Inception Critique: Sowing the Seeds

The basic storyline of Christopher Nolan’s latest outing, Inception, is a heist film. The pulse that weaves us through the film is based upon psychoanalytic approach of dream interpretation. Instead of some precious tangible object, the thieves in Inception attempt to steal a memory. Fans of Nolan are well aware of his fondness of characters weighted down by their own psychological baggage or as in Memento, the frailty of memories. Both are heavy elements in Inception. (Interestingly, memento is defined as “a reminder of the past” while inception is “the beginning of something.”)

Inception begins with a scene that occurs towards the chronological end of the film. This storytelling technique annoys me unless it’s utilized in a film noir. Though there are film noir elements I must stress that this is not a film noir. Nevertheless, it’s executed superbly.

After the opening scene, Nolan spends the next 40-60 minutes introducing us to his characters and more importantly, laying down the science of the film with an avalanche of information. The fast pace and hard transition edits can be quite confusing especially to those who aren’t familiar with the science and theories of dream analysis. I’d have to guess that in the first half of the film, the large amounts of master shots edited in rapid succession were done purposely to allow the viewer some time to digest what was being displayed onto the screen. This is a put-off to me but again, Nolan executes it well.

One can’t help comparing it to The Matrix, visually stunning and the perception of reality. However, The Matrix was rather elementary in its philosophy where Inception goes rather deep and perhaps too deep for the average viewer. Nolan not only throws a ton of visual effects at you, he also requires you to think, a lot. While my ears were sending Jungian dream theories to my brain, my eyes were sending mind blowing visuals to my brain. Thankfully the film was superbly constructed.

This film succeeds not just for its intellect or visual effects. It succeeds because we can all relate to dreams and how they make us feel.  Freud had a very basic view of dreams: desire is the motivation of dreams. While I side more with Jung’s interpretation, Freud’s view has a universal appeal and is the motivation of Inception's protagonist: A man wants to go home to his wife and kids. If you take away all that is profound and surreal out of Inception you’re left with the basic story. The protagonist, who must overcome obstacles to achieve his/her goal. What it left out in the basic structure is the lack of an antagonist. Some may argue that Marion Cotillard’s or Cillian Murphy’s characters are the antagonists but they aren’t, not in the truest sense. Similar to real life, it’s easy to blame others (antagonists) for your failures but when in reality failures are mostly the result of self, you the protagonist.

Inception is a stunning film with a solid cast and worth repeated viewings. If you’re a person who remembers their dreams and questions them as I do then I highly recommend seeing it. It’s like the dream where you are trying to cram for a psychology final while holding onto a screaming baby on a plane that is about to crash into the ocean. Never had that type of dream? Strange, it’s one of my recurring themes in my dreams.

Spoiler Alert - The pitch in 60 seconds:

Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), a corporate thief/fugitive and his team, extract secrets from the minds of their targets via dream sharing. They target Saito (Ken Watanabe), a Japanese mogul, who outdoes them. Instead of exacting revenge Saito proposes to Cobb one last job and in return will use his influence that will allow Cobb to return to the States where his children are. Their new target is Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy) who just inherited a global energy monopoly. Instead of stealing secrets Saito wants the team to plant an idea in Fischer’s mind to break up the monopoly. This presents to be more difficult than stealing thoughts so Cobb and his partner, Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), enlist the help of Eames (Tom Hardy), a dream world impersonator; Yusuf (Dileep Rao), a chemist; and Ariadne (Ellen Page), a talented rookie dream architect. The biggest complication is that Cobb projects the memory of his dead wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard) into his dreams. Cobb can’t get her out of his subconscious mind because he feels responsible for Mal’s suicide. Ariadne becomes aware of this and sees it may endanger the lives of her teammates. She tries to help Cobb let go but will she be able to succeed before everyone awakes or worse, get stuck in the dream world?