Have you ever had a dream so powerful it affected you in reality? Have you ever experienced something in a dream so vivid, that you could swear it was actually real?
Christopher Nolan's latest offering, Inception, is a treatise on dreams and reality. Nolan himself has always been curious with the nature of reality. He explored this in the context of memories in his film Memento. Here he explores this concept in the context of dreams and dream-space.
Cobb (Leonardo Di Caprio) is an extractor, a man who intrudes into the dreams of others to steal personal information. He mainly uses this for corporate espionage. During one such attempt, corporate executive Saito (Ken Watanabe) offers him a deal: perform the act of inception: planting an idea into someone else's mind instead of stealing it. This is way harder than it sounds, but Saito offers Cobb the chance to return home to his family in exchange for success. He assembles a team to undertake this near impossible mission, but it soon becomes clear that in the process of undertaking this mission, he must confront a secret from his past.
The visual style of the film joins other contemporary films in their depiction of the manipulation of dream-space, such as Michel Gondry's the Science of Sleep and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and the Japanese animated film Paprika. But in this film, with the exception of Paprika, the ways people change the dream reality looks quite impressive thanks to breathtaking visual effects. Streets blow up, trains rampage through city streets, gravity-less corridors shake and tumble.
Hans Zimmer does the soundtrack and it is reminiscent of his work with Nolan's The Dark Knight, with deep and epic tones that accentuate the movie well. I watched the movie in a 3D cinema with booming sounds that thundered with every shake and explosion, which was nice (the last time I had an experience like this was while watching The Matrix in a foreign theater.)
The movie is rounded out by an all-star cast that includes Ellen Page (Juno, Red Candy) Cillian Murphy (28 Days Later, Sunshine) Ken Watanabe (The Last Samurai) and Marion Cotillard (La vie En Rose - the song in Inception that plays that signals the 'kick' is sung by Edith Piaf, whom Cottilard portrayed in La vie En Rose) They all do their job capably, although except for Di Caprio's character, the other characters are not given as much emotional scenes in the first place. Let me just say for the record again that Ellen Page is one of my favorite actresses of this generation, and her role as Ariadne/the Architect is solid.
The layered structure of the second half of the movie looks complicated on paper, but is quite simple to understand as compared to Memento, whose structure was most challenging. As long as you know which dream belongs to which, you'll do fine. In any case, trying to figure out the structure of the layered dreams was quite fun.
The premise of the entire movie lends itself to interpretation and the ending leaves open many possibilities. As for what I think, see below:
SPOILERS
The film can be structured as that of Cobb's own journey towards his own catharsis (instead of just Fisher's.) Whether all these events were played out by either Mal in a higher state (a true reality) or Cobb himself, making the whole thing actually a dream, or making these events play out as a result of his recent experiences with his team, we may never know. For all we know, Cobb himself was the one being given an Inception - that he should get over the death of his wife, etc, etc.
By killing the dream version of his wife (or having her killed by someone else lol), Cobb has decided to move on. So does the spinning top stop? For Cobb, it doesn't really matter. I believe that's the point of the whole scene. It was designed to involve the viewer in making a point - that reality is subjective.
If you're an optimist, the top will stop. If you're a pessimist, the top will go on. But for Cobb, none of that matters - notice that he went to see his kids without seeing if the top stopped or not. By electing to look at his kids' faces, he is letting go of all the reservations he has for doubting this reality. He has stopped his obsession or preoccupation with whether things are real or not. He has accepted this, (whatever it is) as this reality.
Being an optimist, my interpretation is that he has indeed returned to reality. Ariadne did say that he will be fine, and him dragging Saito out of the next dream level would have made no sense. He mentioned to Saito that to return to the base reality would make them young again, to make them live life without regrets. In the last scene he does just that - without bothering to check, he no longer feels that regret he had for the death of his wife.
Ultimately, like I have previously mentioned, the movie was Cobb's emotional journey into his own personal catharsis - his reconciliation with his past and his regrets. This is in line with my posited premise of the film itself - that through dreams, people can change, either because of others or because of their own selves.
END SPOILERS
It's the best 2 hours and 30 minutes I've spent in a theater in recent days. Never a boring moment and like all good movies, it sparks discussion like crazy, making the audience an intimate part of the film viewing process. Easily one of the best of the year.
Here's an interesting site where the author compares the main characters to Jungian archetypes in dream analysis:
http://www.cinemablend.com/new/What-If-Inception-Were-Analyzed-By-Dream-Experts-19638.html
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