Inception: A Head Trip That's Worth The Ride

Just as Writer/Director Christopher Nolan redefined the summer movie two years ago with The Dark Knight, he does so again with his newest film Inception. Far from a mindless popcorn movie, it’s the very example of a film that needs to be viewed multiple times in order to fully understand the complex ideas and visions that are being presented.

Although the ideas and plot points are complicated it in no way diminishes one’s ability to enjoy this amazing film. It’s without a doubt one of the best movies of the year. A solid script and wonderful directing, combined with strong performances and masterful editing, it is a much needed life raft in this summer’s sea of mediocre to lackluster movies.

The movie follows Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), a man who specializes in entering people’s dreams and stealing ideas they have hidden within their subconscious minds. He has been living abroad for an undisclosed amount of time after an incident involving his former wife Mal (Marion Cotillard) forced him to flee America. He is approached by a shady businessman named Saito (Ken Watanabe) who offers him a deal. If he can subconsciously convince the son of a former business rival (Cillian Murphy) to dissolve his father’s company Saito will make arrangements for Cobb to return home. Cobb is reluctant to take the job since “inception”, the creation of an ideal within one’s mind, is almost impossible to replicate by an outside influence. But he takes the job in order to go home and see his children again. He assembles a team, which includes trusted point man Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and prodigy dream building architect Ariadne (Ellen Page), and together they work to accomplish the mission.

The film deals with the many different aspects of dreams we often wonder about and ask ourselves, including how long time lasts in a dream, at what point do we begin to remember our dreams, and what can cause us to wake up from a dream. But the film goes even further in the nature of our dreams and subconscious and addresses even more unlikely scenarios, such as how the mind would react if it realized an outside aspect was altering its reality. The concept of the movie I found most intriguing was the different levels of dreams, in which one can dive deeper within someone’s subconscious and enter dreams within a dream. The deeper one goes within the layers of dreams the harder it is to distinguish if one is in the real world or the dream world. It is this aspect that changes the difficulty of the mission in ways the team couldn’t imagine was possible.

This intelligent thriller will certainly be high on many people’s lists of must see movies for 2010. It is a jolting thrill ride that will have people talking for days to come. So forget the movies about angsty vampires and element bending children. For a truly satisfying cinema experience, see Inception.