An intense and stirring ode to the memories we cannot shake.

Rating: 10/10 (8 November 2015)

I first saw Inception with a fine-smelling friend of mine, and to my silent embarrassment, I tend to recall the smell of his cologne whenever I return to the film. Strange as it may sound, even the Coca-Cola we were sharing seemed imbibed with the smell of him. It is a striking detail, one that my subconscious returns to during the film's moments of melancholy, though I am half a decade removed from my original viewing. Even hearing the soundtrack, a moving score by Hans Zimmer, brings me back to that experience, right down to the popcorn, the Coca-Cola, and yes, the stupid cologne. While it speaks strongly to the power of olfactory memory and emotional memories in general, it fits neatly into my perception of the film. Christopher Nolan's journey into the sub- and unconscious mind is a masterwork: an ode to the memories we cannot shake, and the regrets we clutch to as if to a life raft.
Leonardo DiCaprio is in top form as Dom Cobb, an extractor who uses the dreams of his subjects to attain information for his watchful and unseen benefactors. He is at a unique disadvantage—his deceased wife (Marion Cotillard as Mal, in a deeply melancholy performance) begins to appear in his dreams, work-related and otherwise. A shade of her former self, hellbent to thwart her widower's every extraction effort, Mal's presence as an agitator is haunting. Despite Cobb's enduring love for his wife, her constant attempts to cause his failure make her the closest thing the film has to an antagonist. The true villain of the film is the guilt Cobb feels following Mal's death, before the film begins. The reasons for his guilt are discovered by Ariadne (Ellen Page), a young architect whose designs are crucial to the heist around which the film revolves. The scenes involving the three actors form the film's tight emotional core, and are most revelatory in their abiding sadness and sudden violence. Cotillard especially is both tragic and frightening, brandishing a broken champagne glass against her husband in one scene as one might wield a knife.
The supporting cast was expertly chosen, though one could argue heavy on testosterone (Cotillard and Page make up the sole women to actively participate in the film's plot). Regardless, the team Cobb chooses is thoroughly entertaining. Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Tom Hardy are standouts, with back-and-forth banter and teasing that toes the line between playful antagonism and sexual tension. The latter is more apparent, especially in a scene where Arthur (Gordon- Levitt) dreams up a big gun to defend himself from imaginary snipers in a very real dream. Eames (Hardy), of course, dreams up an even bigger gun, advising that Arthur not "be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling." The moment is one of many that add levity to a film that is otherwise heavy and intense, excepting the film's middle section, during which the extraction team prepares for an impossible task. Instead of extracting information, the goal for this mission is to plant an idea in a process called inception. The team—which includes Arthur, Eames, Ariadne, and Ken Watanabe's Mr. Saito, a powerful Japanese businessman who acts as benefactor for the film's titular job—works to enter the dreams of Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), the heir to a company that is Saito's primary competitor.
The third act plays on several themes, all of them heavy, not least of which is that of the weight a parent's expectations can put on the shoulders of their children. The theme that permeates the film most thoroughly is the existential notion that perhaps what we perceive as reality is just a dream, one from which we will eventually wake up. This is not an idea of which many think lightly, but those who enjoy the ambiguity between dream and reality will be rewarded by paying close attention to the film's heady layering of dreams in the third act. The line between the two is first broached in an early scene where Cobb spins a simple top, and with a handgun at the ready, he waits patiently for it to topple. It does, as naturally it should, and Cobb decides that suicide will have to wait. He closes his eyes and sighs, but not from relief. Although she is not on screen, Mal's presence is strongly felt, and the guilt for her death weighs heavy on his shoulders even as he sets the gun down. The top is his way of telling his realities apart, his tether to sanity. Empathic viewers, especially those with serious depression will feel his pain as their own. The fictional aside, countless have felt the guilt of memories we cannot shake.
In the film's climax, Robert Fischer, the man upon whom the heist hinges, opens his just-deceased father's safe. Inside, he finds a paper pinwheel that he made for his father as a child. The moment is one of many gut-wrenchers in the film's highly emotional climax, and the surrounding building collapses moments later. Viewers each have their own pinwheel, whether they know it or not. For some it is a favorite food, a book, a simple spinning top, or something as intangible as a fragrance, and most of us have many. When we cling to that guilt, we find ourselves at an endless crossroads in limbo. In the end, as Cobb and his team learn the hard way, the only way out is by letting go.