MOVIE REVIEW- Magical <i>Inception: </i>Nolan's latest a true original

PUBLICITY PHOTO

It's said that Christopher Nolan spent 10 years writing his screenplay for Inception. That must have involved prodigious concentration, like playing blindfold chess while walking a tightwire. The film's hero tests a young architect by challenging her to create a maze, and Nolan tests us with his own dazzling maze. We have to trust him that he can lead us through because much of the time we're lost and disoriented. Nolan must have rewritten this story time and again, finding that every change had a ripple effect down through the whole fabric.

The story can either be told in a few sentences, or not told at all. Here is a movie immune to spoilers: If you knew how it ended, that would tell you nothing unless you knew how it got there. And telling you how it got there would produce bafflement. The movie is all about process, about fighting our way through enveloping sheets of reality and dream, reality within dreams, dreams without reality..... [full review]