Short Take: An absolutely mind-blowing experience - One of the most creative films in years

Director: Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight, Memento, The Prestige)

Screenwriter: Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight, Memento, The Prestige)

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio (Shutter Island), Ken Watanabe (Letters from Iwo Jima), Marion Cotillard (Nine), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (500 Days of Summer), Ellen Page (Whip It), Cillian Murphy (Sunshine), Tom Berenger (Sinners and Saints), Tom Hardy (RocknRolla), Michael Caine (Harry Brown), Dileep Rao (Drag Me to Hell)

Length: 2h 28m

Synopsis: Neuroscientists Cobb (DiCaprio) and Arthur (Gordon-Levitt) have a unique job, which is to enter the dreams of others and navigate them in order to find out important information – mainly secrets (this is called Extraction). The invention that they use to perform such a task allows for several people to share another person’s dream, which they can more or less construct to their liking. While working within dreams may sound (pardon me) like a dream, the procedure can in fact be very dangerous. Many things can go wrong that can leave the individuals inside a dream with severe psychological problems, not the least of which is the inability to ever be sure if you’re dreaming or not. Cobb and Arthur’s newest assignment asks them to not just steal information from someone’s brain, but plant an idea in it as well (this is called Inception). The mission demands that they recruit a team and delve deeper into someone’s mind than they’ve ever gone before, and the deeper they go the less chance they have of ever waking back up.

Analysis: It should be said that you will not read any review, including this one, that pays sufficient attention to every facet of this movie that deserves your strict awareness and concentration. This is not a knock on movie reviews as a forum but is merely meant to indicate how many intricately built layers the film has, each of which tackles various philosophical, theoretical, scientific, moral, theological, and existential ideas. This being said, the film is not overly complicated and/or convoluted (to the extent that it doesn’t introduce an excess of ideas — each notion is explored to some degree in one way or another). The pace of the story, while not at all slow, holds your hand for the first hour or so and then trusts you to use the information you’ve learned to keep up. The concepts posited in the film are not difficult to understand on the surface, as it is only when you begin to ask certain questions that they become more complex and harder to grasp. Luckily, only a basic understanding of these concepts is needed to follow the plot on the strange and surreal journey it takes you on.

The technology within Inception raises a lot of the same questions and ideas that movies like The Matrix and Shutter Island do, such as the brain in a vat scenario and exact definitions of identity and existence. These are not notions that the story is necessarily directly concerned with, but instead they are meant to be used as tools for addressing other sides of the story that are expressly linked to its main focuses, which arguably include the concepts of control and power. When watching the film the ability to inhabit someone else’s dreams is certainly a power that we the audience take for granted (would you say we do that every time we watch a movie?), but this is a good thing because we must get past the wonder inherent in such a fictional science in order to focus on exactly what the characters are doing with that capability. The details of this capability allow us to examine the concept of control, which each character that uses the invention must also face. The intruders’ ability to shape the basic constitution of a person’s dreams (though not their entire mind) shows they can influence that person’s thoughts, if only slightly, and in effect manipulate them. Such control is possible as long as two things remain constant: the dreamer is unaware that they are dreaming, and they don’t suspect that the intruders are trying to influence them. If either or both of these determinants are compromised, everything falls apart (literally). So, while Cobb and his team possess an unsurpassed method of psychological exploration, the conditions that make it possible are potentially very fragile and volatile.

Continuing to explore the idea of control in the film, certain attitudes could be considered revealing (of the characters, of the film’s respect for the mind’s subconscious, and of human nature in general). When journeying deep enough into your own mind, it is possible (according to the movie) to reach such a level of perception – that is, awareness that you are inside a dream and thus inside your mind – that you have absolute control over everything. You can feel how you want, be with who you want to be with, see what you want to see, build what you want to build, and so on. Such abilities would typically be part of anyone’s utopian world — or would they? One character in particular who experiences living in this state makes it clear that they would not want to stay there forever (possibly because they spent what felt like years there but were only hours in reality (?)). Eventually they became tired of having so much power and sought to be part of the real world. Likewise, everyone who uses the invention to explore either their or someone else’s mind expresses the desire to eventually return to reality. Exactly why is this? Why is it that each character prefers reality to a world inside their minds where they can manipulate things and people with unparalleled dexterity? Do they crave what they think is reality or what they know is reality? Are the two one in the same? The film would argue (by way of a certain character that I shant name) that the two are in fact not one in the same, and that one’s perception of reality is vital. However, that perception is fragile because it relies on an innumerable amount of things to support and reassure it (laws of physics, the face of a loved one, etc.), and it only takes one little abnormality to cause doubt. So, the lure of reality reveals itself. The characters view it as a world without doubt; as a place where your perceptions can always be tested and explained. But why is this important? Well, to think of it another way, our perceptions (including our perceptions of ourselves) are dependent upon our ability to test our level of control, or lack thereof. We covet reality because it simultaneously reaffirms and contests our feeling of control, which is determined by our power to test our perceptions. Ironically, it seems that, if the characters in the film are supposed to be representative of all people, we prefer to live in a world with limitations because it gives us a greater sense of control than does a dream world where anything is possible.

One other thing to consider the first or next time you view this movie is the motif of mazes. From the opening title card to the ending credits there are a number of implicit and explicit references to this idea. The characters who create the architecture for the different dreams in the film state that they want those dreams to be built like mazes. But aside from some practical reasons for this (it’s better if the movie tells you what they are) the concept is apt because as we go further along with the story we discover just how much of a maze the nature of the mind truly is (according to the film, that is, not necessarily science). And just like with most mazes, the deeper you venture into it the harder it is to find your way out. Keep this in mind on your way out of the theater, as you look back at the events you just witnessed. Is the movie itself like a maze? Your call.

Rating: 9.5