Criticism of ‘Origin (Inception)’

Architecturally fascinating, science fiction born out of the Nouvelle Vague has always been the city/state of mind through which Christopher Nolan has moved like a Caligari-ruled sleepwalker with Expressionist roots. Although, to be honestly precise, that shadowy entity capable now of looking at itself in the Alain Resnais of ‘I love you, I love you’ (1968) to rewrite the codes of the Hollywood summer blockbuster has more of the adrenaline of Batman, of a dreamlike James Bond transmuted into the hero of Michael Moorcock, than of the avant-garde calligraphy of expressionist Robert Wiene.

And it is that the Nolan of ‘Origin’ not only completely dynamites the notion of reality based on a brutal overlapping of Borgesian levels, erecting an electric cathedral entity that mixes Hitchcock (the floral filigree of ‘Topaz’ is here a mutant metropolis) with Katsuhiro Ôtomo’s manga (that train that crosses the road in the middle of a Michael Mann-style chase) or cyberpunk (the extractions, the organic suitcase, that sort of rare asepsis). Christopher Nolan turns into original, in a new way of understanding the fantastic, what the different avant-gardes (futurism, surrealism…) saw in the most popular cinema.

Inside of the labyrinth

That was what the aforementioned Resnais or Jean-Luc Godard did. Or Andrei Tarkovski, whose ‘Solaris’ (1972) is one of the most obvious referents (the dead wife who refuses to remain locked up in a basement of memory) of an amazing almost definitive show that, far from a calculated and questionable coldness emotional, it joins without hesitation, and with the highest quality, the serial of super thieves of the impossible that European creators like Mario Bava knew how to find in their adaptations of Italian fumetti.

An overwhelming demonstration of stylistic virtuosity, ‘Origin’ brings together, in the spirit of precise draftsmanship, numerous quotes from the fantasy-scientific genre, never as a mere accumulation of winks: Stanley Kubrick is not only in that gravity-free hotel that would be called a space station, but in the labyrinth that Ellen Page draws, and in the labyrinth that the astute director creates based on juxtaposing the various dreams, the various realities, handling irresistible sequences of high tension (and suspending in time, more than three quarters of an hour, the climax of a vehicle which should fall into the water).

A sum of brilliance that offers a lot and demands a minimum from the multi-screen viewer: you will enjoy yourself in this megalopolis where ‘The Dark Knight’ (2008) and ‘Memento’ (2000) meet in ‘The Matrix’ because, deep down, all the Rosebuds (from Cillian Murphy’s character) from the great movies are just that, a wonderful toy for children.

For dreamers of the new science fiction

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DATA SHEET

Address: Christopher Nolan Distribution: Leonardo DiCaprio, Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Elliot Page (as Ellen Page), Michael Caine, Pete Postlethwaite, Tom Hardy Original title: inception Country: UK, USA Year: 2010 Release date: 06-08-2010 Gender: Fantasy, Thriller Screenplay: Christopher Nolan Duration: 142min

Synopsis: Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is an expert thief, the best, stealing valuable secrets within the human subconscious, during the dream state, when the mind is at its most vulnerable. This quality of Cobb’s has made him a coveted player in this treacherous new world of corporate espionage, but it has also made him a hunted international fugitive, who will have to pay a heavy price; Losing everything he has ever wanted.