Dreamscape

When I was about 14 or 15 years old, I had an idea (which I called 'Dreamscape') about a story that blurred the lines between reality and dreams. Regretfully, I never put in the time and effort to develop the idea into anything more than that one line concept. If I had developed it, and by some miracle a Hollywood studio had decided to turn into a movie, I fancy that my one simple concept would have become Inception.

It took four attempts before I finally got to see the movie. The first time, I discovered I had an intolerance to milk by eating some ice-cream and then throwing it back up in the cinema! Naturally that meant I didn't even get to see the trailers, never mind the film. The second time I set out to see it, hubby remembered that Man U were playing so, of course, we had to turn back. The third time, we got stuck in football traffic and would have missed about 20 minutes at the start of the film. So it was fourth time lucky and the movie was well worth the wait.

Although I'm sure there are people that were confused by Inception, the plot is satisfyingly complex without being utterly confounding. I found the dream sharing idea fascinating and I loved the way that each of the layers of the dream communicated with the next so that sound and sensation trickled down through the dream world.

I also found the characters truly endearing. They all had a function. None of them were there for the sake of padding the cast or making a lofty point, and each one was unique within the story. Ellen Page was the stand-out performance for me. She's a pretty girl and a talented actress. She handled her role in Juno with such a lightness of touch, I was curious to find out what she could do with a big-budget sci-fi action thriller, especially playing across from much older actors (leading lad, Leo is more than a decade older.) Her character was strong, ballsy and intelligent - everything a female lead should be - and it is a testament to her skills that she didn't just do a good job; there was great on-screen chemistry between her character, Ariadne, and Leo's character, Cobb. Even DiCaprio, who has only really played two characters in his entire career, was enjoyable to watch and Tom Hardy plays a marvelous scoundrel.

However, the greatest flourish of this movie was in the visual, which brings a whole new meaning to the phrase 'world-building'. The world in which Inception functions is both beautiful and mind-bending. It's a world where gravity and concrete are flexible and mirrors become reality.

If I have any gripes with this movie, and I hasten to add that this is just being picky, it's the fourth layer of the dream. The limbo layer. It's a concept that doesn't quite hold up for me. I can accept it. It doesn't spoil the flow of the film. But I know that if I let me brain go and really think about it, I could find a dozen problems with it. I'm also annoyed that Cobb's dead wife, played by Marion Cotillard, was named 'Mal' rather than 'Mol'. I had assumed that 'Mol' was short for Molly, which made sense. Mal, however, is a stupid name.

Nevertheless, this is, quite possibly, the best film I've seen in a decade. It is as visually ground-breaking and conceptually revolutionary as The Matrix was and, to Chris Nolan's credit, it is much more accessible: Friends who don't normally make a fuss over the sci-fi genre loved this movie and it's appeal is proven by the fact it was a trending topic on Twitter for months. This is definitely one to add to the blu-ray collection. It will be stunning in hi-def!