Inception

Computer generated animation is busy. Busy displacing live action techniques across a range of genres including drama (Alice in Wonderland), comedy (Shrek), family film (Toy Story, er, pick a number) and action (Avatar). It seems that every new major motion picture represents a new advance or development in the field of imagination realisation. Literally anything writers can think of can be made to take place, seemingly realistically, on our movie and TV screens.

It makes a great deal of sense therefore that someone would make a film about it. After all, what would the world be like if we could control our dreams?

Setting Inception against the wonderfully antagonistic and exciting world of corporate espionage is really smart; setting our feet firmly on the ground while our minds are swept away with the story. The notion that large corporations would be busy attempting to steal ideas from one another is as old as wheeling and dealing itself. It’s certainly firmly embedded in the western psyche and lends a sense of familiarity to a film that abounds with absurdity and absurdities.

Without such a mundane, yet mysterious, premise the movie might have faltered. Instead the all too believable conspiracy, greed, and straight up deception, lend almost limitless credibility to an otherwise ridiculous flight of fancy. How else could one appropriately describe a film principally concerned with very normal people going about stealing thoughts fresh out of the minds of the people who think them?

It’s fantastic.

I can’t really remember when I last found it so easy to let go. The Matrix was masterful, but had to work really hard to keep audiences in the alternate reality. The direct tuition from characters throughout the film to ensure viewers were comfortable with the mechanics of what was meant to be happening are readily apparent.

Inception is smarter. The cues and reminders are there but they’re more graceful, more refined, more incorporated.

The quality of computer generated animation leaps forward almost continuously and each new blockbuster strains to redefine what’s possible by the greatest margin imaginable. The frontiers of script writing have expanded and it is now possible to realise almost anything in a convincing and ‘believable’ fashion. New technology tends to lead to excess. Which is why I am pleased to say that Inception definitely feels like a story first effects second type of movie.

It’s all the more worth watching because of that.

Now go. What are you waiting for? Bedtime?