Inception

Warner Bros

R4 DVD

I have been waiting to see Inception for quite some time. It is a film which has been surrounded by a vast amount of hype and I wondered if it could live up to the publicity. Christopher Nolan is a very accomplished director having made such films as Batman Begins, The Prestige and Insomnia. While Leonard DiCaprio has risen from been a teen star to taking roles which are far darker and eccentric, his last film Shutter Island, was a superb exploration of memory, madness and the inner recesses of the psyche. Together I wondered what they could do and I was not disappointed.

Inception is a very complex film; its origins could probably be traced back to a book written in 1976 called The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. In this book Dawkins posited that genes replicated for their own benefit and we were only the means of transmission. As an afterthought, Dawkins suggested there was another sort of replicator on this planet, a cultural one, he called this a meme. The concept of the meme took off like wildfire; it became a major cause of debate among academics worldwide. Do ideas replicate like genes, do they act like viruses and when planted spread from host to host. A vast number of books continue to be written on this idea alone.

Inception takes meme theory (though it never actually uses the word) and matches with an exploration of the world of dreams. It is interesting that in the last weeks news there was a discussion of a firm in the U.S. which has developed a machine which can record dreams, perhaps the ideas in this film are not farfetched. The idea of shared dreams has been around a long time in both mystical literature (Tibetan Buddhism for example) and in such films as the Nightmare on Elm Street series. Nolan takes shared dreaming further and creates a dream heist squad. This team work together to create a dream world based on the subjects life and when the subject is kidnapped and brought into the shared dream information can be extracted. This can be a messy process as the subject fills the dream environment with their own projections and these can be defensive even violent. The dream team needs to include an architect, who designs the structures of the shared dream world, a medical technician, an extractor and various support staff. It isn’t an easy business.

This process can work on multiple levels with three dreams within dreams. At the same time there is another process, more elusive and dangerous, that of inception. This is where a meme is planted deep within the unconscious of the individual and believing it is their own original though their whole life experience is changed by this experience, for good or ill.

Cobb (DiCaprio) is an extractor who is good at his job; he has a top team who works together at this new form of industrial espionage. However he has a dark past which haunts him. He experimented with his wife exploring the various levels of dream work not understanding that the deeper you go the more time is disturbed in the process. In the first level of dreaming 5 minutes in the conscious world gives you some 60 minutes of dream time, at very deep levels 5 minutes could equal 10 even 50 years. Together Cobb and Mal find themselves in the deepest dream levels and spent some fifty years growing old together and building their own world. Unknown to Mal, to achieve this task Cobb used the art of inception to plant a thought within her mind, the idea that this dream world as the real world.

However, Cobb realizes that they have totally lost touch with the real world (and their children) and brings them back to the waking state. Mal cannot adjust; she becomes more and more depressed and suicidal. The meme that her dream world is the real one obsesses her more and more and finally she commits suicide unable to convince Cobb to join her. In fury Mal has also distorted the evidence to suggest Cobb was involved in her death. He loses access to his children and has to flee America, a wanted man.

Inception has multiple plots which are locked together into a fascinating story. The central story is an inception where Saito agrees to use his high end connections to clear Cobb’s name is they can pull off a risky job. They need to implant a thought into the mind of Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), a business rival of Saito’s. This thought will result in him splitting up the rather gigantic business empire which he will inherit on his father’s death.

When Fischer’s father dies they swing into action. Saito makes some arrangements with the private plane company transporting Fischer and his father’s body and the team has 60 minutes to undertake the art of inception. Using three levels of dreams, risky medications and alternate realities the game begins. But things are never as easy as they seem and Cobb’s dead wife, who lives on in his memory, takes to sabotaging the operation at every turn. At the same time Fischer’s unconscious has impressive defensives and they are armed with all manner of weapons. As they move from dream level to dream level the risks get greater and greater, since they are so heavily sedated a dream shock may send them into limbo. Limbo being a sort of dream freespace where the mind lives eternally in its own reveries without any sense of reality.

This is a film which takes a lot of concentration and thought, it is not easy entertainment and sadly that is what has bought it some less than spectacular reviews. Personally I like my films intelligent, I am sick of plots which could be deciphered by a six year old who is playing Nintendo at the same time. I want a mental challenge and Inception supplies it. It is a beautiful looking film with some truly ingenious special effects, the characters are all superb and they all perform their roles admirably. The movement between various dream states and reality is superbly handled and at times you scratch your head and begin to ask that perennial question “what is reality anyway?”.

This is an instant classic; I truly believe it is the best science fiction film I have seen in many, many years. Multiple viewings will even give greater enjoyment and offer more nuances hidden within the plot.

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