I noticed the posters for this film (that just premiered in the Netherlands) downtown, but Leonardo DiCaprio, the tagline “of the creators of The Dark Knight” or the poster that looks like an action movie did not really catch my attention. Then my girlfriend noticed that the director is Christopher Nolan. I do not immediately think of Nolan when I hear “of the creators of The Dark Knight“. Visitors of these pages of course think of “Following” and “Memento” when hearing the name of Nolan. When I think of it, Nolan is not really my favourite director with two Batman’s, the mediocre “The Prestige” and a remake of “Insomnia” that may be good, but unnecesary (the original was great enough). In my case he got enough credit with “Insomnia” for me to keep watching his films and in the general case it seems that “The Dark Knight” has earned Nolan enough credit of financers to be able make a big-budget of his own liking. When I write this, Inception gets a 9.3 out of 10 from almost 60.000 voters on IMdB! Now things start to get interesting!
Contrary to “Insomnia” there is no mystery about the story. That story is, in fact, given away in all reviews and announcements. Let me remain with saying that when the Kaufman brothers had written the story of “The Matrix” the result might have been something like “Inception”. Imagine a story as weird as that of “Being John Malkovich” poured over the earlier mentioned, and already not too straightforward in story, “The Matrix” and you have an idea of what to expect. I must say that “The Matrix” is better worked out in details, but “Inception” is impressive in its basic simplicity that is worked towards a few extremes with amazing filmographic (and psychological?) experiments. Just as in the last Matrix, there is a lot of focus on impressive action with top-notch techniques, completely ear-shattering in a 1200 watts Imax theatre by the way. Like I said, the story is not hard to follow and might not be the ultimate filmscript, but Nolan managed to create that uncanny “Matrix” atmosphere and the suggestion that the story may be more complex afterall. All in all a maybe bit too spectactular film, but a very, very good one.