My Favorite Movies: #2—Inception

2. Inception (2010) 

Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller 

Director: Christopher Nolan 

Writer: Christopher Nolan

Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy 

Awards: 4 Oscars—Cinematography, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Visual Effects             

Metacritic score: 74 

IMDB Ranking: #14

The penultimate film on my list, Inception stands as my favorite movie of all-time in terms of pure entertainment value. That is to say, I have more fun watching this movie as opposed to tomorrow's top pick, for reasons that I will explain when I unveil the top spot.

Inception is about a group of high-tech thieves who use futuristic military technology to invade people's dreams in order to steal their secret ideas—this is called "extraction." The angle for the plot, however, is about "inception"—planting an idea into a subject's mind that will cause him to do something he wouldn't ordinarily do. The idea must be planted so deeply that the subject doesn't realize that he's being manipulated by an outside mind.

Dominic Cobb (DiCaprio) is the leader of the group, a pioneer and expert in dream extraction who is haunted by the death of his wife, Mal (Marian Cotillard). He feels responsible for her death, a suicide that she made look like a murder, because as they became lost in the world of each other's dreams, he used inception to bring her back to the "real world." It drove her insane, however, and now he cannot return home to his children without being arrested for her murder.

He is aided by the team leader, Arthur (Gordon-Levitt), Eames, the forger (Hardy), Yusef, the chemist (Dileep Rao), and Ariadne, the architect (Page), all of whom are funded by Japanese billionaire Saito (Ken Watanabe). Their target is Robert Fischer, the son of the owner of the world's largest energy conglomerate, played by Cillian Murphy; their goal is to plant the idea for him to break up his father's company, left in his care by his late father's will.

The fun and the thrill of this movie is found in the dreamscape. All the participants, except for the unwitting mark of extraction or inception, are lucid dreamers, which means they can manipulate the reality and physics of the dream. The special effects for these impossible actions are amazing, and in many cases, done with old-fashioned stunts, explosions, set design, and camera trickery rather than CGI. In fact, director Christopher Nolan intentionally limited his use of CGI to make the dreams seem as realistic as possible.

In order to make their plan work, Dom and his team must go down three levels—a dream within a dream within a dream. The conceit is that because the mind works faster in the dream, the farther down you go, the more time is stretched out. Level one is a rainy city, one week. Level two is the interior of a hotel, six months. Level three is a wintry fortress in the mountains, 10 years. What lies deeper? Limbo. Infinite subconscious. Yeah, you know we're going there. For Dom, he's going back to confront the dream of his late wife that continues to haunt him.

 

There are countless Internet theories as to what Inception means, but my favorite interpretation is that it is an allegory for making movies. Saito is the studio head who puts up all the money. Arthur is the producer, Dom is the director, Eames the actor, Yusef does special effects, and Ariadne is the set designer. Fischer, and ourselves, are the audience, the ones who have this idea planted inside our heads that becomes the dominant thought in our minds.

I've always been interested in lucid dreams, the ability to realize, while in a dream, that you are dreaming, then use that knowledge to manipulate and change the dream. Again, the Internet is full of advice on how to train your mind to do this, but it is difficult and complicated. But I've done it a few times, most recently causing myself to levitate to the roof of a building and descend to the ground again safely. Every time I watch Inception, I wish that their lucid dreaming technology was real.

But there's a danger in that. When Dom first meets Yusef, it's in a basement filled with men and women who come every day to dream for twelve hours at a time. As an old man tells them, "For them, the dream has become the real world." Why would we choose to live in a world where free will is so limited, where we are subject to the whims of fate and time, when we could live in a world where everything around us is our own creation? Who would be able to resist the idea of becoming your own god, even if it was just for a few hours a day?

 

These are the type of deep philosophical ideas that Inception causes us to confront. The most controversial question about the movie is whether the ending takes place in "reality" or whether Dom is still experiencing a dream. In fact, some wonder if the entire film is just Dom's dream. I think it's clear that the top is beginning to wobble, which clearly indicates that he's not dreaming, but it's also clear that the entire concept of Inception is that each of us has the power to create our own reality, whether it's in the real world or the dream world.