Tuesday 10 April 2012

"There Hasn't Been..." #1

In true Haydon's Movie House style, I have come up with a new section of the site which I hope to update each and every week for you lucky lot. All too often in film criticism and debate, motion pictures are regarded on the facts that they remind viewers of previous films or recall similarities and memories to other cinematic works rather on their judged and accounted for on own merits or demerits, so being the kind of person that I am, I have decided to start "There Hasn't Been..." - a new interactive post which will focus on a single picture each week and will become attached with a statement which is deliberately made to spark debate, clashing of opinions and probably end up like a YouTube comment section laden with profanity and poor punctuation.

So without further ado, let's get the ball rolling and let the frustrated keyboard bashing commence.

#1 

"There Hasn't Been...
...A Better Film Released since Inception (2010)"


In July last year, I declared that I hadn't seen a film as impressive, imaginative and ambitious as Christopher Nolan's masterpiece Inception (yes, his masterpiece - it's better than the seemingly perfect The Dark Knight) and now in April 2012, there still hasn't been a single release that can shake the sheer mass and gravity of this multi-layered, beautifully constructed slice of Hollywood art. 

 Nolan approaches Inception in the same way he did with earlier works like Following (1998) and Memento (2000) - to him this is an arthouse movie about the sciences of the subconsciousness with a $200 million budget, this is not as many called it, 'The Matrix with A-Levels' - it's so much more. Rarely is a film this tremendous in scale, style and scope yet is so grounded and tamed by intimacy and definition of it's characters and their complexities. Inception may have rotating corridors, extravagant set pieces and the best use of an ensemble cast in recent memory, but fundamentally, this is a study of the human mind and all the trauma, wonder and relentlessness that is attached to it.

 For me, I cannot recall having the same sense of excitement, developmental heft and satisfaction with any other film as I do when re-watching this picture and personally, there isn't another film since it's release that has blown me away in the same manor as Nolan's Sci-Fi Heist Thriller. If I had to pick a single film to re-watch from the last two or more years, I'd pick Inception every time and one is fairly sure I'll be saying that for many more years to come.

 Right, now it's your turn... 

Do you agree with me?
Do you completely disagree?
Have you seen Inception and prefer The Dark Knight?

Comment below and let me know!

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