Movies: Inception

Score: **** out of *****

Long Story Short: Inception is a very entertaining, very thought-provoking (or brain melting) film. Characters and other details seem to shrink before the wonderful and powerful idea of being able to interact with others in dreams. Unfortunately, so does any emotional impact, but the film isn't dragged down too much by this fact.

Inception is director Christopher Nolan's latest film, one that arrived with great anticipation due to the filmmaker's recent successes such as the the new Batman films and The Prestige. Nolan certainly retains his reputation for mind-bending material (Memento, The Prestige) with this one, and it's perhaps his most complex film yet. Warning: this review contains spoilers, of course, and if you have not yet seen the film, you may want to skip to the concluding, summary paragraph.

In these paragraphs, I will attempt to explain at least some of what happens in Inception, having now seen the film twice. First, I should start by explaining that the film revolves around a (hopefully) imaginary technology that allows multiple people to enter and manipulate another person's dream (using a serious of wires and a small machine in a suitcase). There are two purposes, primarily, for this: to "steal" information from the mind of the dreamer (usually located in, naturally, a literally safe place), or to plant an idea into the mind of the dreamer (a concept, inception, from which the film takes its name, and which is also a lot harder to do). The film seems to take place in modern times.

The film begins with Cobb (DiCaprio) in the middle of what seems to be a fairly ordinary, though difficult, job stealing information from the mind of Saito (Watanabe), the head of an energy company whose rival has hired Cobb. However, Saito is actually the one deploying deception, as he uses the attempted theft to determine Cobb's skill and those of his co-workers, including Arthur (Gordon-Levitt). Impressed with Cobb's abilities, Saito offers to drop charges against Cobb in the U.S. and allow him to see his kids again if Cobb will perform inception on the heir to Saito's rival company so that he will break up his father's dominating entity. Cobb proceeds to gather a better team, retaining Arthur and adding Eames (Hardy, a dream shapeshifter and master of psychology) as well as Ariadne (Page), a newcomer to the dream-stealing world, allowing Nolan to explain most of the, to this point bewildering, mechanics of the activity.

Thus, Ariadne "designs" a setting for the dream theft (an ability left, appropriately, to the imagination of the audience), Eames tries to figure out a way to manipulate Fischer's (the target of inception) conflicted relationship with his now-dead father, and the audience gets a glimpse at Cobb's own psychological mess. The "simple" backstory is that Cobb once got obsessed by exploring the dream world with his wife, and they became trapped in dream prison, or limbo. Details get added at various points throughout the film, but by the end we know that Cobb performed inception on his wife to break her belief that limbo was actually real, but the belief that the world was not real continued even after the two had finally woken to the real world. Mal, Cobb's wife, attempted to get back to the "real world" by killing herself, and tried to force Cobb to follow her (making it look like a homicide and framing Cobb). Thus, Cobb is haunted by the guilt of his performing inception on her, and so he tries to "keep her alive" in a sense through his dreams, but the effect is that she follows him in his dreams even when not wanted. *gasp* OK, maybe that wasn't so short.

The rest of the film can be explained a bit more quickly. In order to perform Inception, the team has to go to multiple levels of dreams, requiring precise coordination. Once the objective is accomplished, they must wake up from each level of the dream simultaneously (via "kicks", a clever concept in which one is awaken by the feeling of free fall). The matter is made more serious by the fact that Fischer unexpectedly has "dream defenses" and that anyone killed in the dream will not wake up, but rather be sent to the aforementioned limbo. Having spent more than enough time on the plot already, suffice it to say that Cobb succeeds and gets to go home and see his kids again.

The characters of Inception are each interesting to one degree or another, although they are all generally overshadowed by the plot and the dream world concepts. DiCaprio does a good job playing an agent who clearly knows the dream world better than any other, but restrains himself due to danger presented by Mal. His emotional parts in regard to Mal, in particular, however, are ineffective thanks to the fact that we are given precious little on which to base any emotion; what we do see is a psychotic, cold, vengeful and dangerous dead wife who doesn't seem at all as "lovely" as Arthur describes her pre-death. Page doesn't really make Ariadne a particularly interesting character, but this is mostly due to her position in explaining dream world mechanics and observing Cobb's past. Both Hardy and Gordon-Levitt, however, give the film charismatic and lively characters, usually playing off each other as competitive sidekicks. They also provide most of the film's humor. Watanabe does a good job playing the powerful executive in total control, although later he's reduced to moaning from a wound received early in the mission. Murphy (familiar as Scarecrow in Nolan's Batman films) is also an excellent choice as a bitter, entitled, but still affected heir to his father's empire. Once again, though, the film has difficulty letting its characters shine through the massive overhead of plot.

The effects and action of Inception are very well done, although again they are secondary to the ideas and plot of the film. The centerpieces of the effects are the creation, manipulation and destruction of the various dreamworlds, from Paris to Japan to Cobb's limbo. These are quite intriguing, and Nolan wisely uses them somewhat sparingly. While Inception is primarily a thought-provoking film, it also offers some surprisingly tense and well-choreographed chases and fights, including one in the "real world" when Cobb recruits Eames. However, probably the coolest action/effects come when Arthur struggles against Fischer's defenses in the hotel as first a hallway is jolted from side to side (as the van carrying dreaming Arthur goes out of control), and then later as he engages in zero-gravity combat when the van goes into free fall. It's a pity that this segment was not expanded a bit more. Then there is a battle in and around a winter fortress/hospital (yes, strange) as Cobb and company enter what they think is the final dream level. This, unfortunately, plays out more like a typical action scene- a type that seems out of place in a film like Inception.

***

Especially after seeing it for the first time, Inception really does give you the feeling that you just woke up from a dream. The whole thing forms a generally comprehensible picture, but with many of the tantalizing details lost to memory or understanding. I have a great desire to understand exactly how and why the events in a movie happen (even if it's "Hollywood logic"), making a second viewing mandatory for me (plus, it's just enjoyable to watch anyway). Well, I still don't think I understand everything, and am starting to think that that may not be possible. But there are a lot of interesting dream concepts brought cleverly into movie form (the "kick", the subconscious reacting to elements that seem out of place, etc.). The cast and characters are good, if not the most exceptional. But the biggest problem with the film is the lack of emotional involvement. It's obvious that Cobb's attempts to return to his kids and to get over his dead wife were meant to provide that, but it fails for the most part due to there not being enough time for it. Even as it is, there is probably too much packed into this film. Although, isn't that how dreams often are?