Inception (2010)

Honestly, who has never, at one time or another, wished to view their dreams as if they were a movie. The idea of being that much more aware and conscious during a dream seems, at least to me, to be pretty cool. Then again, I have no real idea of the power behind dreams. I understand that in many cases the dreamer has quite a bit of power to change things in their dreams. Then again often times dreams get away from the dreamer and into some pretty weird crap. I've heard it's the subconcious that does a lot of the construction in dreams. The subconcious is buried deep for a reason, it can be pretty messed up. Christopher Nolan's newest film, “Inception” he takes a unique and interesting look at dreams.

The story follows Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), a corporate spy who, along with his partner, Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt),  steals valuable information from the very minds of the information holders. The movie starts out with Cobb and Arthur  rather successfully stealing information from a Japanese business man, Saito (Ken Watanabe).  Saito turns out to have been testing the pair and seeing if they are skilled enough to complete a reportedly impossible task called “inception.” Instead of finding and taking information out of someone's dreams, inception requires the placing of an idea or information in the person's mind and have them take it as their own. This is a very difficult task.

To do this Cobb and Arthur need to recruit a team including a forger (Tom Hardy), a sleep drug expert (Dileep Rao), and an architect (Ellen Page), someone to actually build the worlds in which they will be going through. The target of the job is a man (Cillian Murphy) who's recently inherited his father's huge corporation. There's a lot of explanation and exposition that I'm going to leave out of here. Needless to say, it's complicated but simple for those who know what's going on, namely the people in the movie, and maybe Christopher Nolan. If you haven't seen this movie yet, go see it. You won't get any more of the story from me.  Suffice it to say that Cobb's got some baggage (Marion Cotillard), and when you're going into dreams, baggage can be very dangerous. The story's really not the driving force of the movie.

The driving force of the movie is the visual aspect. The idea of having the majority of a movie taking place within a dreamscape demands some spectacular visuals, and “Inception” does not disappoint. One of the main aspects of this movie is that the settings are created. That is why Cobb recruits architecture students. Nowhere else can someone build exactly what they draw on a page or think of in a daydream. This movie boasts a city that turns in on itself. Whole cities slowly falling into the see. One of the greatest scenes of visual effects was done without computer generated images. Christopher Nolan thinks big with his movies and bigger every time. This movie is a spectacle to watch.

The only real problems with this movie is how dishonestly it looks at dreams. Like I said, the subconcious is a crazy and messed up place, yet in the movie the most dangerous thing is a crazy wife and thoughts with machine guns. Yes, Cobb's memories often make their way into the dreams he's working in, however, I feel that a movie that truly wants to look at the power of dreams needs to give those who mess with them a lot less control. Dreams are crazy, dangerous, and oftentimes scary places. We see no terror in this movie. The dreams in “Inception” do not seem to be anything like a normal person's dreams. The concept of dreams here are more likely for architects than anything else. That being said, that is a small problem and does not take too much away from the movie.

8/10