Inception (2010) ****
Up (2009) *****
Shutter Island (2010) ***
"BBC Three are showing 'Anchorman', you say?" Carl Fredicksen feels my pain
Last week, something very strange things happened to me. No, it’s not that after seven weeks away from the keyboard I settled down to type a new entry for the blog. The strange thing was that in the space of three nights I watched three movies, none of which are more than 18 months old. This might not sound unusual but for The Man in Lincoln’s Nose watching three recent releases in succession is akin to spotting Halley’s Comet. My movies in my DVD collection come almost exclusively from before I was born 28years ago and any regular readers will have come to the conclusion that my personal motto is ‘they don’t make ‘em like that anymore’.
They certainly never used to make films quite like Christopher Nolan’s current blockbuster ‘Inception’ (2010), which opened in UK cinemas a couple of weeks ago and has, so far, been the smash hit of a summer dominated by remakes and sequels. If you happen to have been living in some sort of cocoon recently, the plot is about a team of people who can ‘invade’ the dreams of others with a view to finding out the best kept secrets of the victim. They are challenged to carry out the much harder task of planting an idea into the brain of a young businessman whose cold, tyrannical father has died, leaving his son a wildly successful string of businesses. Most say it can’t be done, but troubled Leonardo DiCaprio says it’s definitely possible, especially as he stands to end his exile from his children (he’s on the run as his wife died in suspicious circumstances) if the task is carried out successfully. That is about as much as I can give you without spoiling the many plot elements and twists of this fine thriller. In fact parts of the story are so confusing that you may have to surrender a couple of week s in the immediate aftermath of seeing it to have the sort of internal dialogue that even Raymond Babbitt would have given up on. Nolan was working on the script for over eight years and whilst all that toil still couldn’t deliver a movie without any holes in its plot, we would do well to remember that this is a science fiction movie and it makes enough sense to let us bend our minds in Nolan’s favour.
Where ‘Inception’ really sets itself apart from the rest of the summer’s output is its cast. Every one of the major roles is occupied by actors of real ability as opposed to just a star name. DiCaprio’s boyish good looks are going. He’s only 35 but he’s already starting to look a bit rough around the edges so that in mind it’s a good job he can not only act but also seems impervious to bad decisions when it comes to picking projects. Here he is ably supported by indie flick favourites Ellen Page and Joseph Gordon Levitt, the cast’s standout performer. Brit Tom Hardy looks set to be the next big export to Hollywood whilst Cillian Murphy and Ken Watanabe are as perfectly believable as one can be playing men whose dreams are being manipulated. Even Marion Cotillard, in a small role, makes the most of what screen time she is afforded. Producers of movies such as ‘The Expendables’ (2010) would do well to remember that it’s very easy to make a summer blockbuster populated by familiar faces, but if none of them can act then you film will be forgotten before it even makes it to DVD. ‘Inception’ will last a lot longer in the mind and given the quality of the entertainment it’s almost a pity that sequels to the movie itself will be cluttering up our screens in the coming summers.
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Another movie that producers who care about quality as well as financial success should learn from is the Disney-Pixar phenomenon ‘Up’ (2009). ‘Up’ is about a widowed curmudgeon who attempts to fulfil a life-long dream aided, and sometimes hindered, by a stowaway boy scout, a talking dog, a temperamental, giant bird and thousands of helium balloons. It says something pretty sad about the movie industry that, these days, the majority of characters who make you care about them and evoke genuine emotion within you aren’t played by actors but are computer generated. I don’t think I have spoken to many people, men, women or children, who haven’t admitted to shedding a few tears whilst watching ‘Up’. It’s certainly tugs on your heart strings with quite an old fashioned sense of love, loss and the emptiness that results... and that’s all in the first ten minutes! Maybe this is the problem. Maybe today’s audiences will only allow a film to come with a large slice of sentimentality if it’s animated. They can always pass it off as being ‘aimed at children with a few jokes for the parents thrown in’. That way the old-world, tear-jerking elements can be accepted. This begs the question what is wrong with a bit of sentimentality now and again? Young adults now are encouraged to be cynical of anything that wants to make you get a lump in your throat and that is sad. Cinema shouldn’t just be chewing gum for the eyes. Now and again it should drag you in, strip you down and leave you feeling heartbroken, heart warmed or, as in ‘Up’s case, both together.
Anyway, one mustn’t digress. Suffice to say that anyone from the age of 5 to 105 should check this brilliant movie out at the earliest opportunity. It is an admirable fusion of old and modern Hollywood and, what’s more, it has something very pertinent to say about the danger of hero worship, a lesson well headed on a weekend when one of the nation’s most popular radio stations spoke about nothing but Will Ferrell, a man whose career I am all to happy to see has crashed and burned.
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Last, and I’m afraid least, from last week’s viewing was Martin Scorsese’s ‘Shutter Island’ (2010). This is a well made but predictable psychological thriller that marks something of a departure from the director’s usual output. This isn’t a problem as Scorsese has made departures before and come up trumps (‘Raging Bull’ (1980), ‘After Hours’ (1985), 'The Age of innocence' (1993)). Leonardo DiCaprio is again the star but this is more on a level with the disappointing, meandering ‘Gangs of New York’ (2002) then his excellent Scorsese projects ‘The Aviator’ (2004) and ‘The Departed’ (2006). The problem with ‘Shutter Island’ is that it’s been done before, not necessarily better, but definitely often. It also suffers from being more implausible than a movie like ‘Inception’ which isn’t even set in our version of the universe.
It’s very difficult to criticise Scorsese as his films always have something to recommend them. ‘Shutter Island’ is no different in fact it’s perfectly watchable. The problem is more one of reputation. Scorsese, for me and for many others, exists in the absolute top echelon of movie makers. He is probably the only person in that group still living so his less successful efforts are more apparent to me than someone like Hitchcock or Lang whose weaker efforts are ignored by the revivalists. In that respect I have no doubt that in fifty years time the Scorsese revivals will be free of ‘Shutter Island’.
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