| 
Inception
Sunday, July 25th, 2010
At one point in Inception, an expert chemist named Yusuf (Dileep Rao) takes the main character Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) into a room full of people hooked up to a machine that allows them to experience a shared dream. So adjusted to the effects of the sleep extraction machines that they can no longer dream independently, they seek out the chemist Yusuf during the day so that they may use the machine to experience the dreams they no longer have at night. The old man guarding the dreamers explains they go there no to sleep, but to wake up. To the dreamers, the experiences they have while asleep are now more real and more meaningful than their daily lives. He addresses this to Cobb, who also goes under the machine at night to experience his own dreams. There are dreams that Cobb doesn’t want to leave, and they are haunted by memories he can’t bear to forget.
Christopher Nolan’s Inception sidesteps the tropes and clichés of dream movies, ignoring useless symbolism and illogical, twisting plot threads. His plot follows a logical narrative and never ducking or swerving to pull cheap tricks out for the sake of confusion. This is no David Lynch nightmare, where characters and scenes loop in on each other in surreal, strange ways. That’s not to say there isn’t complexity, and a film about the nature of reality and perception will always carry doubt about what we see before us. But Nolan is more interested in Cobb, who can’t stand the guilt he faces in the waking world, but also fears the torments of his dreams as well. For a man who spends his time breaking the mental defenses of the rich and powerful, he seems unable to bury his own secrets just out of reach. It might be telling too much that as he invades the dreams of others, he brings along a woman named Ariadne (Ellen Page) to help him navigate the labyrinths of the reality.
The basic premise comes from thrillers and heist films. A powerful businessman named Saito (Ken Watanabe) hires Cobb to perform a difficult job of inception, that of placing an idea into someone’s mind, rather than just extracting the secrets already there. Cobb reluctantly accepts, but only after Saito promises to wash away Cobb’s sins so that he can return to the states and see his family again. Cobb’s exile is central to film, and the guilt surrounding it explains why Cobb believes inception can be performed when everyone else declares the act impossible. Once accepted, Cobb begins hiring team members for the difficult job of breaking into a man’s mind. It follows the usual beat of heist films, even if the vault they plan to invade is more cerebral and challenging.
If there is a great flaw to the film, it’s that every character serves as set-dressing for Cobb. Most of their conversations, dialogue and actions are in service of Cobb, discussing his history and why inception and extraction means stuff to him. Of course, Nolan provides an excuse for this, and may go a long way towards helping people interpret the film. But that’s not to say the film couldn’t have benefited from going into the mind of the other characters, such as Ellen Page’s Ariadne, who remain just as sealed off to us and they are to Cobb.
It’s no understatement to place Inception as the best film of the year. Nolan’s gripping plot, twisting visuals and snappy pace add up to a tight, well conceived thriller. After the credits start rolling, the mind races to puzzle together what’s been seen, and to add up all the threads until they make sense.