn’t doubt them. She guides her own life all the way through. It is refreshing to see a story about teenage pregnancy that is neither preachy nor moralistic nor emotionally overwrought in any way. It simply presents the situation as is and the family then deal. Nobody erupts in anger or accusations or whatnot. Luckily Juno’s dad is a mellow and supportive man. Of course he tries to blame himself, in private asking his wife, Juno’s stepmom, “Is this my fault? Why did this happen?” To which his wife simply answers: “Teenagers have intercourse.” Simple, honest and true.

What makes Juno work as well as it does are two big things. Firstly, the fun, creative and witty script that doesn’t pander to any potentially moralistic issues or to where you might think this story would or should go. The dialogue is always lively and precisely constructed with lines that will make you laugh out loud. Take this little gem of a conversation that had me howling.

Juno: “...and the receptionist tried to get me to take these condoms that looked like grape suckers and was just babbling away about her freaking boyfriends pie balls! Oh an Su-Chin was there and she was like, ‘Hi babies have fingernails.’ Fingernails!!”
Leah: “Oh, gruesome. I wonder if the baby's claws could scratch your vag on the way out?”

And J. K Simmons’ classic: “Next time I see that Bleeker kid I'm going to punch him in the wiener.”

And then there is dialogue that sounds exactly like Joss Whedon had written it.

Juno: "Hey, Dad."
Dad: "Hey, big puffy version of June bug. Where you been?"
Juno: "Oh, just out dealing with things way beyond my maturity level."

But the dialogue would be useless if the right actors didn’t deliver it.

Which brings me nicely to Ellen Page.

In my mind this girl is one of the finest young actresses of her generation. She was awesome in Hard Candy and I loved her recently in Whip It. She was fine but wasted in X-Men 3. But here, in Juno, as Juno, she strikes pure solid gold. She is the film. It’s that simple. She’s in virtually every scene and just commands the screen with such natural charisma and effortless charm and skill. She makes you laugh out loud but always has a sweet vulnerability about her that makes you just want to take care of her. Possibly because, despite actually being in her early twenties, she still looks about fourteen and is so very little. But a big, big talent is bound up in that little package of cuteness. The North Americans have Ellen (she’s Canadian) and we Brits have Carey Mulligan, two young, luminous and immensely gifted actresses who are simply a joy to watch. But Ms Page is not alone in being fab in this film. The supporting cast is top notch too starting with the always brilliant J.K. Simmons as Mac, Juno’s dad. Simmons is a fantastic character actor with flawless comic instincts. He was, for me, one of the very best things about the Spider-Man films playing J. Jonah Jameson. Alison Janney plays his wife Brenda. Janney is a fine actress with plenty of kindly gravitas, who is best known for her role as CJ in The West Wing. Olivia Thirlby as Juno’s best friend Leah is also great. She is a bundle of carefree fun and energy, always ready with a sly comeback or witty retort. Michael Cera is very good too as Bleeker even if he is just doing the same schtick he always does. And Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner provide strong support as the baby’s adoptive parents to be. Bateman is playing it straighter and lower key than he normally does but is still very good while Garner is beautiful, poised, obsessive and just a little sad as the hopeful mom to be.

In the end, Juno is a great little film that tells a simple story with a lot of heart and a lot of very funny and creative language. Jason Reitman does a spot on job directing and the film always looks great with the passing of time and the seasons shown in some truly vibrant beauty. He also includes little flourishes such as animation and the odd quick cutaway to enhance a mood or a story point. But such things are few and far between and don't detract from his main directorial style of just letting the actors get on with delivering the script as written. But if nothing else Juno is worth seeing for the brilliance of Ellen Page, a young actress who is now one of my favourites and who will hopefully have a long and fruitful career. I am also looking forward to what Diablo Cody writes next. As far as I’m concerned the lady is two for two. And third times the charm.

Trailer

Whip It: Juno meets Gertie...on wheels.

Whip It is Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut. And storywise it is nothing original whatsoever.

But that’s perfectly fine as the one time E.T. moppet, then hell raiser, then acclaimed movie star’s first stab at film direction is a hugely entertaining, quirky and affecting little comedy/drama that shows its newbie director has a potentially big future behind the camera lens.

