New INCEPTION photo!

It’s not a new assumption, I know, but it’s still worth repeating that Leonardo DiCaprio was partially cast as the lead for Inception (16.07.10) whether consciously or not by Chris Nolan, because of the striking physical resemblance DiCaprio shares with his director.

I think we can all agree on that being the case.

The practise of directors casting actors as extensions of themselves is nothing new and it happens frequently of course, but for Nolan to do it for the first time after five previous feature films, and in the first movie birthed from his own idea and script – well to me it screams “this is personal to me, this is me baring my soul”.

Above, a new image from Inception as released by The L.A. Times.

Nolan’s movie about “metaphysical heisting”, his “fourth dimensional Bond movie“ that seems to blend film noir with The Matrix and the dream theories of Sigmund Freud into a near $200 million summer blockbuster cocktail – is by any cerebral film-goers account, the most fascinating feature film to be released in 2010. Anyone who doesn’t think so should be shot at dawn.

Directors casting actors with whom they share a physical resemblance to is not really anything new, especially for highly personal movies. Coming to mind straight away are Steven Spielberg’s use of Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Tim Burton’s casting of Johnny Depp in Edward Scissorhands, and of course Martin Scorsese’s frequent use of Robert De Niro, but most specifically in Taxi Driver.

Would anyone argue that the above mentioned movies aren’t the most personal from those particular auteurs?

In truth, those movies are probably their best works of art.