‘Inception’ breaks into dreams
Director Christopher Nolan’s latest is a heist movie with an unusual target: the mind.
April 04, 2010|By Geoff Boucher
It was the success of “The Dark Knight” (which broke records as a home video release and now stands as the bestselling Blu-ray ever) that allowed Nolan to put his most ambitious idea on the screen. The presence of DiCaprio not only gave Nolan a major movie star, it led to changes in the film that may make it more accessible to moviegoers.
“I’ve incorporated a huge number of his ideas,” Nolan said. “Leo’s very analytical, particularly from character point of view but also how the entire story is going to function and relate to his character … It’s actually been an interesting set of conversations, and I think it’s improved the project enormously. I think the emotional life of the character now drives the story more than it did before.”
Critics of Nolan say that he makes frosty films with no detectable human heartbeat, just the clicks and whirls of his intricate story gears. It’s interesting, then, to consider that contributions by DiCaprio (who is coming off another dark fever dream of a movie, Martin Scorsese’s “Shutter Island”) and how they meshed with Nolan’s own revised view of his original “Inception” story.
