In your dreams: Leonardo DiCaprio's new movie will have you going back for more (if only to work out what it's all about!)
Mind Games He spent months working on it, but even
now Leonardo DiCaprio scratches his head and admits how hard it was to
get to grips with the script for his latest film.
The actor is no stranger to confusing plots, but Inception really is a film which will have nerds debating its finer points for decades.
The brainchild of British director Christopher Nolan - the man behind the box office megaliths Batman Begins and The Dark Knight - it is part science-fiction, part heist and part love story.
And it's probably one of the best films - in terms of special-effects, acting and ingenious plot - for years.
With layer upon layer of complexity, a recent screening for critics had the audience groaning collectively as the credits began to roll.
They thought they had worked out the ending... only to wonder if they really had.
Nolan is unquestionably onto a winner at the box office as people will want to go several times to try and work it all out again - piecing together things they might have missed first time around.
So what's it all about?
Based in a future not too dissimilar from our own world, humans have created the technology to enter each other's dreams.
While many enjoy shared dreams simply for the fantasy ride, they are also invaluable for the criminally-minded.
Leo plays Dom Cobb, a thief skilled in the art of 'extraction' - where you can steal business secrets stored in a person's subconscious by entering their dreams.
It's taking industrial espionage a huge step forward.
Although he is tired of the job, Cobb is a fugitive who takes on one last assignment because he has been on the run and is desperate to see his children again.
If he pulls off the job, the man behind it will arrange for him to be allowed home. (Cobb is not allowed back into the U.S. because he is wanted for murder.)
But this job is different. He must plant an idea in someone's head through their dream world - an inception.
He is hired by the boss of one enormous corporation to enter the dreams of the boss of its rival and plant an idea that will destroy his empire.
The inception is almost impossible to carry out successfully and much riskier than extracting secrets.
It involves dreams within dreams and a depth of sleep which will necessitate sedation.
To make things even more dangerous, it is possible to die within the dream, which means staying in a state of limbo for ever. Cobb is also hiding a dangerous enemy in his own subconscious, which could blow his cover.
'It certainly took a couple of readings,' laughs Leo of the script.
'I was in an initial state of confusion, as I believe almost everyone in the cast was when they first read the screenplay.
'We all had to take a leap of faith with this movie.
'But what was immediately engaging was that this is a highly entertaining, complex thriller where anything can happen. And at the heart of it is one man's quest to uncover a long-buried truth to get back home.
'It's also completely original; I don't think anyone could say they've experienced anything like it before.
'It's highly entertaining but also existential and cerebral and surreal.'
He admits he struggled to know how to approach his new role: 'I tried to take a very traditional approach to researching this film by reading about different dream analysis techniques and tried to pick apart what things meant in the dream world.
'But I quickly realised that this was a whole new type of preparation and that meant a great deal of talking to Chris about what my character goes through.'
He says he had the idea nearly a decade ago but it took him that long to become adept enough at directing to make the film.
'I've always found it to be an interesting paradox that everything within a dream - whether frightening or happy or fantastic - is being produced by your own mind as it happens, and what that says about the potential of the imagination is quiet extraordinary,' he says.
'I wanted to create a film that would allow the audience to experience the limitless realities of dreams.
'About ten years ago I focused on the idea of exploring the technology that would allow people to share dreams and the uses and abuses that might bring.
'I came up with this idea of exploring the idea of a heist film set in the world of dreams with the technology that would allow somebody to penetrate somebody else's subconscious.
'The idea was for a large-scale action film with an unusual twist.
'At the heart of the movie is the notion that an idea is the most resilient and powerful parasite. A trace of it will always be there in your mind... somewhere.
'The thought that someone could master the ability to invade your dream space, in a very physical sense, and steal an idea - no matter how private - is compelling.'
It requires more than an ordinary amount of attention but viewers are rewarded with a film that treats them as intelligent beings.
Many at the early screenings said they wanted to go back in and watch it all over again.
Key to the action are the dreams within dreams; the moment where you think you have woken up but are actually still dreaming.
Even the thieves have trouble working out what is reality. No wonder the actors said they had to pick the director's brains about what was going on.
'The key to my understanding was to sit down with Chris over several months,' says Leo.
