Inception Movie Review

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66TuSJo4dZM

Listed above is the Inception movie trailer via Youtube.

This movie is a bit of a psychological thriller laced in an original heist movie. It's a concept we've all heard of before, but has yet to become cliche - dreams.

DiCaprio plays the lead character Dom Cobb. An extractor, he specializes in extracting secret information from those whose dreams he enters.

The Story (MAJOR Spoilers Ahead!):

The movie starts off with Cobb washed up on the beach and carried to a table where an old man is seated. However, the scene quickly changes to Cobb and his partner Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Leavitt) speaking to Saito (Ken Watanabe) in Japan about the advantages to allowing Cobb to train Saito's mind in the art of defense against extractors like himself. Refusing, Cobb and Arthur continue their original motive - to steal Saito's secrets.

Soon we meet the antagonist of the movie - Mal (Marion Cotillard). Mal plays a bit of a double-agent, reporting to Saito exactly what is going on. Cobb and Arthur have sedated Saito and they are actually in his dreams to steal his secrets.

Failing to do so completely, upon waking, Saito informs the team that they have failed their "audition", not because they didn't come away with his secrets, but because he knew he was dreaming. However, it is quickly discovered that Saito has been dreaming a dream within a dream and is impressed by their deception.

Shortly after the audition, Saito asks, if extraction of an idea from the mind is possible, why not inception - the art of planting an idea in the mind? Arthur adamantly denies the possibility, where Cobb claims the opposite, going so far to say that he has accomplished it before. Saito promises that with one phone call upon completion of this job, Saito can erase the outstanding charges Cobb has from running from that have kept him from his children in America.

Upon accepting, Saito explains that he is the business rival of the dying Maurice Fischer (Pete Postlethwaite); both run energy companies, but Saito fears that if Maurice's son Robert (Cillian Murphy) inherits his father's empire, Saito will be driven out of business. So, Saito wants Cobb and team to plant the thought of splitting his inheritance in Robert Fischer's mind.

Such a job requires a team of specialists. Eames (Tom Hardy) is a forger, someone who can change his identity within a dream. A new architect is necessary, so Cobb asks his father-in-law and former mentor (Michael Caine - as expected from a Christopher Nolan movie ;) ) for someone who is a better architect that Cobb ever was.

So we meet Ariadne (Ellen Page), a college graduate who serves as the audience's guide to understanding more about the dream world. In a Paris bistro, Ariadne and Cobb get to talking about their upcoming job. The architect builds the dreamworld as a maze that the target fills with his subconscious, and subsequently his secrets, often manifesting as a safe. The people seen in the dream are projections of the targets subconscious and just as the body sends white blood cells to attack what seems a threat to the body, the brain uses the projections to seek out the invader in the dream - i.e. Cobb and his team. The more things in the dream are changed by any of them, the more aware the projections become and hone in on the threat. However, the more complex the dream maze, the less likely the projections can find the dreamers.

Pain in the dream world feels as real as physical pain because pain exists in the mind. However, death in the dream results in waking up in the real world. Cobb vehemently warns Ariadne to never use memories as a way to build the dream; it then becomes nearly impossible to pull apart reality from imaginary. Time in the dream passes much slower than the real world - five minutes in the physical becomes an hour in the dream, mostly because the brain can process so much more in a dream. Level building becomes necessary for this particular job - i.e. the dream within a dream within a dream. At each depth, time slows even further.

To distinguish a dream from reality, each dreamer carries a totem, something that only they must touch and carry on them at all times. Cobb's is a top - in a dream, it never loses balance, thus continuously spins, whereas in reality it will eventually stop. Synchronized music is used by the team to time escape from the dream. Such escape -aside from dying in the dream- is accomplished through a "kick".

You know those falling dreams you have from time to time? As soon as your stomach drops and hits the metaphoric floor, you jolt awake. That's a kick. Except these guys do that on purpose in the physical world through tipping over chairs or other creative uses of gravity to jerk the dreamer awake.

With such an unstable idea of using dream within a dream within a dream within a dream, the team has to locate the chemist Yusuf (Dileep Rao) who will leave inner ear functions uninhibited (so the kick can take affect) but will sedate the team so heavily that they will have at least ten hours real time to accomplish inception. As discussed, this magnifies time in each level by an extent. (I think they mentioned on the first level it would take a week dream time, six months for the second level, then ten years on the third. Though this is never brought up again so I'm not sure if it matters that much.)

