Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010)

When I first saw the trailer for this film, it didn’t really appeal to me. I mean, seeing the scenes with the actors floating in the corridor and the sky folding upside down made it seem like some sort of disaster movie or strange sci-fi. However, it was after I read about Inception and starting hearing about it from other people that I became interested and realised that the trailer was quite misleading (for me anyway). It was the whole exploring-the-nature-of-dreams theme that really caught my attention.

Leonardo Di Caprio plays Dom Cobb, a thief who is part of a team who illegally enter people’s dreams in order to extract information they may be holding subconsciously or to incept an idea. I found the fact that an idea planted in someone’s mind may “grow” to have such impact on a person throughout their life was really exaggerated. I mean, sure, I might wake up and ponder some strange ideas I had in my dreams but the fact that someone like Fischer may change his whole attitude and actions during the rest of his life due to one dream seems really unlikely. I think the impact Cobb’s wife, Mallorie (Marion Cottilard), had on her husband was probably the closest the film came to being a “thriller”. She was a bizarre, frightening character but at the same time was illustrating that mystifying concept of the difficulty in making the distinction between reality and dreams.

Anyway, I particularly like the fact that Ellen Page plays an architect who helps design the dream they enter. It reminds me of when I design something in the world of my lucid dreams. But in a film that is so science-fiction and complex, I found myself thinking about certain issues or potential obstacles that would arise in such a world and which may have been considered in the scriptwriting process. For instance, how would people awake from the dreams? Director Christopher Nolan, who wrote the script, put in the idea of a “kick” that would awake the individual. Interestingly, it is not the impact of a person falling that wakes them, for instance, but it is the moment before the impact, when the body is jerked awake. However, I couldn’t accept that heavily-sedated individuals (even having ingested other “special” chemicals) would wake with a “kick” in the same way − to me you’re either sedated or you’re not.

Another issue, which has been pointed out by dream researchers, is the fact that the dreams depicted in Inception were quite unrealistic, in the way that they were so well-connected and logical. As probably most people have experienced, dreams are often made up of several surreal, incoherent, illogical scenes or moments. Obviously the plot (or lack of) in such a film would have been hard to follow, so it’s no surprise the dreams were constructed in this way.

Anyway, the biggest potential flaw with this dream inception process is how it would work with those who lucid dream. In the film, when people realised they were dreaming, most of the time their surroundings would start to crumble or suddenly change in some way as their brain makes this realisation. I’ve read a bit about consciousness in dreams and usually, as soon as someone realises they’re dreaming, they suddenly awake. However, as a person who lucid dreams, I am able to continue sleeping and maintain an awareness to the extent that I can start “controlling” my dream. So I just find it difficult to picture how people could incept a lucid dreamer because they would remain aware and have more control over what would happen.

It was actually Nolan’s experience of lucid dreaming as a teenager that led him to think about the story for this film. So I like the fact that the story stems from a personal experience of the director, and is really a topic that many people are interested in and curious about. I like the basic concept of the film and no doubt is a springboard for discussion about dreams. Actually, it’s common that after reading or thinking about dreams before going to bed can affect one’s dream − so I’m hoping to have some real interesting multilayer dreams tonight!

It was very clever though not surprising to have Nolan cut the final scene with the top still spinning (so we can’t be sure whether Cobb is still dreaming or not when he is reunited with his children). Although many people seem to be frustrated at the ending, it honestly doesn’t bother me that much − while I think the top looked like it was about to drop (and therefore it is real), I doubt that Cobb would have been “kicked” back into reality in time underwater. But the fact that Cobb is reunited with his children (whether in reality or not) is closure enough for me.

So overall, I found Inception quite engaging and original, which is a quality I really admire in value, and which I think is becoming quite rare in modern films. With echoes of the highly successful The Matrix and the mysterious topic of dreams, it’s easy to see the appeal of this film.

4/5