'This is a concept which has been locked in his mind for several years.'
With a smile on his face, he adds: 'As far as how the dreams were going to work - and Chris was going to make four different states of the dream world interact with each other in a cohesive plot structure - I left that entirely up to him and did not want to get involved.'
'I love watching my team react with a little bit of panic when I first present them with what I'm thinking,' says Chris.
'For me it was crucial that, at every level, the world feels concrete because when we are in a dream we accept it as reality. We wanted to do these for real so they feel possible.'
There are some incredible shots of a Paris street literally folding
in on itself. In fact, many of the special-effects actually took place
in a former aircraft hangar in Cardington, Bedfordshire.
For the the extraordinary zero-gravity scenes in a hotel, his special-effects created a 100ft long corridor which could rotate 360 degrees.
The corridor was suspended along eight massive concentric rings outside its walls and powered by two giant electric motors.
'I love the fact that it was not just playing in front of a green screen, as that would have been just pretend,' says actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who plays Dom's right-hand man Arthur.
'The floor really was spinning out from my feet and I really was 10ft in air with nothing beneath me.
'I think it makes the scene more compelling because I really was off balance.
'The scenes look really different to your average digitally-created film ans that's what makes it such fun to watch,' he says.
To create a hotel bar which could tilt, the set was built on a giant seesaw, while a freight train was built on chassis of a tractor to drive through the streets of Los Angeles.
Also beautifully imagined are the details of the new dream world. One scene shows an illicit dream den for addicts who prefer their fantasy lives to reality.
And for all its action - and there is plenty of action - at its heart is Cobb's surprisingly touching back-story.
He, too, is addicted to his dreams as they are the only place he can see his dead wife, Mal, played by La Vie En Rose star Marion Cotillard.
'My character is an addict, addicted to his alternative reality,' says Leo.
Up and coming British actor Tom Hardy plays the master-forger Eames who can impersonate anyone he wants in the dream world to aid the heist.
The actor admits he used many of the mannerisms of Chris for his role as an eccentric Brit.
Juno actress Ellen Page plays Ariadne, the architect of the dreams which have been specially synthesised to make the heist gang's target, heir Robert Fischer (played by Irish actor Cillian Murphy), believe that they are real. Chemist Yusuf, (Dileep Rao) and money man Saito, (Ken Watanabe) complete the team.
Michael Caine has a small role - as he has done in three of Chris's other big movies (the two Batmans and The Prestige) - playing Leonardo's father-in-law.
'As Michael says, he is our good luck charm,' says co-producer Emma Thomas who also happens to be married to Chris.
'I don't think we could make a film without him at this point.'
The Edith Piaf song Je Ne Regrette Rien features in the film but Chris says people should not read too much into it.
'The song has been in the script for ten years,' he says.
'When Marion (who played Piaf in an Oscar winning biopic) came on board I thought about taking it out but I liked the idea of the connection. I don't know why I chose that song. I just wanted one with a very distinctive opening.'
Chris and his younger brother Jonah, a Hollywood screenwriter, are film hot-shots but their big brother Matthew is currently in jail accused of murder, fraud and attempting an audacious prison break.
Matthew, 41, is accused by authorities in Costa Rica of kidnapping and murdering businessman Robert Cohen. They also claim he wrote false cheques and used a fake British passport.
He is currently in jail in Chicago, extradition to Costa Rica.
But while in the notorious Metropolitan Correctional Center, a search of his cell is said to have discovered everything he needed for an escape, including '31ft of improvised rope, which had been braided together from bedding, a makeshift harness and a metal clip of a pen cap, which Nolan manipulated to make a handcuff key'.
He was also said to have had a razor blade hidden in a bar of soap
It was so cold on Fortress Mountain in Calgary, where icy action scenes were shot, that set-builders had to bring in special heaters to stop their paint freezing up as soon as it left the tin.
• Inception is released in cinemas today.
The actor is no stranger to confusing plots, but Inception really is a film which will have nerds debating its finer points for decades.
The brainchild of British director Christopher Nolan - the man behind the box office megaliths Batman Begins and The Dark Knight - it is part science-fiction, part heist and part love story.