Seventeen-year-old misfit Bliss Cavender (the always great Ellen Page) lives in the tiny Texan town of Bodine with her mum (the wonderful Marcia Gay Harden) and her dad (holy crap it’s Daniel Stern) and her little sister (Eulala Grace Scheel – real life daughter of Marcia Gay Harden). Bliss spends her time either at school, or working as a waitress with her best friend Pash (the funny and charming Alia Shawkat) or attending witless beauty pageants to please her mom who used to do the same in her youth. Then, one day, while on a shopping trip to Austin, Bliss catches sight of a bunch of cool looking girls on roller-skates giving out flyers for a Roller Derby league. Bliss is fascinated. And so, lying to her parents about what she’s really doing, she goes along for a look-see. And loves it. So much so that she gets invited for tryouts for the Hurl Scouts, the local rag tag, underdog roller derby team. Due to her impressive speed on wheels (plus lying about her age), Bliss makes the team despite her general lack of aggression. Now a full fledged Hurl Scout she adopts the moniker Babe Ruthless and quickly bonds with her new teammates - a gaggle of rather eccentric women in their twenties and thirties who don’t seem to really care anything about winning much to the exasperation of their long suffering coach. However with the addition of Bliss the Scouts do now actually start to win…much to their surprise. This soon leads to some big time rivalry in the form of Juliet Lewis (on good bad girl form) as Iron Maven, leader of the top team in the league, who has takes an instant dislike to Bliss and her rising Roller Derby stardom.

Now, its gotta be said…

The Hurl Scouts are a fantastic creation!

Every single one of them is a wonderfully drawn character with a daft-yet-funny team name, the only names we get to know them by. But the standouts are Maggie Mayhem (Kristen Wiig), the kindly den (single) mother of the bunch who takes Bliss under her wing and helps her out when things get tough at home. Then there’s the awesome Smashley Simpson (Drew Barrymore) who is just so crammed full of excitable aggression that in virtually every game she ends up being sent off for beating up a rival player after being smashed bloodily in the face or sent flying on the roller rink. And a special mention goes out to Zoe Bell as Bloody Holly. It was great to see Zoe onscreen again after her cool role in Tarantino’s Death Proof where she essentially played herself, a tough-as-nails stuntwoman. Zoe’s not the best of actresses but she does have an undeniable screen presence and an easy, likeable charm to her. Plus you just know she could kick your arse well and truly.

And so with Bliss/Babe Ruthless now a crucial part of the Scouts new found success the stage is set for an extremely fun and funny coming of age/underdog tale. Can Bliss continue to help the Scouts win? Will her new life alienate her best friend, Pash? Will her lying to her parents about what she’s been doing as well as to her teammates about her real age come back to haunt her? Will Bliss’s parents - especially her mother – see that she is truly good at something she loves and allow her to live her own life and not the one they want for her?

Like I said before, this is nothing original. And it doesn’t matter one jot as the execution of Whip It is wonderful. The script by Shauna Cross from her own semi-autobiographical novel is fun, spiky and also quite insightful in its own way. It is filled with some great characters and moments that Drew Barrymore as director translates expertly on to the screen in her own slightly offbeat way. I’ve always loved Drew. She’s a talented comedy actress full of natural charm and charisma who has now proven with Whip It that she is just as adept at staging and directing comedy as she is at performing it. But amongst all the funny she also finds the moments that work as pure cinema and pure emotion. Two that jumped out at me were when Pash and Bliss dance together around the diner to Dolly Parton’s Jolene…only making up their own lyrics about their sucky town. And a beautifully shot and edited love scene in a swimming pool using only music and no dialogue. There are plenty of other great moments too including everything with Marcia Gay Harden as Bliss’s mum. For at its heart Whip It is a story about a mother and a daughter who have to come to terms with each other. The mother must learn to let go of her growing up child, to let her begin living her own life. And the child needs to learn to listen to the wisdom and to the emotional maturity of her mother, which is there albeit hidden under a layer of hypocrisy (e.g. the running gag about mum hiding her smoking). And it is here that you can see thematic parallels to Drew’s own troubled relationship with her own mother, the stuff of tabloid news now for years.

The visual style of the film is also something worth mentioning. The story is clearly set in present day. However the aesthetic mixes in the 1970’s (music, hairstyles, décor, record players, 8 track tapes etc.) with our contemporary world outside. There is a distinct indie vibe to the whole thing including the sorts of music used and the quirky feel to the direction. This is enhanced by the stylised and colourful photography by regular Wes Anderson collaborator Robert Yeoman. Put this all together and you have a very funny and warm comedy/drama that stands with one foot firmly in the mainstream but the other tiptoeing lightly in indieville.

Sadly Whip It made no impact at all at the US box office last year where it grossed a paltry total of $13m despite gaining positive critical reaction. Perhaps the cheesy idea of Roller Derby put people off. Or maybe they found the film just a bit too quirky for mainstream audiences. I dunno. But hopefully Whip It will eventually find itself an audience. It deserves to. It’s a hugely enjoyable little flick that had me smiling and laughing all the way through.

Way to go Gertie!