A lot of directors undoubtedly envy Christopher Nolan right now. His 2008 summer blockbuster The Dark Knight grossed more than $533 million at the box office, making it the second highest-grossing film of all time, following James Cameron’s Titanic. For this reason, Warner Bros. was more or less required to let the guy do whatever he wanted to do next. He didn’t choose to do another Batman movie.
He chose to do Inception instead.
Warner Bros. has described Inception as “a contemporary sci-fi actioner set within the architecture of the mind.” The film, which reportedly has a $200 million budget, has a cast that includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Cillian Murphy, Ken Watanabe, Tom Hardy and Tom Berenger. Not a bad group, and some interesting choices from the indie film realm (Page and Gordon-Levitt). These are all proven actors, some with Oscar credibility to boot.
The big news of the minute, however, is the teaser currently attached to prints of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, released this past Friday. It’ll be almost a year before Inception actually hits theaters, and we already have a teaser. It went online this past Monday; check it out here.
The teaser begins with a spinning top, the same one that we see at the intriguingly sparse official Web site for Inception. As the top wobbles and falls, the shot switches to an overhead view of a city, and then to DiCaprio’s face as he watches two men dragging another man away. It looks like he may be looking out a car or helicopter window.
Then, it gets even more interesting.
We see a glass of water. The angle of the water’s surface changes, and the water begins to bubble. We see DiCaprio’s face again, as onscreen words tell us “your mind is the scene of the crime.” We see two men battling in a hallway, defying gravity as they walk on the walls and eventually “fall” to the ceiling and then down the hall. There’s a quick shot of a guy (DiCaprio?) emerging from water, and a clock ticking. Then it’s a shot of DiCaprio’s face once again, and the logo at the top of this note is revealed.
Confusing stuff, but ridiculously cool nonetheless. The film obviously deals with the ability to defy gravity, perhaps only within an alternate (mental?) reality. The glass and the fight demonstrate this. The mind as the “scene of the crime” stuff reminds me immediately of Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report, but I doubt it’ll be anything close to that.
Conjecture aside, I think it’s safe to say that Inception somehow deals with the complexity of the mind. Throughout the teaser, between the shots described previously, we have a camera zooming through what looks to be a mazelike city. There’s also the obvious fact that the above logo is set within a maze. It looks like we may have a complex film on our hands next summer.
Another interesting point to make is the fact that a book exists titled “The Architecture of the Mind,” written by mental philosopher Peter Carruthers. I’m no psychologist, but I gather the book deals with the idea of mental modularity. Translation: the human mind is made up of many modules, each dealing with different aspects of, well, the mind. It sounds overly complicated for a big-budget Hollywood film like this, but considering how little we know about Inception, I’d argue it’s not out of the realm of possibilities.
Nolan’s Inception doesn’t hit theaters until July 16 of next year, but it’s already shaping up to be an interesting film. The teaser does exactly what a teaser should: intrigue us, without giving away too much or showing too little. Inception is a long ways off, but it’s safe to say that after that 58-second teaser, it has climbed to the top of my list of future anticipated films.
Let me know what you think.
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