The LA Times recently spoke to Christopher Nolan about Inception and extracted some clearer details about the film’s story. The article questions whether the film is “an international thriller,” “a story of madness and lost love,” “or Hollywood’s first metaphysical heist movie” and quotes Nolan as saying “all of the above.” It’s not clear whether Nolan or the interviewer originated those descriptions, but they fit what we’ve seen thus far. Still, the article says “a key part of the premise is corporate espionage by way of dream invasion, but motives and even reality are slippery in a film that toys with perception as its travels through time and space.”
Emma Thomas, the film’s producer and Nolan’s wife, says they’ve been talking about this movie for “seven or eight years.” Although The Dark Knight‘s success allowed them to go huge in terms of production size or scope, picking Inception as the follow-up had more to do with doing a personal project than simply upping the ante, though that came with the story. Talking about some of his inspirations for Inception, Nolan says:
I grew up watching James Bond films and loving those and watching spy movies with their globetrotting sensibility…. We get to do that here, not just geographically but also in time and dimensions of reality as well. We get to make a movie that’s expansive, I suppose you’d say, in four dimensions.
I assume the movement through time could just refer to the dreams and/or mental spaces that DiCaprio’s character invades, whether they be past or present, and not more traditional notions of time travel. Nolan got to shoot the film in six different countries, which probably satisfied his Bond film desires.
Nolan adds that “this is the biggest challenge I’ve taken on to this point” and “we’re trying to tell a story on a massive scale, a true blockbuster scale – the biggest I’ve ever been involved with.” Between the scale and the story concepts being touted, I’m psyched. It continues to feel a lot like a Satoshi Kon film to me, that is if he worked in live-action and had a massive budget to use. Something in that vein coming from another of my favorite working writer/directors is what makes this undeniably my most anticipated film of 2010.
Inception stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Marion Cotillard, Ellen Page, Cillian Murphy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ken Watanabe, Tom Hardy, Tom Berenger, Michael Caine, Lukas Haas and Dileep Rao. DiCaprio plays a CEO-type, Cotillard is his wife, Gordon-Levitt is an associate while Page plays a young grad student who’s at DiCaprio’s character’s side. Watanabe has the villainous role and is blackmailing DiCaprio’s character.
Inception opens on July 16th, 2010.
