My Favorite Scene: Inception

Warning: Critical plot details will be divulged in this post. The ending will be spoiled.

I can’t mention a favorite scene from Christopher Nolan’s thrilling spectacle, Inception, without first discussing the hallway fight. The first time I saw Joseph Gordon-Levitt jump off a wall, fall to his hands and spider walk across the hall to fight a suited thug, I gasped out loud. Literally gasped. You don’t understand, this kid doesn’t gasp in movies, because this kid sometimes naïvely thinks he’s seen it all. How futile of me. That fight scene, which by now most know was achieved with visual trickery, not computer effects, is as fascinating as any gravitational deceit found in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Chills run through my spine everytime I watch it.

So, in understanding how iconic I find that sequence, it may come as a surprise that my favorite scene from Inception is something far subtler. Really, it’s just a series of looks.

Once the mission is complete and Cillian Murphy’s brain has been incepted with the idea of terminating his father’s company. Once everyone comes out of their dreams and slowly wakes up aboard the airplane where it all begin. Once, you know, the movie calms the hell down and aims to finish its story, we are privy to a handful of exquisite examples of emotional expression.

Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), in tight close up, slowly opens his eyes to see that the mission is indeed complete. He ventured to the unknown and rescued Saito (Ken Wantanabe) after presumed decades of withering.

Now watch.

Watch DiCaprio’s enlarged eyes as he takes the scene in. He looks behind him to Arthur (Gordon-Levitt), his right hand man who stares at Cobb with understated gratification, before looking at the ground, smiling, then looking back up. We then glide past Ellen Page’s character (which admittedly does nothing for me), before focusing on Wantanabe, who isn’t waking up from a dream, but from a “lifetime of regret.” Saito slightly looks around, makes eye contact with Cobb, then effortlessly picks up his phone as promised. The call he’s about to make will allow Cobb to be a free man. And the way Saito makes it, without the hint of thinking twice, is ungodly satisfying.

But it gets better. Once Cobb clears customs, he walks through the baggage claim area, receiving a few gracious looks of approval from his partners in crime.

Arthur gives him a nod, Page’s Ariadne smiles on, Tom Hardy’s Eames stares pleasing, but it’s Murphy who steals the show. As Cobb passes Murphy’s Robert Fischer, the two share the briefest of looks, in which Murphy reveals the slightest hint of acknowledgement. It’s as if he’s seen Cobb in, you guessed it, a dream. But watch – fucking watch – what Murphy does with this moment. He looks at DiCaprio and instead of doing a standard double take with his head, he lets his eyes gently jolt from DiCaprio’s face, to the ground, to the back of his own mind, to his phone, all in the span of a second. It’s a look that says so much in such a tight period of time. That, to me, is acting.

Human movement is very exaggerated. Have you ever watched a video of yourself when you didn’t know you were being recorded? Say it’s a short clip of you at a party or get together or whatever. One of the reasons people get so embarrassed when they watch themselves is because they are completely unaware of how they move. They didn’t know they flailed their hands so wildly, or moved their heads so continually. The point I’m getting at is, to be so in touch with your movements is to exercise a great amount of skill. Believe me, it is just as hard to convey that amount of restraint in Murphy’s eyes, as it is for Gordon-Levitt to fight a man in a revolving hallway.

Murphy’s look is such a delicacy among a film filled with hyperbolic, gasp-inducing moments of action bravado. It’s one of the best looks I’ve ever seen on film. It is clear evidence of the restraint displayed by the actor playing the role, and the director running the show.

Previous installments of My Favorite Scene include:

8 Mile
Babel
Brokeback Mountain
Crash
Fargo
The Godfather
The Godfather Part II
GoodFellas
He Got Game
House of Games
Hustle & Flow
Leaving Las Vegas
Philadelphia
Platoon
Raging Bull
Redbelt
The Rules of Attraction
Se7en
Sleepers

Traffic

Next on the Week of Nolan:

Wednesday July 18

In Character: ???

Thursday July 19

The Polarization of The Prestige

Friday July 20

My Favorite Scene: Insomnia

Saturday July 21

Review of The Dark Knight Rises

Sunday July 22

Why You Need to Follow Following