Speaking of sedation, the team hooks themselves into a machine (hidden in a metal briefcase) via intravenous sedatives. On each level they reproduce this machine then synchronize a kick to bring them out of it.

Ok, back to the main plot. While Ariadne is learning and constructing her levels, she finds out that Mal is Cobb's dead wife. She is also the reason Cobb cannot return to their children in America - Cobb is believed to be the murderer. Because of his inability to let go of her, she materializes in whatever dreams Cobb is in and interferes with his goals. This has something to do with Cobb trying to trap her in his memories and reliving his memories is the only way Cobb can dream. This is also why Cobb can no longer architect dreams himself; if he knows the dream maze, so does Mal.

When the team buys out a first class cabin on a private 747 from Sydney to L.A. (a ten hour flight-just enough time to pull off the inception), they sedate Robert Fischer and go to town on his subconscious - the first manifesting as a city. However, upon arriving, the projections immediately attack. Turns out Fischer has been trained for this type of attack when his subconscious is weakened through dreaming. Saito is injured and when the team tries to put him out of his misery, Cobb explains that if any of them die while they are under this heavy sedative, they won't wake up but will be trapped in limbo, a place of nothingness.

Cobb is the only one of the team who has been to limbo, but as the team goes deeper into Fischer's subconscious, Ariadne realizes they will also go deeper into Cobb's, running the risk of meeting Mal or dying due to the trained, violent nature of the projections. Either way, they're screwed, so the team presses downward to go forward. While driving a van, Yusuf stays on the first level to fight the projections and ready to signal for the kick - playing music, followed shortly by driving off a bridge into the river to initiate the kick. The team kidnaps Fischer on the first level and they go into the dream within a dream.

On the second level (manifested as a hotel), Cobb impersonates Mr. Charles, the man who trained Fischer to raise his defense via the projections in his subconscious. By telling Fischer that he is dreaming, Cobb is able to gain his trust and trick Fischer into delving further into his own subconscious. Arthur stays on the second level to initiate the kick there and fight off the projections as well.

On the final floor (a snow covered mountain fortress), the team's victory may be short lived after the chemist on the first level initiates the music synchronization too soon because he has no where left to go before the projections kill him and the others' dreaming selves in the van. Initiating the kick, Yusuf drives off the side of the bridge, causing zero gravity for Arthur and the dreamers in the second level. Without gravity, there can be no kick, so Arthur orchestrates the elevator in the hotel to shoot like a rocket via bombs then stabilize, creating gravity.

With little time to spare, Cobb orders Ariadne to admit to a shortcut in the dream maze. Hesitant to tell him, as Mal will show up since Cobb would know the route to the safe where they are planting the idea, she gives in and confesses to a series of air ducts that will take the team half the time to get through the fortress. On arrival, Fischer gets through the duct first, Cobb standing by with a sniper rival from a higher plateau. Mal appears and shoots Fischer, Cobb shooting her too late.

The team decides to push on to a fourth level - dream within a dream within a dream within a dream - Cobb's subconscious limbo. Retrieving Fischer from that level will revive him in this one. Ariadne and Cobb dive in, and Cobb reveals some startling information.

Cobb and Mal were trapped in limbo for decades, playing God and building everything that's seen in the fourth level, though now it is decaying after years of being out of it. When Mal and Cobb got bored playing God, they recreated their memories - the reason why recreating memories in a maze dream is dangerous, though it won't make sense just yet. As they approach their destination, Cobb goes into further detail about Mal's death. After returning from limbo, Mal was changed, convinced that the real world was imaginary, and limbo was real.

On their anniversary in a hotel, Mal sat from a window sill several stories above the ground and implored Cobb to jump to her "dream death" with her so they could return to their "real" children. As further incentive to jump, Mal reveals that she has written a letter to her lawyer, explaining that Cobb has threatened to kill her, thus incriminating himself if he did not jump with her. Obviously, he didn't; Mal falls to her death, and Cobb must flee the country and his children so he is not locked up in prison for life.

Finally the two meet up with Mal, who offers to release Fischer if Cobb stays with her. Cobb does not, but instead reveals the reason why he knew inception to be possible.

He was the one that planted the thought that limbo was real and the real world fake as a way to help Mal cope with their situation in limbo.

An idea is viral, he says, repeating what he told Saito at the start of the movie, and it changes the very person who has the idea so that it's all they can think about.

Cobb also says that he could never stay with Mal in his subconscious because even he could never recreate all that Mal was; this Mal was merely a shade.