Stars: Marion Cotillard plays Mal and Leonardo Dicaprio plays Cobb in Inception, a high concept sci-fi with a love story at its heart
With layer upon layer of complexity, a recent screening for critics had the audience groaning collectively as the credits began to roll.
They thought they had worked out the ending... only to wonder if they really had.
Nolan is unquestionably onto a winner at the box office as people will want to go several times to try and work it all out again - piecing together things they might have missed first time around.
So what's it all about?
Based in a future not too dissimilar from our own world, humans have created the technology to enter each other's dreams.
Concentrate: DiCaprio plays a criminal adept at stealing business secrets from people's sub-conscious via their dreams
Leo plays Dom Cobb, a thief skilled in the art of 'extraction' - where you can steal business secrets stored in a person's subconscious by entering their dreams.
It's taking industrial espionage a huge step forward.
Although he is tired of the job, Cobb is a fugitive who takes on one last assignment because he has been on the run and is desperate to see his children again.
If he pulls off the job, the man behind it will arrange for him to be allowed home. (Cobb is not allowed back into the U.S. because he is wanted for murder.)
But this job is different. He must plant an idea in someone's head through their dream world - an inception.
He is hired by the boss of one enormous corporation to enter the dreams of the boss of its rival and plant an idea that will destroy his empire.
The inception is almost impossible to carry out successfully and much riskier than extracting secrets.
It involves dreams within dreams and a depth of sleep which will necessitate sedation.
To make things even more dangerous, it is possible to die within the dream, which means staying in a state of limbo for ever. Cobb is also hiding a dangerous enemy in his own subconscious, which could blow his cover.
'It certainly took a couple of readings,' laughs Leo of the script.
'I was in an initial state of confusion, as I believe almost everyone in the cast was when they first read the screenplay.
'We all had to take a leap of faith with this movie.
'But what was immediately engaging was that this is a highly entertaining, complex thriller where anything can happen. And at the heart of it is one man's quest to uncover a long-buried truth to get back home.
'It's also completely original; I don't think anyone could say they've experienced anything like it before.
'It's highly entertaining but also existential and cerebral and surreal.'
He admits he struggled to know how to approach his new role: 'I tried to take a very traditional approach to researching this film by reading about different dream analysis techniques and tried to pick apart what things meant in the dream world.
'But I quickly realised that this was a whole new type of preparation and that meant a great deal of talking to Chris about what my character goes through.'
The brains
You have to wonder what sort of brain Christopher Nolan, the British director who created the film, has.He says he had the idea nearly a decade ago but it took him that long to become adept enough at directing to make the film.
'I've always found it to be an interesting paradox that everything within a dream - whether frightening or happy or fantastic - is being produced by your own mind as it happens, and what that says about the potential of the imagination is quiet extraordinary,' he says.
The brains: Director Christopher Nolan was also the man behind the box office hits Batman begins and The Dark Knight
'About ten years ago I focused on the idea of exploring the technology that would allow people to share dreams and the uses and abuses that might bring.
'I came up with this idea of exploring the idea of a heist film set in the world of dreams with the technology that would allow somebody to penetrate somebody else's subconscious.
'The idea was for a large-scale action film with an unusual twist.
'At the heart of the movie is the notion that an idea is the most resilient and powerful parasite. A trace of it will always be there in your mind... somewhere.
'The thought that someone could master the ability to invade your dream space, in a very physical sense, and steal an idea - no matter how private - is compelling.'
Why it's so confusing
The film is multi-layered with as many as four different but interlinking stories going on at the same time.It requires more than an ordinary amount of attention but viewers are rewarded with a film that treats them as intelligent beings.
Many at the early screenings said they wanted to go back in and watch it all over again.
Action men: Ken Watanabe and Lucas Haas feature among the stellar cast
Even the thieves have trouble working out what is reality. No wonder the actors said they had to pick the director's brains about what was going on.
'The key to my understanding was to sit down with Chris over several months,' says Leo.
'This is a concept which has been locked in his mind for several years.'
With a smile on his face, he adds: 'As far as how the dreams were going to work - and Chris was going to make four different states of the dream world interact with each other in a cohesive plot structure - I left that entirely up to him and did not want to get involved.'
