Thinking person’s drama

Christopher Nolan’s Inception is all about the mind and dreams and
how one is able to enter the psyche of another person

THERE are sci-fis and there are sci-fis, some of them in-your-face FX heavy like Star Wars, and others which tickle one’s mind, like John Frankenheimer’s Seconds (Rock Hudson) or Ralph Nelson’s Charly, both 1960s classics. Christopher Nolan’s Inception, a thinking person’s drama, comes close to those classics.

What works against it is its undue 148-minute length and the fact that Nolan made two Batman films (the last being The Dark Knight) to get used to the huge sets and ambience. For this, he probably thought that Inception too should be in the biggie mould.

Inception is all about the mind and dreams and how one is able to enter the psyche of another person. How much of it is authentic and how much a figment of imagination is anyone’s guess, even though the fare is made workable, if not quite plausible.

Dom Cobb (Leonardo DeCaprio) is a thief, who enters the minds of others in order to access information. It’s all about "shared dreaming" and "a dream within a dream" (probably the cinematic equivalent is the double flashback) and "limbo" and there are evocative lines like "an idea can either define or destroy" thanks to Nolan’s absorbing screenplay.

Commissioned by Saito (Ken Watanabe), Cobb has to enter the mind of Robert Fisher Jr (Cillian Murphy) to plant some vital information in the corporate world and he has the assistance of architect Ariadne (Ellen Page).

There are other cameos by veterans like Michael Caine and Tom Berenger but they scarcely deserve a mention. It is Cobb’s wife Mal (Marion Cottilard), who plays a major role in his dealings because of an inherent guilt complex but this too is needlessly drawn out. If it meant to be Bergmanesque, it fails by a long way.

Inception is endowed with the right establishing shots and Hans Zimmer’s music heightens the suspense. Nolan’s handling is adept aided by Wally Pfister’s caressing cinematography.

But Nolan has little regard for the Bunuelian formula (90 minutes at the outer limit). One could have allowed him 20 minutes more. But by prolonging the agony, he dilutes the overall impact. Leonardo DeCaprio is his usual competent self and Ellen Page provides adequate support. As Yusuf, Dileep Rao has a good cameo in the film, which by Hollywood’s falling standards, is still worth watching despite its shortcomings.

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