Meanwhile, on the third level, Saito has died from his injury and is lost to limbo until he can somehow escape. Cobb must sense this because as Araidne throws Fischer over the ledge of the building - creating her own kick to get him back to the third level and finish the job - (I think this happens; a lot goes on as Araidne and Cobb speak, so don't quote me.) he says that he will stay in limbo to find Saito and bring him back to the real world. Araidne jumps over the edge and returns to the third level.

Fischer reaches the thought that the team has implanted, and Eames sets off explosives to destroy the entire infrastructure, creating the kick back to level two. The elevator in level two takes off then shuts down, initiating the next kick into level one. The van hits the river's surface and the team stays in level one until the sedative wears off. Cobb is shown remaining unconscious in the van and Araidne, Eames, Arthur, and Fischer are the only ones shown onshore.

The scene that played out at the start of the movie replays, revealing that the old man was Saito after years of being trapped in limbo. Cobb informs him that this is not the real world, and they need to get home.

Cobb wakes up on the plane and the stewardess says they will be landing in L.A. in twenty minutes. He looks over and sees that Saito is well. Saito returns his glance, then makes that phone call through immigration. Boarding off the plane, Cobb turns in his passport, and he is cleared through security immigration checks without any indication of his criminal record. Cobb meets with his father-in-law and the two return home.

When Cobb gets home, he spins his totem top, but is distracted by his children playing in the yard and rushes to reunite with them.

However, the camera pans back to the top, still spinning on the table before the camera cuts to black.

Personal Opinions and Reflections:

The movie took a typical heist and tweaked it. In a bizarre way, it reflects the extent of crime - stealing an idea is wrong but implanting one (or giving one away) is just as bad. It's a bit of a play on stealing one's inspiration or a jab at plagiarism.

Anyways, the ending of the movie blew me away. If Cobb was indeed dreaming, then this movie took dream within a dream to a sixth level, the fifth being with Saito in limbo then the sixth with his father-in-law and kids. However, it is possible that he was awake, as the top did wobble, but the camera cut to black before the audience can be certain of anything.

I love a good moral/internal/mental battle. The fact that this movie was based mostly on that -the antagonist being Cobb himself- is something I find refreshing and satisfyingly maddening.

I used Wikipedia to refresh my memory and add detail to this review, and while I was reading Wiki, I found a lot of interesting things about the movie. There's a lot of background stuff I'd recommend checking out. The special effects are explained on Wiki also. The whole zero gravity thing had me grinning the whole time. (Have you ever seen a fist fight without gravity? It's intense. Ever wanted to distort your dreams? Get some inspiration from this movie.)

There was some criticism on how rigid the movie was with the rules inside the dreamscape that didn't allow for enough madness. I found the literal, realistic approach fascinating because it makes the movie seem that much more possible. We've all experienced everything that goes on in this movie (minus the actually heist). No one ever remembers the beginning of their dream; we have dreamed within dreams (possibly within more dreams); we've experienced the kick; some of us have had the same shared dreams. Everything that has been explored about dreams and about the subconscious was in this movie (though we know so little). Everything made sense in a realistic way that has me double guessing at my own dreams.

If there is one thing I would critique, it would be that the dialogue sometimes went unheard or too quickly. I'd love to watch this movie again with subtitles because there's a lot I missed, especially when the soundtrack is jacked up to heighten the suspense of the movie. Speaking of, the soundtrack is fantastic. I actually jumped a couple of times, lol.

One other thing is that some things weren't carried over or explained enough. For example the whole time difference in the levels; I don't get why that was so important. Or the totems; the only one we see in action in Cobb's, but I wanted to know what the others' totems did. And how did Cobb and Mal get to limbo the first time? Minor details, but when I like anything enough, I want as much understanding about how it works as I can get.

In conclusion, Inception is going on my list of favorite movies (alongside another Nolan directed movie - The Dark Knight). I highly recommend seeing this movie (though I might recommend seeing it twice, but it is a 2 hour and 40 production so allot your time wisely).

What's on your summer movie list?

Happy Summer, Movie-Goers, and God Bless!
EPD

Edit:

I highly recommend checking out these websites for further information on Inception.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inception_(film) (where most of the info for this blog was verified)
http://screenrant.com/inception-spoilers-discussion-kofi-68330/all/1/ (further detail on what happens in the movie)
http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Inception-Explained-Unraveling-The-Dream-Within-The-Dream-19615.html (a website with a glossary and FAQ for the movie; allows for viewers to leave their own theories on questions raised in the movie; by far the best website I've encountered for Inception)