"I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours." Bob Dylan

Rating: 10/10 (7 December 2010)

"Take, if you must, this little bag of dreams, Unloose the cord, and they will wrap you round." William Butler Yates
"Ha, bloody ha!" Viewing this movie left me with wobbly legs, barely able to walk the first few steps towards the door. My hands were shaking and my head ached. What a rush! I haven't had this reaction since "Black Hawk Down". Christopher Nolan has artfully taken the images of our subconscious nocturnal ruminations and used them as priceless fodder for his "Inception." Not only was I completely drawn in within the first few minutes, I felt involved.
The notion of dreaming 'in conference", as well as in layers is interesting and intelligent, but there are myriads of such ideas bouncing around in the heads of creative sorts all over the place. The fact the Nolan was able to gather the group of actors that he did and then pull it off is extremely impressive.
DiCaprio as Cobb the retired 'architect' was, as usual, solid and dependable. Even more, his haunted affect in respect to his relationship with his wife, was chilling. Ellen Page, Ariadne, becomes to Cobb a sort of 'good angel' on one shoulder to Marion Cotillard's (Cobb's wife), bad angel on the other. The insinuations of ambiguity between reality and dream become a frightening proposition for Cobb, and for those of us who witness. As supporting cast, Tom Hardy, Ken Watenabe and Joseph Gordon-Levitt were icing on the cake, powerful and proficient in their parts. What a surprise to see Gordon-Levitt used as muscle!
CGI was mind-bendingly claustrophobic in some scenes and eye candy for the ADHD advantaged in others! I'm far too ignorant about such things to comment beyond that.
There have been some criticisms regarding character development and confusion regarding the role of Kobel Engineering in the dream sequences. As far as character development in concerned, when chaos abounds, there is not much time to exchange personal information or go fishing. This was an intense experience that I believe would have suffered from too much exposition. As to Kobel Engineering, I believe they were in Cobb's surreality, as was Mal.
"Inception" was the movie of 2010 for me. I plan to watch it at least a couple more times in order to cull the marvelous minutia right out of it.