"You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger"

Rating: 10/10 (24 January 2014)

Writer-director Christopher Nolan explores the realm of dreams in Inception; The sci-fi thriller's premise sounds simple enough, but its execution by Nolan is anything but.
It's about time that an intelligent, original piece of film has finally enjoyed a wide release. Christopher Nolan has crafted another masterpiece. It shares more with Memento than Dark Knight - a more personal journey that delves far into the mind and is much more than about just dreaming.
Ostensibly an international heist caper, Inception follows Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), an "extractor" whose form of corporate espionage is to invade the dreams of the rich and powerful and pluck their most tightly guarded secrets from the depths of their subconscious. "A single idea from the human mind can build cities. An idea can transform the world and rewrite all the rules," Cobb says at one point.
Nolan helps us with an emotional thread. The reason Cobb is motivated to risk the dangers of inception is because of grief and guilt involving his wife Mal (Marion Cotillard), and their two children. Whether we are seeing Cobb's memories or his dreams is difficult to say—even, literally, in the last shot. But she makes Mal function as an emotional magnet, and the love between the two provides an emotional constant in Cobb's world, which is otherwise ceaselessly shifting.
In order to make his dream a reality, Cobb must gather a team together for a wealthy businessman to make a rival break up his company. The business man is Ken Watanabe, and his team is composed of a researcher - Joseph Gorden-Levitt, an architect - named, appropriately, Ariadne played by Ellen Page, a forger played by Tom Hardy and a druggist played by Dileep Rao. The team needs to invade the mind of Robert Fisher, Jr. - Cillian Murphy, but not to extract an idea, but to plant one - inception.
This is a dangerous proposition, as it requires going much deeper into the subject unconscious and if things don't go exactly as planned, they could wind up in limbo - a sort of formless dream-scape where seconds become eternity and your mind can turn to mush. Time, much like reality, plays a big part in Inception. For every level you go down, the more time passes. A minute in the real world can turn into an hour, a week, a month - a decade.
The key to Inception is providing a "kick" to wake up after being highly sedated. Luckily the drug doesn't affect he inner ear, so a feeling of falling will provide the needed means to awaken. Things are complicated, however, when Fisher turns out to have trained his brain to protect against mind thieves. This leads to the films most exciting moments - a zero-g fight in a hotel hallway, a gun at a snowy fortress, a race through the streets to survive.
Indeed, Inception could very well be Nolan's masterpiece." Inception" does a difficult thing. It is wholly original, cut from new cloth, and yet structured with action movie basics so it feels like it makes more sense than (quite possibly) it does. This time he isn't reinventing anything. Yet few directors will attempt to recycle "Inception." I think when Nolan left the labyrinth, he threw away the map.
The other mind-bending visuals are all about asserting control in dreams - a city that rolls in on itself, a set of endless stairs, a cityscape that crumbles like a sand castle against the tide - stunning visuals that make their mark.
The story can either be told in a few sentences, or not told at all. Here is a movie immune to spoilers: If you knew how it ended, that would tell you nothing unless you knew how it got there. And telling you how it got there would produce bafflement. The movie is all about process, about fighting our way through enveloping sheets of reality and dream, reality within dreams, dreams without reality.
The story is not always easy to follow, but as long as you pay attention (something that doesn't seem to be required for most movies, sadly, these days) you can pick up on the clues. I can see why this is a film people say you need to see twice (or more). Even if you pay strict attention to detail and nuance, Nolan leaves the ending ambiguous. Normally I would say it's a cop out, but in this case it's the perfect way to end the film. In a movie about a dream within a dream within a dream - another layer just makes things even more interesting.
In an age of remakes, sequels and adaptations, it's nice to see something truly original reach for the sky and succeed. Maybe it might give others in Hollywood the same idea.
Inception is a breathtaking achievement and a movie-going experience well worth your time and investment. It is a mixture of many movie genres (and movies itself); however, it creates an original premise and story that you don't care.