Beware, dreamweavers!

21 July 2010

BATMAN director Chris Nolan rides high with his $200million sci-fi epic centering on a team of dream-world spies invading the subconscious mind.

Nolan immerses viewers in a two hours 30 minutes' swirl of multi-layered, gravity-defying dreamscapes, conjured up by data extractor Dom Cobb, (Leonardo DiCaprio), who is tormented by the death of French wife Mallorie (Oscar-winner Marion Cotillard).

Nolan, on top of his game after his $1billion-grossing feature, The Dark Knight, writes and directs a cerebral thriller, featuring the theft of vital information from the heir to a business empire.

Under pressure to deliver after his critically-acclaimed comic book blockbuster, the film-maker plunges movie-goers into computer-generated worlds of seaside skyscrapers and twisted Parisian quarters.

The Memento director challenges and stretches the imagination with visual effects.

Clearly indebted to The Matrix, Nolan at times almost manages to lose his audience with an intricate plot, perhaps driven by a desire to impress after the success of his superhero success.

Inception does implant fresh insights into one's mind, but sometimes hangs by a thread - almost a figment of one's imagination - only managing to gravitate around colliding worlds with a conventional heist-movie plot.

Already hailed as one of Nolan's best offerings thus far, the challenging film reunites the director with German composer Hans Zimmer, who provides a solid score, reverberating inside his collapsing dream-world, but fails to break the new grounds unearthed by the comic book feature.

Ten years in the making and apparently stemming from an original idea dreamed up as a teenager, Nolan delivers a fantastic, thought-provoking journey that might leave Freud or Jung puzzled.

Dream on, Nolan.