INCEPTION

US, 2010, 148 minutes, Colour.
Leonardo Di Caprio, Joseph Gordon- Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Ken Watanabe, Dileep Rao, Cillian Murphy, Tom Berenger, Marion Cottillard, Pete Postlethwaite, Michael Caine, Lukas Haas, Talulah Riley, Earl Cameron.
Directed by Christopher Nolan.

Conception? Deception? Exception? Perception? Reception?

All of the above, plus Inception.

With a surprisingly high initial box-office income in the US (given its demands in making its audience pay attention and think), Inception has become something of an event. Even audiences who might not like this kind of science-fiction exploration of the psyche or who don’t go for fast-paced action sequences and explosions – and Inception has a great deal of both in its two and half hours’ running time – probably need to see it for its place in movie history and development, just as we needed to see The Matrix at the end of the 1990s and even Avatar at the end of the last decade.

That would probably do for a review for anyone thinking about going to see Inception or not.

What seems more important is to have a review for reading after viewing the film and reflecting on it. Mention of The Matrix reminds us that audiences these days, older and younger, like a creative puzzle movie, especially when it tantalises the mind as well as the imagination, so The Matrix has probably facilitated the making and acceptance of Inception. It doesn’t matter if audiences can’t quite follow everything immediately or if they cannot give a clear and logical synopsis. The film keeps working on its audience long after the final credits come up.

This is a film about ‘reality’, asking the question, ‘what is reality?’ or ‘how many realities can exist at the same time?. We usually say that we can’t bilocate even though there are plenty of stories of parallel worlds, of time travel and doppelgangers. With Inception and its exploration of dreams and the variety of dream worlds, we can actually bilocate (or, as here, trilocate and, even, quatrolocate) because we can by lying asleep while active in our dreams. And, as posited here, in dreams within dreams.

Because we all dream and are fascinated by our dream selves and behaviours, the audience generally goes willingly into the world of Inception. When we speak about our imagination and drives in both waking and dreaming states, we start to use the language of the sub-conscious which emerges and the unconscious which is driving us unawares. Characters in dreams are facets of ourselves and projections from our sub-conscious, revealing deeper aspects of our psyches and personalities than we might be willing to share when awake. There is plenty of verbal exposition of these themes in the screenplay but, more importantly, we see these themes illustrated in complex stories, especially in dreams within dreams.

Whether all that we see is possible in reality is debatable. It seems scientifically implausible if not impossible – but who knows whether in years, decades or centuries, medical, scientific and psychological techniques will combine to make some of this actual! Then we think of the development of brainwashing techniques, truth drugs and cult leaders’ mind control of followers.

And, all the time, there is the unpredictable human factor, something which Inception explores in its dreams.

The opening is puzzling as Leonardo di Caprio’s Cobb is washed ashore and brought before an elderly Japanese businessman in his exotic house. We arrive back here at the end, discovering what state of consciousness it is, but the flashbacks begin explaining Cobb and his team and their capacity to enter the dreams of others, their being awake in the dreams, and able to extract information that can be used for good or for ill. Cobb has become an ideas thief. We see dreams within dreams at once but our puzzle is working out who is dreaming – and who is in who’s dream. Since Cobb has gone beyond ethical bounds which has cost him his wife (Marion Cotillard) and his children, he is consumed by memories of her and her unanticipated presence in his dreams. He wants to redeem himself and move from thieving extraction of information from dreams to inception, the inserting of ideas in dreams so that the dreamer might think that the incepted (the correct word?) idea (which is compared to a virus) is self-generated rather than implanted. A young businessman (Cillian Murphy) is chosen for economic and power reasons to be the subject. Cobb’s team, encouraged by his father (Michael Caine) and introducing a protégé, Ariadne (Ellen Page), study the subject and the candidate’s background, the illness and death of his tycoon father (Pete Postlethwaite) and prepare a complete architectural drama to perform the inception. Cobb’s right-hand man, Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and other contacts (Tom Hardy and Dileep Rao) and the Japanese businessman (Ken Watanabe) all enter the dreams. One of the team can also assume the appearance of someone else, in this case the businessman’s adviser (Tom Berenger)

Inside the dreams, we get plenty of action where audiences might think they are in an adaptation of a graphic novel (including a vast snow episode that outdoes James Bond and films like On Her Majesty’s Secret Service). In fact, there is a great deal of action amidst the speculations. The locations are also filmed quite spectacularly, with action set in Japan, Paris, Kenya and Los Angeles. And the effects are sometimes amazing, especially the city of Paris folding on itself and, while a van containing the sleeping team falls in slowest motion from a bridge into a river with Arthur being rocked by the fall and having to perform deadline feats of saving the team who are also asleep in a hotel in another dream by defying gravity.

Cobb has also to solve his own personal and family problems. And, of course, the final question: is how the film ends reality? After all, we are participating in a waking dream as well as we watch the reality and unreality on screen.

Christopher Nolan has shown himself no slouch in making films that demand attention: Memento a decade earlier with its action moving backwards in time, the Arctic thriller, Insomnia, his two Batman films, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, and his intriguing tale of rival magicians, The Prestige. He is obviously enjoying the opportunity to write a screenplay that is quite outside the box while directing a fine cast doing their best and playing with special effects to his heart’s – and our –content.

1. The impact of the film? Reputation? Success? A cinematic event?

2. Christopher Nolan and his skills, imagination, writing, direction, use of special effects?

3. The strong cast, effective?

4. The technical bravura, the sets, computer graphics, the folding Paris, the gravity sequences, action and car chases, explosions?

5. The score, the range, the moods?

6. The locations: Japan, Paris, Mombasa, Los Angeles?

7. The visuals of the exteriors, lavish? The interiors, the set design? The echoes of other films – The Shining, 2001, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, James Bond films…?

