Christopher Nolan’s latest action blockbuster is stunning, smart, and thrilling, and certainly lives up to all the hype surrounding it’s release. It is just as good as, if not better than the Dark Knight due to its complex yet ingenious plot that takes the audience on a wild ride through the depth and structure of dreams. This is not your usual summer film that consists a lazy plot based around an uninspired idea. Inception commands your full attention from start to finish and challenges your mind with the intricacies of its layered storyline. But instead of a plot overload, the near-constant action keeps the movie moving at high speeds. This movie combines action with substance, intellect with emotion, and entertainment with real and lasting questions. I thought it was the best movie I’ve seen this year – for me it beats even AVATAR.
Before I saw the movie, I was completely oblivious to the anticipation around this movie. The only thing I had really seen of it until today was a short and confusing trailer before The Twilight Saga:Eclipse (don’t get me started on that movie…). When I was asked to go see it I said, “Is that the movie that has something to do with dreams?” After seeing it, I think that it’s best to see this film that way – completely in the dark – because if I had known anything about the plot, I think it would have taken away the complete and total mind-blowing nature of the film’s concept. So if you don’t want to know anything about the plot, stop reading and go see the movie now, or skip to the last paragraph for a sum-up.
The basic idea of the film is that a person’s mind can tampered with in a dream, where one’s mind is more vulnerable to attacks or intruders. Invading a subject’s mind in a dream state allows the intruders to acquire information or ideas from their subject’s mind. To do this, a team of invaders can induce a dream state using sedatives on themselves and the subject they wish to extract information from, but manipulate the subjects dream to fit their needs for the extraction. Extraction is relatively easy. In the film, rather than trying to take an idea, they try to plant one, but for it to take hold, the subject must believe that they thought of the idea on their own. While this may seem foolproof, the subconscious mind that is active in dreams has its defenses. The subconscious populates the dream with projections of people from the subject’s mind, and these projections can become hostile to the intruders he or she realizes don’t belong. A dream can be created within a dream to further open a person up, but as you go deeper, the subconscious becomes more hostile and reality seems further and further away. The difference between dreams and reality is a line that Inception constantly plays with, and if you lose your focus for a minute, the line could become blurred for you as well.
While all of this may sound extremely confusing from my poor attempt at a brief explanation, one of the things that makes Inception so good is the way it makes this concept seem real, understandable, and completely legitimate. Rather than a lofty psychological idea that throughout the movie leaves you constantly grasping at it’s impossible meaning, the nature and laws of the dream world and its many layers are made concrete through the expert story telling, the establishment of the characters and their specific skills used in the dreams, and the emotional consequences these dreams can have as shown by Leonardo DiCaprio’s character. It is amazing to see this concept unfold and watch it’s boundaries stretched to its limits as it is an idea that will stick with you for a very long time.
In conclusion, this was, in my opinion, the best movie of the year so far. It is a rival to the success of The Dark Knight with a mind-blowing concept that is explored beautifully amidst the backdrop of a high-action blockbuster. I highly recommend this movie. Although as a side-note, if you are tempted to spend the extra money and see it in IMAX, don’t. It’s not one of those movies that IMAX enhances the film. It makes the action scenes far to loud and leaves your head ringing and unable to fully concentrate on the dialog and plot, which is the more important part of the film. But aside from the headache I received from the IMAX showing, I give it 5 stars. I mean, it was just awesome.