There was so much that I liked about this film, putting aside the main plot conceit of dreams and dreams within dreams. The ensemble cast were a pleasure to watch – DiCaprio is probably one of the finest actors on the planet and Joseph Gordon-Levitt is slowing becoming the actor I think he can be, ever since seeing him in 3rd Rock From the Sun, I realised then that there was a latent big screen talent waiting to break through, his finest screen performance to date has been the low-budget “Brick”.

The direction of Inception is exquisite, cinematography and editing showed creativity and pacing of what was a complicated storyline but the director and editing team managed to keep it coherent and interesting throughout. The script and screenplay – snappy and on point, the dialogue believable and credited the audience with enough intelligence to not go into the minutiae of the plot. I loved the fact that the film combines so many genres – sci-fi, drama, suspense, action, mystery etc, it didn’t over-rely on CGI to wow the audience, the CGI that was used, was used to great affect and seemed natural (natural as it can be in a dream world), the score was unobtrusive and “managed” emotions and suspense very subtly. Nolan is an amazing director, who knows how to make intelligent but complex films intelligently, for those who haven’t seen it, watch Memento for an earlier example of his work.

I took my two boys with me (15 and 13) and both enjoyed the film and were left thinking about the concepts even after the film. For those looking for a “spiritual” bent on the film, the fundamental question is “What is the true nature of reality?”. In Sufic (Islamic Spirituality) terms, once you have tasted The Real, it is hard to then accept “reality”, I suppose a close approximation of this is the Sufi concept of “Fana’” or annihilation of the self, some people who achieve this are forever in a state of “limbo” and experiencing an alternative “world”, some of those who are lead to “fana’” by a true spiritual guide can straddle the two realities and function in both “realities” and benefit from both and the “faani” (the one annihilated) sees and experiences the higher and true reality all the time and is not deceived by the temporal reality that the rest of us experience.

Additionally, there was no nudity or sex and even intimate moments were not sexualised, and I don’t recall even a minor expletives although I could be wrong, sometimes the expletives are so contextualised that you don’t realise that they have been said, it is so rare to find a film in which sex is not used as a plot device or for titillation of the audience.

It’s now available on DVD.

[amazonify]B003H04O7U::text::::Inception DVD at Amazon[/amazonify]