Where dreams about past and present realities don't mix too well - or maybe they do?

Rating: 7/10 (11 December 2010)

Christopher Nolan's imaginative use of filmic structure, script, cinematography and direction provide a passably entertaining story within a story that has, unfortunately, confused many viewers here, and elsewhere, perhaps with its overuse of dream sequences, but certainly with its fantasy caper that often doesn't make any sense.
But that's the cunning beauty of this movie: it's deliberately designed to be as confusing and mystifying as your own dreams.
For viewers who have not yet seen the film:
STOP READING NOW – MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOW...
After sampling forty plus reviews here, I found two that are on the ball: leda_ananke from Canada who begins "Its all a dream"; and Danijel Pajur from Ireland who asserts, up front, "This movie is so predictable that it takes all of 10 minutes to figure it out."
A bit less than "10 minutes" actually: according to my timing, at 3 minutes and 7 seconds into the film, Cobb (di Caprio) says: "This is a dream and you have a safe-full of secrets and I need to know what's in that safe." He says it so quickly, however, that many would miss it, or ignore its significance. Director Nolan, however, has told the viewer: You're now in Cobb's dream.
The second clue follows very swiftly, just in case you missed Cobb's brazen admission: the whole building shakes, much noise roars, sounds of explosions intrude, and we see through the window, the chaos of fire and smoke, lots of smoke in the streets outside, cars exploding, people rushing about, and heaps of smoke...
Thirty minutes into the chaotic plot, we're in Paris with Aridane (Ellen Page) – what a deliciously subversive name from Greek mythology – who's leading Cobb through the dream and stops suddenly to magically bring forth two giant mirrors, positioning them to show Cobb to infinity, in both directions. It's the third clue for viewers and, added to the first, we have director Nolan's explicit and clever admission to you, the viewer: This caper is all smoke and mirrors, dear viewer; don't try to understand – just concentrate on the real story...
Which is, quite simply, the crisis of guilt Cobb feels as a result of his wife's death – a death for which he holds himself personally responsible. So, that's the real story: a man's dream about his own guilt complex. (By the way, would the word 'corn' come to mind when you say Cobb?)
The parallel story – the corporate mind-blowing and mind-robbing caper – is just a narrative device to allow Cobb's associates to assist his efforts to come to terms with his guilt. And all of which is wrapped up into a convoluted mix of psycho-babble, outrageous and impossible pseudo-scientific equipment, fantastically impossible or improbable situations and a slew of special FX guaranteed to confuse and/or delight those who dwell on such banalities.
So that's Cobb's real mission: with a little help from friends to feed him ideas – the Inception of the title – he must face the truth of the circumstances of his wife's death. Hence, if Nolan did indeed set out to confuse his audience about mind-shaping, I'd say he largely succeeded. Which is surprising, because planting ideas into another's mind has been around since the mid-nineteenth century with hypnosis and auto-suggestive techniques, a fact which that consummate thriller writer, Richard Condon, used to great effect when he wrote The Manchurian Candidate back in 1960 (and later filmed twice).
Dreams, however, have been used all too often in cinema. A couple of significant examples are, first, Hitchcock's imaginative use of animation in Spellbound (1945) to help solve a murder mystery; and second, William Friedkin confused many viewers with his enigmatic and much-underrated Bug (2006) – a very clever story that keeps you guessing to the very last frame...and beyond.
So, despite the overly gushing praise about Nolan's originality, his effort here is original only to the extent that he...er, dreamed it all up, wrote it, and directed it. Moreover, he'd be the first to admit that, I'm sure.
From a production and technical perspective, however, the film is top-notch; the acting is adequate to the task of presenting a succession of comic-book characters to assist Cobb's mental and emotional recovery; the special effects are precisely what's needed to keep viewers trapped in Cobb's dream; and the plot – the sequence of events – must be seen because it cannot be sensibly described.
Overall, Inception is just the latest filmic effort guaranteed success at box office: the level of hype and hubbub I've heard and seen, online and offline, is every film-makers wet dream. David Lynch does it all the time. So, how can anybody accuse Nolan of failure?
The film is not an instant classic, however: it's an average story competently overshadowed by an old idea dressed up to cater to today's visually obsessed audience. The fact that it confuses, annoys, delights and even angers a large (young) population proves that Nolan pushed all the appropriate buttons. Give it a seven out of ten, but wait for the DVD to see it; don't pay exorbitant cinema fees.
Nolan now has a problem, though: what next?