Life is but a dream...

Rating: 10/10 (19 July 2010)

For several years now the corporate establishment of Hollywood has given the world unoriginal and artistically vapid films that achieve no other purpose than to make money. Vampire love stories and mindless action orgies that hide their banality through fancy special effects. Remakes, sequels, sequels of sequels, and yet worse, the occasional Adam Sandler film. Inception is a refreshing and inspiring break from this. It is in an elegant film that cleverly blends reality and dreams – and dreams within dreams (within dreams) – resulting in an original exploration of the strange world of the human mind and those who wish to exploit its vulnerabilities. It is without doubt the best major film of the year.
Inception is written and directed by Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight). In 2000 he established himself as a daring and creative director with Memento. Ten years later he's surpassed Memento, making a film that deserves to be in the same conversation with other conscience-bending works such as The Matrix, eXistenZ, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Cobb, an agent who is hired by wealthy businessmen to entire the dreams of other businessmen to steal their private ideas and secrets. He is a fugitive in the US, which means he can never return to his home country to see his children. His employer makes him an offer he cannot refuse: the chance to return to the US and to his children with a clean slate. For this to happen, he must enter the dreams of an heir of a business empire and perform a task called inception. Stealing ideas is one thing; implanting ideas into a person's mind is another. Inception straddles the outer boundaries of possibility, an incredibly difficult task, as Cobb must go deep into the subconscience of his target, Robert Fischer (played by Cillian Murphy).
To assist him he brings a crew of dreamers, including Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Ariadne, played by the adorable Ellen Page. To get deep into the subconscience of Fischer, the crew must create a dream world that Fischer and they enter. In this dream world, they must create another dream world, and enter that one. In that dream world, they must create and enter another dream world. And it doesn't stop there. The result is a recursive web of dreams and a narrative that is complicated, but not overly so.
In each level the dream intruders are attacked by armed elements of Fischer's subconscience, providing for fantastical and riveting action sequences. Multiple action sequences take place simultaneously in every level, and what happens in one dream world has a profound effect on the nature of another dream world. The original dream world begins to collapse, which has a ripple effect on other dreams embedded within that one. The result is a stunning cascade of collapsing worlds in which characters must wake up from the deepest dream before being killed, repeating the process until they finally return to reality. The collapsing cascade is an extraordinary achievement of direction, storytelling, and editing. Further description of it would not do it justice: it must be seen.
Perhaps one of the most telling signs of the film's success was the audience reaction. I saw Inception on opening night in a sold out auditorium. When the movie ended, everyone sat in silence, overcome by the awesomeness of what they just seen. Two separate rounds of applause ensued, accompanied by cheers and gasps of amazement. I don't believe I've ever seen such a strong audience reaction to a film.
Cinema is a unique art form, probably the only medium in which complete multi-dimensional worlds can be built from imagination. Inception has achieved this in a dazzling way – it is a quintessential film, an exemplar of what films ought to be. It presents a compelling and novel universe, the mechanics of which have never before been dreamed of. The film worth seeing for many reasons, most importantly because it is innovative and audacious. Perhaps Christopher Nolan took the advice of one of the characters in his film: "You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling."