Week 1 Film Special: Inception

Similar to the Fight Club review earlier this week, I will be posting a weekly review special going farther in depth with a film that deserves more recognition. This week's film is Christopher Nolan's recent blockbuster, Inception. Inception hit the ground running grossing $21 million in its first day and $63 million that weekend alone. Nolan spent around 9 years working on the script of the film and directing other fantastic films (Batman Begins, The Prestige, The Dark Knight) in order to gain experience for the Inception project. Filming took place across 6 countries and in 4 continents. That coupled with the concept of dream-stealing, a concept not-oftenly portrayed in films, garnered the critical acclaim for the film that allowed it to do so well in its premier.

Inception

Release Date: 2010
Director: Christopher Nolan
Genre: Thriller
Main Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio (as Tom Cobb) Joseph Gordon-Levitt (as Arthur) and Ellen Page (as Ariadne)
IMDB Rating: 9.0
My Rating: 9.8
Length: 142 minutes
Budget/Gross Revenue: $160million/$823million

The following illustrations do an amazing job of allowing you to visualize the progression of the plot of the film. The graphics might be a little too small to view in their entirety on this page, however, opening it in another tab or page will allow for easy viewing. I think that these graphics also might help many of those confused by the plot, as the multi-layer dreams and many characters cause the storyline to seem complex at times.

Plot: To begin the story, Leonardo DiCaprio's character Tom and his partner Arthur are inside of a man's two-layered dream attempting to steal information for their current employer. The dream starts to fall apart because of both Mal, Tom's deceased wife who appears in Tom's dreams, and the subconscious of the man being stolen from, Mr. Saito. After they leave the dream state, they are captured by Saito who proposes them a job opportunity of inception of a large corporation heir, the planting of an idea in someone's subconscious through dreams. Cobb accepts the proposition on the stipulation that he is granted amnesty to return to the US to live with his children, who were taken from him after his wife's suicide and wrong accusations toward him. Cobb and Arthur then travel to complete their team for the Inception. They hire Cobb's friend Eames, a forger, Yusuf, a chemist, and Ariadne, a prodigy architect. Eames does work forging documents to get the team into places necessary, Yusuf is in charge of the sedatives required for the dream, and Ariadne creates the settings of the dreams. The team practices and builds their skills while planning the process the the job. Throughout the story, Cobb has reoccuring issues with Mal in his dreams, as they had spent much time in dream-states which eventually led to her suicide prior to the present time. The team all creates and/or possesses their totems which are small objects that differentiate reality from dreams. Once the team's plans are in place, Cobb and his associates board a plane with the heir on board as he is going to attend his fathers funeral. Saito joins them to make sure the job is done right. The plan leads the team through 3 levels of dreams, each with a different amount of convincing done to the heir, Fischer, to break up his father's monopoly. Within the three dreams, they run into many obstacles, including Saito getting shot by Fischer's subconscious projections, who chase the team throughout the job, as well as Mal in Cobb's subconscious. Saito ends up dying from his wounds, and Fischer is shot and killed by Mal, thus sending them into limbo. Cobb and Ariadne save Fischer and finish the planting of the idea. The team must all kick out of the dreams to wake up in reality, thus, they form different forms of kicks in the different levels, including a van falling off a bridge and an explosion in an elevator. Cobb stays to find Saito, who has aged in the dream timeframe. Saito and Cobb finally kick back to reality and join the rest of the team on the plane. The team then arrives at the airport, after which Cobb is reunited by his children. However, to test reality, Cobb spins his totem on the dining room table. The top continues to spin as the film ends, but shows some signs of wobbling when Cobb is distracted by his children.

My Synopsis: This film, similar to last weeks, was another mind-blower. After watching it in the theatres for the first time, my mind was almost literally in shock as I walked out of the theatre, it was hard to process all that had happened in the two-plus hours. It was also very difficult to comprehend what was reality and what was not, as the entire film questioned the essence of that situation. I took me a solid month of going over the scenes and plot to actually get a grasp on the extremity of what took place in the film, and watching a second and third time really helped clarify some things that I hadn't understood the first time. The magnitude of the changes in physics and changes in reality during the dreams was incredible, more than mind-boggling. Ariadne's part in the film was instrumental, as her ridiculous architecture-building skills gave the film the special-effects that got it nominated for the Best Motion Picture in the Golden Globes. My only slight issue of the film is the absence of a antagonist, someone in the film that you can truly hate. In many films, that character is irrelevant, but in many of the great films, the villain is the character who truly makes the film. Inception does an excellent job making do without a bad guy to cause problems, but I do think that it would have been that much better with one, as the projections in the dreams do not do much for an antagonist role. I also felt that the individual performances of the actors and actresses were nearly flawless by everyone involved, with standouts being DiCaprio and Ellen Page. DiCaprio is superb in nearly every film he does, Blood Diamond and Shutter Island are two more recent films that he has excelled in. Since her role in Juno, Ellen Page has evolved as a versatile actress that can handle the stress of thriller roles. The poise she presents throughout the film does a great job of balancing DiCaprio's out-of-control character who is more caught up in past regrets than with his present situations. Their conflicting personalities throughout the film end up equalizing most discrepancies. I was impressed with the settings of the dreams, specifically the snow scene. The action in that scene by Tom Hardy's character was superb as well as the location of the base in the snowy mountains. Finally, the closing scenes drew much skepticism and differing opinions. Many critics believed that Cobb's totem of a top that seemed to continue spinning signified that he was still in a dream state, thus meaning that Cobb stayed and was locked in limbo and that he had never left Mal nor returned to reality. This version of the ending seems to be a more realistic ending than the alternative, as Cobb had issues accepting reality after the passing of his wife. However, the only reasoning for Cobb wanting to return to reality was to stay with his children, causing the other version of the ending to seem more logical. Many people think that in this version, Cobb's totem starts to wobble and he sees the faces of the children, both proving that he was actually in reality. Both versions of the ending have their own logicality, and I personally like to take the optimistic road and believe it was the second. The position of the top is the determination of the whole attitude and desire of Cobb's fate, and by leaving it spinning Christopher Nolan allows the audience to determine Tom Cobb's fate themselves.

Decide for yourself, as I have done...

-Jarid Holliday