Inception

Christopher Nolan’s Inception is a film that generated almost as much debate before its release as after it; while some may argue that it could never live up to its initial hype, the very fact that it was able to create such intense discussion and passionate defenses and critiques following its release speaks to the film’s significance and complexity.  Many films with this sort of advanced buzz could not sustain the interest, enthusiasm, and arguments of critics and viewers after they actually went out into the world.  Inception, however, has only become more of a hot topic following its release and will be, I suspect, a film that permeates the culture for years to come.

Inception, for me, is a quintessential case of a “forest for the trees” kind of movie. Like almost all movies, it is not perfect—you can complain about some clunkily expository bits of dialogue, or maybe there are a few holes in the story, or possibly some of the supporting characters are not as developed as they should be.  But to focus on the drawbacks would be to miss the fact this is one of the most enthrallingly creative, smartly constructed, and refreshingly cinematic films of the last several years.

Inception follows a group of high-tech thieves who steal information from a person’s subconscious while they are sleeping and in the dream state.  The group is led by Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), the most skilled “extractor” of people’s minds in the world, and a man who is fighting some serious psychological demons of his own.  Cobb and his cohorts achieve their theft by creating a specific dream world in a person’s subconscious, and then they enter that dream and steal the information they need.  The first hour or so of the film lays out the rules of how these guys work, and shows the specific planning of the “job” that will take up the rest of the movie.  This section, while a little overly expositional and on-the-nose at times, does a good job setting out the logic and principal rules of the dream world that we are about to enter.

It is once we enter that dream, however, that the film fully takes off and becomes such a thrilling, one-of-a-kind experience.  Nolan manages to create not one, not two, but FOUR layers of dream space that are highly distinctive and show great visual flair.  He also injects many more interesting twists and complications into an already intricate set-up.  The job Cobb and his team are doing this time is not an extraction, but an inception, which means they are trying to plant an idea in the head of someone, not steal information.  Further complicating matters are Cobb’s personal motivations and precarious mental state. Cobb had previously been accused of murdering his wife, and had escaped the United States before being sent to prison; while he is surviving as a fugitive in places like Europe and Asia, he has been prohibited from returning home and seeing his two kids.  This job, which Cobb repeatedly refers to as his “last job”, is for one of the wealthiest, most powerful businessmen in the world, and if Cobb does it successfully, this businessman can get him cleared with one phone call.  But, as Cobb gets further consumed by guilt, grief, and frustration about his wife’s death, he endangers the mission by bringing his own subconscious feelings into the dream, which are often manifested by his vengeful, murderous wife Molly (effectively played by Marion Cotillard).  The subject whose mind these guys have “broken into” is so heavily sedated that if Molly kills someone in the dream space, it can have serious and lasting repercussions in the real world.

If this all seems a bit complicated—well, it is, but it is also directly laid out within the context of the film, and Nolan is smart enough to ground all this storytelling complexity in some very basic emotions and genre conventions.  Many have called Inception a “heist film,” and it does in fact fit into that category quite nicely.  From the gang leader who just wants to complete “one last job,” to the early sections of the film where he’s getting his team together, to the complications that arise during the crime from unforeseen emotional baggage and character behavior, Inception utilizes many familiar, effective tropes to tell its story.  Also, Cobb’s ultimate goal of getting back to his kids, and his guilt and depression over his wife’s death, are easy to understand emotions that make his character a compelling, sympathetic protagonist with whom to journey through the film.

Part of Nolan’s genius is to take complex ideas and make them accessible and comprehensible to a wide audience, without dumbing down or compromising the integrity of his films.  This includes some fascinating plays with time, space, and linearity—all things on which classical narratives are typically based.  In the past, if directors were to deviate from and play with narrative structure and the general rules of time and space—and invoke the alternate logic (or lack thereof) of dreams—they were usually confined to the realm of art cinema (one of Nolan’s oft-cited inspirations for Inception is Alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad, which is a quintessential, if overrated, example of this type of art film).  Nolan, though, manages to combine this experimentation with a firm grasp of commercial storytelling—he gives us narrative elements we recognize, characters we can care about, and even a detailed and rigorously worked-out explanation of what we are witnessing or will be witnessing later.

This ability was first evident in Nolan’s 2001 breakout film, Memento, where he told the story in reverse order, a brazen device that worked because, like Inception, it carefully laid its rules and approach at the outset, and gave you a story and protagonist worth caring about.  Also, like Inception, Memento’s structure was part of its overall thematic design—Nolan was exploring the nature of memory and subjective experience, and he conformed his storytelling approach to reflect these larger thematic concerns.  In Inception, he is dealing with many big and weighty ideas—dreams vs. reality (and the consequences of blurring them), subconscious feelings and desire, the power (sometimes inspiring, sometimes destructive) of both familial and romantic love—and again, his structure helps to comment on and enhance these numerous thematic and intellectual components.  Yet, even with all these ideas, he is a still making a big studio movie with a big studio budget, and he never forgets that first and foremost he must entertain and engage, which he does extremely well.

While the world has room for all kinds of movies—small-scale films about two people falling in love are just as valid as large-scale superhero adventures—it is hard not to marvel at a director like Nolan, who is able to make such thought-provoking and intelligent films on such an epic scale, and ones which bother to engage your mind while providing first-rate entertainment.  In many ways, Inception is a culmination of Nolan’s earlier work—it has the originality and narrative and formal playfulness of Memento, the grandeur, scope, and invention of the Batman films, and the sleight-of-hand of The Prestige (though admittedly, he pulls that off more impressively here).  It is also, however, very much its own thing, and his tightest, most ambitious, and most original work to date.  Nolan reportedly has been working on the script to this film for ten years, and while it may feel like people have been anticipating the movie for almost that long, this is one of the rare and exciting occurrences where the discussion following the film will be much better and last much longer than anything leading up to it.

                                                 David Laub