8. The structure: the introduction of the flashbacks, dreams, the different levels of dreams, dreams and reality, folding and unfolding, the characters entering dreams and waking, dreaming within dreams? The family flashbacks, the threats with Mal?

9. The presuppositions about inception, the nature of waking life and reality? Dreams and the imagination, the character entering into the middle of events, going into action, remembering and forgetting dreams? Films and the celluloid dreams, illusions and audiences surrendering to them? The use of Edith Piaf’s songs as the cue to end the dream – and sung over the final credits to cue the ending of this celluloid dream?

10. The presuppositions about science, technology, the use of drugs for different mental states, the outer world, the inner world? Characters being aware in their dreams, working as a team, meeting, influencing the action? The theory of extraction of ideas? Robbery? The contrast with inception, planting ideas? At different levels of the psyche and dreams? Plausible, possible?

11. The philosophical underpinning of the story, the metaphysical aspects? The visuals to dramatise this?

12. Cobb, the opening, coming ashore, taken to Saito? His gun, his symbol for the dreams and reality? Saito as old, talking, the flashback to the action of the film? The recurrence at the end, the explanation of the limbo experience? The need to get out of this experience? Possible or not? The challenge for Cobb?

13. The first dream episode, Saito and the task given to Cobb and his team, the interviews with Saito, real, yet in dreams? But whose dream? Cobb’s, Arthur’s, Nash’s, Saito’s? The various characters waking up, travelling in the train? The architecture of the dream, the locations? The thriller aspects? Waking, risks, the failure of the enterprise of extraction?

14. Cobb and his team, the various personalities, their success? Yet Mal and her continuing reappearances? Cobb’s experience of her, the others seeing her? Her threat to Saito and the assassination? Cobb going to meet Miles, the discussions, the revelation about Mal, Miles as the instructor? Mal, in herself? As a projection from Cobb? Her destructive elements, killing, fighting? In the elevator, in the lower level, her presence? Memories of her, of the children? The explanation of limbo? Seeing them grow old together, the passing of the decades? Her continual re-entry, the final arguments, her sitting on the window sill, falling to her death? The finale and Cobb having to let go of her? Her pleading, for the children, the children and their age, never seeing their faces, their finally turning towards Cobb? His controlling his projections?

15. Saito, his staff, his role, industrial espionage, the test, his place in the dreams, the warrior? The interactions in his own dreams? His giving the information about Fischer? His wanting to participate in the inception dreams?

16. The projections, the others as projections, interactions, who was real or who was projection? And in whose dream?

17. Arthur, his character, skills, inaction, waking? His architectural skills, support of Cobb, wary, clashing with him? His concern about Mal? Nash, his place in the dreams, his contribution to the team, the betrayal to Saito, his death?

18. The indications for waking, kicks, wounding and death, pain, the Edith Piaf songs?

19. Miles, the explanation about Mal, Miles’s advice, his helping Cobb, introducing Ariadne? Miles at the end, welcoming Cobb home?

20. Ariadne, her skills, student, her interest in the project, Cobb testing her, taking her into the dreams? The Paris sequences, walking the city, the city folding in on itself, their ninety-degree walk? Her creativity, the architecture for the locations for the dreams? Her inventiveness?

21. Cobb, his perceived need for redemption, meeting Mal with Ariadne, explaining the situation and his life to Ariadne? Ariadne seeing her? The elevator, the concern, rising to different levels?

22. The introduction of the idea of inception, seeming impossibility, Cobb being capable, his experiments with Mal, her death?

23. Choosing the target for inception, Maurice Fischer and his son? In themselves, the father and his skill as a proprietor, the son and his self-image? Visualising the father’s death? The important role of Browning as adviser? Godfather for Robert?

24. Saito’s reason for wanting the inception, to stop the monopoly, for global peace, ecology? Saito wanting to be part of the project?

25. The elaborate preparations, Cobb going to Mombasa, the African experience, meeting with Eames? His role in Africa? Drugs, his skills? His being tantalised by the project? His personality and participation?

26. The preparations in Los Angeles, the drive, meeting Yusuf, his skills?

27. The preparations, the drugs, the different levels of dream, the planning, the locations, the architecture, the risks?

28. The episode, everybody on board the plane, the encounter with Robert Fischer, the drink, his unconscious, dreaming? Each of the members of the team on the plane, entering into the dream? The time limit of fourteen hours? The different time spans within the dreams?

29. The details on the different levels, the team in the car, Yusuf driving, the pursuit, the dangers, crashing, the dreamers turning over as the bus turned over? Its falling from the bridge, the slow-motion fall? In the hotel, the behaviour of the group, the rooms? The sleepers? Fischer and his bewilderment? Arthur and his having to rescue the team, defying gravity because of the bus turning over? Fischer and his participation? The issue of Browning, Browning putting the idea into Fischer’s head? Eames and his disguising himself as Browning? The snow operation, the vast building, the military, the attack? The split-second timing for Arthur’s rescue, the explosion? Saito, his being wounded, his going into a different level?

30. The time limits in each level of the dream? The dramatic suspense?

31. Browning, Eames’ impersonation, his being tortured, Fischer’s reaction? The reality and the unreality for Fischer? The torture, the brainwashing?

32. The revisiting of Maurice Fischer’s death, the use of disappointment in his words to his son, the truth and the different interpretation? The success of the inception? Waking?

33. The team waking, Cobb and his achievement, the plane to the US, Miles meeting him, Saito and the influence, getting him through passport control, meeting his children again? Redeemed?

34. The achievement of the film, entertainment, thought and reflection, opening up possibilities?