Leonardo DiCaprio Interview
With the release of ‘Inception’ a week away, we have an exclusive interview with the one and only Leonardo DiCaprio. The high octane sci-fi psychological film for the serious-minded action lover. He spearheads a cast that includes Ken Watanabe, Marion Cotillard, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Cillian Murphy.
Synopsis
Acclaimed filmmaker Christopher Nolan directs an international cast in an original sci-fi actioner that travels around the globe and into the intimate and infinite world of dreams. Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a skilled thief, the absolute best in the dangerous art of extraction, stealing valuable secrets from deep within the subconscious during the dream state, when the mind is at its most vulnerable. Cobb’s rare ability has made him a coveted player in this treacherous new world of corporate espionage, but it has also made him an international fugitive and cost him everything he has ever loved. Now Cobb is being offered a chance at redemption. One last job could give him his life back but only if he can accomplish the impossible—inception. Instead of the perfect heist, Cobb and his team of specialists have to pull off the reverse: their task is not to steal an idea but to plant one. If they succeed, it could be the perfect crime. But no amount of careful planning or expertise can prepare the team for the dangerous enemy that seems to predict their every move. An enemy that only Cobb could have seen coming. This summer, your mind is the scene of the crime.
What makes this film so unique?
Well, I think it’s a very ambitious film. I think Chris Nolan tried to pull off a multi-dimensional narrative set within the subconscious of the human mind, and also provide an extremely entertaining thriller on a grand Hollywood scale. But also, you know– And you’re dealing with surreal worlds here. You’re dealing with surreal worlds and almost an existential film, at times. But at the same time, you’re very deeply rooted in these characters’ journeys to come to terms with the truth of their past and accomplish this underlying goal that they have. And my goal in the movie is to get back home to my family. I mean, I’m in the black market of the dream world. My job is to infiltrate people’s minds, extract information. And here we are trying to pull off this grand-scale idea of planting something in somebody’s mind. So, I’m assembling a team of people to do that. And I think the audience is with all these characters on that journey. They’re experiencing these experiences with them for the first time. And that’s what Chris Nolan managed to do in a plot structure that makes it engaging for an audience.
How did you infuse so much emotion and heart into the film?
Well, we worked very hard on it. I mean… A lot of the visual stuff, a lot of the concepts that Chris wanted to pull off in this film, were things we didn’t really argue with him about. I mean, obviously, the guy’s got a great track record. He’s done amazing work in the past. He’s pulled off concepts like this and made them digestible for an audience. So, our job really was to have one-on-one interactions with him, to try to create interesting characters and create characters that had emotional weight to them and give, you know… certainly, for me, give my character a real cathartic journey. And a character that comes to terms with who he really is. So, in a way, it was like a giant– I looked at it like a giant therapy session for my character, this whole journey.
What kind of research into dreams did you do for this film?
I think it’s very difficult to put an exact science in the dream world. I think obviously there are things that we repress in our emotions, thoughts that we have in life, concepts, fears that submerge during that state of dreaming, in that unconscious world. And to put an exact science on it is very difficult. And I tried to do the traditional sort of approach to this movie, where I was reading up on dream analysis and the meanings of it, and at the end of the day, this is a very specific dream world that’s in the mind of Chris Nolan. So all the research came from the creative talks with him and had to be looked at in a different way.
What was it like to shoot in so many different locations around the world?
Well, we sort of expected the unexpected every day on set. I mean, we knew that there were these grand ideas that he wanted to pull off. But what’s really interesting about Chris is– And I remember meeting him years and years ago– He likes to put cultural references, or things that we kind of understand in the world that we live in, into science fiction. So you’re never truly, truly detached from what you see. And Chris likes to be on real locations. He likes to redress the sets according to what he wants it to look like visually. So there wasn’t a lot of green screen. There wasn’t a lot of things that made us feel like we weren’t really there. We were in these real places around the world and we felt– And it helps us as actors. It really grounds you.
INCEPTION ARRIVES IN CINEMAS ON JULY 16TH