the entire film is Cobb's dream

Rating: 9/10 (25 July 2010)

An amazing thing happened to me with this film. Never before have my views on a film shifted so dramatically as with Inception. In fact it is my second review of it, I edited the first which was very unflattering. What happened? Well, by chance I read an eye-opening analysis at chud.com, and then I went to see it again, this time in IMAX and with better sound. Chud's piece on this is quite brilliant and profound. I also shows that sometimes it is not enough to see a film, especially such an ambitious one, it is important to read about it, for example what the director says about it. Chud explains that in an interview Nolan reveals this is kind of autobiographical film for him, in a metaphysical sense. It is about... making films, about creative process! Yes yes, not about Matrix so much. DiCaprio confirms it, he says it is much more like "8 and a 1/2" was for Fellini than it is another Matrix. Cobb's team is like a film crew: a director (Cobb), producer (Saito), screenwriter (Ariadne), actor/ actors (Eammes, Fisher). And then there's Mal: a director's or artist's fetish or obsession, something that an original artist usually tends to bring into his work, for better or worse. That is why some good directors should not write scripts, like Cobb, you see? Chud then explains that seen this way, the ENTIRE film is a dream, Cobb's dream. We cannot be even sure that his wife is dead in his "real life", maybe she has just left him? The purpose of such a film for Nolan: analysis of why films work for us or not, why we identify with characters and feel for them or hate them, even if we know that what we r watching is unreal (a dream?). Chud brilliantly writes that some people can shed a tear or two during sad moments of the animated "Up" (or Toy Story), which does not diminish their emotions and does not make them untrue, even though they r reacting to pure fantasy. I for one was deeply moved when the young Fisher discovers what's in the safe and has a catharsis. I was moved with him, and I think Nolan tried to show us that such is the worth of good art and performance. Plus he included in this film elements from melodrama, heist movies, Bond movies etc., all in one. He could not include much of a comedy because it is supposed to be a dream of a sad character, someone who has apparently lost his wife. And when we know the entire film is a dream, many of its apparent inconsistencies or unlikely events do not trouble anymore, because it is Cobb's subconscious we are watching. And if Nolan says Cobb is like him we can guess Cobb is a film director in "real life", dreaming like a film making and about his wife that left him. Details start to make sense: bad goons cannot hit good characters - like in a dream or a bad action film, Cobb attaches the rope onto a chair in which Mal is seating though he has said he could not trust her, Mal is seating on a ledge opposite their hotel room and that room is like a copy of their room, the children look exactly the same and are dressed the same during the ending as before, the narrow alley moment in Mombasa, the explicit names like Ariadne (Greek mythology, the maze) or Mal (evil in French and Spanish), Ariadne asking Cobb what's in the snow castle FOR HIM when it was allegedly Fisher's dream... So I upgraded this film from weak 4 to a very strong 9 after that, for originality, ambition and high production values. Thanks to Chud, the film critic. I do not give it a perfect 10 because I still think the first hour is a bit flat and they talk too much in it.