Inception

Warner Bros.

Theaters. Theaters Everywhere.

148 minutes

Director Christopher Nolan’s last film outside of his rebooted Batman franchise was 2006’s “The Prestige,” a mystery on the mortal rivalry between two Victorian-era magicians. It opened and closed with the same question: “Are you watching closely?” That question has been the motto of Nolan’s filmmaking career since he debuted the expanses of his intellect with 2000’s “Memento.” Above all other sensory engagements, Nolan requires his audience’s undivided attention. Never has this been truer than with “Inception.” Because so much of his directorial work has been adapted from existing sources, Nolan’s ability to make his audience expand the boundaries of their perception has been only partially showcased. With “Inception,” an original work wholly his own, Nolan has the audience all to himself, and he doesn’t waste the opportunity.

The plot of Inception is too dense to encapsulate and too polished to spoil. In Nolan’s world exists the technology to invade, populate, and manipulate the human subconscious through dreams. Leonardo DiCaprio (“Shutter Island”) is Cobb, an expert practitioner of this invasion and fugitive for reasons unknown. He has a chance to clear his besmirched name via one last impossible job.

As a heist film, “Inception” relies on an ensemble of thieves; they even have titles that reflect their responsibilities. Ariadne is the Architect. Eames is the Forger. Yusuf is the Chemist. Arthur, well, shoot, he’s just Arthur. But he’s no less important than the rest of the gang. Joseph Gordon-Levitt (“500 Days of Summer”) fills the role with a clenched jaw, cherishing efficiency and precision above all. He steals the film with a fight scene, perhaps the best — and certainly the most creative — in years. It’s the technical centerpiece of the film and may not be topped in a lifetime.

Tom Hardy is Eames, a charmer. The mad glint in Hardy’s eye might be a spot of leftover psychopathy from his murderous performance in “Bronson,” a maniacal indie drama about Britain’s most violent criminal. In his big budget debut, Hardy belies no anxiety. His levity and argumentative rapport with Gordon-Levitt are welcome in a film that would otherwise detonate the audience’s adrenal glands. Until, that is, he abandons his smile and outshines even Leo in combat.

But Leo’s Cobb is incontrovertibly the emotional core of the film. It’s not difficult to feel the weight on his shoulders. He’s wracked with guilt, and he’s losing control over the one thing we’d all like to think is always safe: his memories. They betray him at every turn. While the whole team rises above the mere requirements of their duties, Cobb’s stakes are highest.

It’s no surprise that a brain like Nolan’s would deliver such spotless production. Disregard the exposition—“Inception” is viscerally thrilling beyond what many of Nolan’s contemporaries might have thought possible. How he and his cinematographer, fellow genius Wally Pfister, created some of the shots are anyone’s guess. In an age of endless digital shortcuts, when films spend more of their lives on hard drives than in the can, Nolan’s best work is physical. His vision for action photography is not merely to be respected; it is an awesome talent, in the most elemental sense of the word.

David Cronenberg’s films are notorious for their graphic violence. The director received particularly pointed commentary for his lingering shot on a close-range bullet wound in “A History of Violence.” Blood flowed from a mushy hole while bits of smoky bone swam in the plasma gathering on the linoleum floor and some unidentifiable chunk of flesh remained hanging delicately from what was once a face. The victim wasn’t even dead; he sputtered and gagged and blew bubbles in his own blood. Surely this imagery would indicate Cronenberg’s relative comfort with all things gruesome. Yet the director insists that he abhors bloodshed. Cronenberg claims he shows the bullet wound as closely as he can so as not to glamorize the weapon that creates it. He wields his fake violence as a deterrent to those who would commit it in the real world by safely and non-lethally demonstrating its consequences.

In contrast, Christopher Nolan is clearly a lifelong fan of action cinema. That’s not to say that he’s a misanthrope hell-bent on turning the viewer’s stomach, but he doesn’t employ car chases and fight scenes and gunplay as a necessity to appease the mindless box office contributors; he has a genuine appreciation for the ballet of exhilarating and purposeful action. No other filmmaker can assault the audience’s endocrine system quite like Nolan, not even at the expense of the narrative. “Inception” only solidifies Nolan’s status as an aesthetic genius. He’s making a pretty strong case as a literary one, too.

Inception is at once thrilling and meditative. Nolan presents his material neither lightly nor mortally; there’s no cheese to his art. He doesn’t demand that the viewer question reality or ponder the meaning of life, nor does he inhibit it; the viewer is free to interpret the film however he wants. Nolan’s contribution is an honest hypothesis on the strata of human consciousness. Nolan – at considerable risk – respects the intelligence of his audience. He makes films for people who cannot leave their crosswords unfinished. Ariadne’s job in the film is to construct mazes. Nolan does the same for his audience.

If there’s one word to describe Hollywood these days, it’s derivative. Nothing that can’t be packaged and sold in Burger King gets the green light. Successful foreign films get reshot in English with a bigger budget and bigger stars with more collagen in their lips after the original taps the European box office. But, once upon a time, at least a year or two passed before a film got reheated and tossed on our placemat. “Inception” shared its opening weekend with “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” the CGI-laden sugary crotch-punch raped corpse of a Disney classic starring Nicolas Cage’s forehead and the human sinus cavity, Jay Baruchel. “Inception,” by some miracle, exists. That it might thrive in this ever-slackening jaw of an industry is a dream we can only pray becomes reality.