inception

You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling. — Eames, Inception

I've been a fan of director Christopher Nolan since I saw Batman Begins, which still comes to mind whenever people ask me what my all-time favorite film is. No other current director seems to be able to package it all together like he does: creative and engaging storylines, layers of themes, outstanding performances across the board from his actors. Nolan proves that a movie can be intelligent and a box-office draw at the same time; he makes movies that please critics and crowds alike. He also has the rare and admirable ability to deal with intense and mature subjects tastefully and with restraint, with little gratuitous content.

Inception is a continuation of the Nolan trend: brainy, thought-provoking, and wildly entertaining. It's a sci-fi thriller somewhat in the vein of Gattaca or Blade Runner, putting more emphasis on characters and theme than on being sci-fi. The protagonist is Dom Cobb, played very competently by Leonardo DiCaprio. Cobb is an "extractor," a specialist at breaking into minds to steal the secrets lodged there. He mostly uses his abilities to steal corporate secrets for rivaling companies, but his latest subject, a Japanese businessman named Saito (Ken Watanabe), outwits him and then offers him a new job: the task of "inception," planting an idea in the head of a rival, rather than stealing one.

As far as its main plot goes, Inception is actually pretty straightforward. Cobb assembles a team to break into the mind of Robert Fischer, Jr. (Cillian Murphy), Saito's rival. Their goal is to subconsciously convince Fischer to break up his father's corporate empire. Where Inception gets a little complicated is with the introduction of a confusing subplot involving Cobb's wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard), who killed herself some time prior to the events of the film. Mal continuously invades Cobb's subconscious, disrupting the dream worlds his team has constructed and threatening the success of their elaborate scheme.

Mal seems to represent the dangers of what Cobb and his team do, entering the dream world and manipulating other people's thoughts -- an exceptional violation of human dignity. [Spoilers] It is revealed that, years ago, Mal and Cobb had together become trapped in a "limbo" of their own dreams, and while Mal was content with remaining in that dream state, Cobb was unsatisfied with living a lie. He convinced Mal, through inception, that by "killing" themselves in the dream state they would return to their real lives. The inception worked, and both of them woke up back in the real world. But ideas, as Cobb explains to Saito at the beginning of the film, are resilient. And the idea Cobb planted in Mal's mind, that death leads to a greater reality, lingered even after she woke up in the real world. Eventually it drove her to commit suicide, and Cobb has lived with guilt and regret ever since. [End spoilers] The irony is that he is now trying to do to Fischer the very same thing that ruined his own life, endangering both himself and his team as they descend deeper and deeper into the dream world.

Inception speaks very strongly about the dangers of rejecting reality for selfish fantasy. Cobb has sacrificed so many meaningful things in his life -- including his relationships with his wife and his children -- because he has spent so much time in the dream world, tampering with things that shouldn't be tampered with. [Spoilers] At the end, we see him reunited with his children after successfully completing his job. But his happy ending comes about only because he has once again performed "inception" on another person, and an ambiguous closing shot leaves us to wonder whether he has really achieved real-life happiness at all. [End spoilers]

I feel like that's a very inadequate explanation of the film, but Inception really doesn't lend itself well to me trying to explain it. It's something you have to see for yourself. I recommend it wholeheartedly. After so many disappointments this summer, Inception is one movie that actually lives up to the hype.

As an aside... I didn't really pick up on this until I watched the credits rolling, but Nolan uses Edith Piaf's song "Non, je ne regrette rien" repeatedly in the film. In the context of Cobb's story, it's brilliant.

WORLD magazine has an excellent review of the film here.