Breathtaking Cinema - Why we go to the movies

Rating: 9/10 (19 August 2010)

Inception is wonderful movie that takes you deep into the emotional dilemma of a man who is coming to grips with his wife's suicide. The visual medium never "felt" so real as you're presented with scenarios that draw out Cobb's feelings as he travels on his journey towards acceptance.
While much has been said about the on-screen plot, the emotional plot is what drives this movie. We're presented with visuals where the on-screen action is merely a trigger for deeper emotions. Take Mal's suicide scene with facing duplicate hotel rooms (one trashed, one in perfect order). It's easy to sense the symmetry of love and how Cobb felt helpless to watch half of himself die (as Mal says to Ariadne a half of a whole). It's obvious this isn't how Mal died, but you can feel the sense of concern, anger, sadness, helplessness, pain and emptiness that Cobb feels just from living through that scene. This is cinema at its best.
The two key elements that codify the ideas of the movie are held in two riddles: 1. The "Travelling on a train" riddle, which signifies the idea that Cobb had embedded so deeply into his mind that he and Mal would grow old together (the idea that like a virus was embedded deep into Cobb's mind) and 2. The "leap of faith" riddle which ends appropriately with "or become an old man, filled with regret, waiting to die alone" (Cobb knows he has to move on but has to travel the journey of denial, anger, bargaining and acceptance (which is what each level of the dreams represented) to get there.
To fully deal with her death Cobb had to realize that Mal did spend her whole life with him, but he can no longer live on just that memory of her and has to move on for the kids and himself.
The whole movie was a dream until he awakens on the plane surrounded by strangers he incorporated into his dream during the flight (he never talks to them and they never act like they truly know him). As Mal said it best "Feeling persecuted ... being chased around the world by anonymous corporations (wouldn't any husband feel people must blame him if his wife committed suicide?) ... I'm what's real" ... and she truly was.
This movie will be amongst the classics for a very long time.