Building a nightmare
Visually, and in imagination, it is as stunning as Avatar but Chris Nolan insists that he considers himself an old fashioned moviemaker, using as little computer trickery as possible, unlike the oscarwinning 3D movie, which used every gizmo going.'I love watching my team react with a little bit of panic when I first present them with what I'm thinking,' says Chris.
'For me it was crucial that, at every level, the world feels concrete because when we are in a dream we accept it as reality. We wanted to do these for real so they feel possible.'
Special-effects: Nolan aimed to create stunts
for real, rather than relying on computer wizardry, even when he needed a
rotating hotel corridor
For the the extraordinary zero-gravity scenes in a hotel, his special-effects created a 100ft long corridor which could rotate 360 degrees.
The corridor was suspended along eight massive concentric rings outside its walls and powered by two giant electric motors.
'I love the fact that it was not just playing in front of a green screen, as that would have been just pretend,' says actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who plays Dom's right-hand man Arthur.
'The floor really was spinning out from my feet and I really was 10ft in air with nothing beneath me.
'I think it makes the scene more compelling because I really was off balance.
'The scenes look really different to your average digitally-created film ans that's what makes it such fun to watch,' he says.
To create a hotel bar which could tilt, the set was built on a giant seesaw, while a freight train was built on chassis of a tractor to drive through the streets of Los Angeles.
Also beautifully imagined are the details of the new dream world. One scene shows an illicit dream den for addicts who prefer their fantasy lives to reality.
And for all its action - and there is plenty of action - at its heart is Cobb's surprisingly touching back-story.
He, too, is addicted to his dreams as they are the only place he can see his dead wife, Mal, played by La Vie En Rose star Marion Cotillard.
'My character is an addict, addicted to his alternative reality,' says Leo.
The stars
Making up the heist team is an extraordinary mix of characters.Up and coming British actor Tom Hardy plays the master-forger Eames who can impersonate anyone he wants in the dream world to aid the heist.
The actor admits he used many of the mannerisms of Chris for his role as an eccentric Brit.
Juno actress Ellen Page plays Ariadne, the architect of the dreams which have been specially synthesised to make the heist gang's target, heir Robert Fischer (played by Irish actor Cillian Murphy), believe that they are real. Chemist Yusuf, (Dileep Rao) and money man Saito, (Ken Watanabe) complete the team.
Michael Caine has a small role - as he has done in three of Chris's other big movies (the two Batmans and The Prestige) - playing Leonardo's father-in-law.
'As Michael says, he is our good luck charm,' says co-producer Emma Thomas who also happens to be married to Chris.
'I don't think we could make a film without him at this point.'
No regrets...
Happy accident: Marion Cotillard played Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose, and Piaf's song Je Ne Regrette Rien appears in the film
'The song has been in the script for ten years,' he says.
'When Marion (who played Piaf in an Oscar winning biopic) came on board I thought about taking it out but I liked the idea of the connection. I don't know why I chose that song. I just wanted one with a very distinctive opening.'
The jailbird brother
While it takes some imagination to create the world of Inception, Chris Nolan does not have to look far from home when it comes to criminal inspiration.Chris and his younger brother Jonah, a Hollywood screenwriter, are film hot-shots but their big brother Matthew is currently in jail accused of murder, fraud and attempting an audacious prison break.
Matthew, 41, is accused by authorities in Costa Rica of kidnapping and murdering businessman Robert Cohen. They also claim he wrote false cheques and used a fake British passport.
He is currently in jail in Chicago, extradition to Costa Rica.
But while in the notorious Metropolitan Correctional Center, a search of his cell is said to have discovered everything he needed for an escape, including '31ft of improvised rope, which had been braided together from bedding, a makeshift harness and a metal clip of a pen cap, which Nolan manipulated to make a handcuff key'.
He was also said to have had a razor blade hidden in a bar of soap
All around the world
Filming took place in Tokyo, Bedfordshire and London, Paris, Tangiers, Los Angeles and Calgary in Canada.It was so cold on Fortress Mountain in Calgary, where icy action scenes were shot, that set-builders had to bring in special heaters to stop their paint freezing up as soon as it left the tin.
• Inception is released in cinemas today.
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