Inception

Leonardo DiCaprio is Cobb, an “excavator”, who digs around in people’s subconscious while they’re catching some zzzzs. This act of infiltration is “not strictly legal” – the motive is not therapeutic but espionage and theft. It’s also not a solo operation. To do the job properly requires an “architect” – basically someone to design an appropriate dreamscape, something vivid and detailed enough to keep the dreamer’s defences down. Depending on the complexity of the project, it might also require a “burglar”, a “chemist”, and preferably someone on the outside to administer a well-timed wake up call.

Cobb’s partners include Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a newbie, Ariadne (Ellen Page), Yusuf (Dileep Rao) and Eames (Tom Hardy). Their client, Saito (Ken Watanabe), wants more than access to a rival industrialist’s grey matter, he requires Cobb to plant an idea in there that will dismantle an entire conglomerate. As if that wasn’t hard enough, Cobb is also plagued with keeping his own demons at bay, in the form of an angry dead wife (Marion Cotillard).

A kind of meta-heist movie, Inception evokes Philip K Dick’s cerebral sci-fi, the exploration of alternate states of consciousness, memory and fantasy. But these are also Nolan’s themes. Ariadne (who helped Theseus slay the minotaur in Greek mythology) devises labyrinths that are also escape hatches, and that metaphor of the maze runs through the film, which is itself a puzzle to be navigated by filmmaker and audience alike. It certainly hasn’t escaped Nolan’s attention that this dream life functions as a metaphor for the movies. Ariadne is a production designer; Cobb an actor-director. Extras in the dream – ordinary passersby – are known as “projections”, and they become hostile if they suspect someone is messing with their reality. Gloriously, real world physics are refracted in the dream zones – gravity just drops out like a faulty signal – and if the dreamer starts to stir, the universe crumbles.

This is a popular entertainment with a knockout punch so intense and unnerving it’ll have you worrying if it’s safe to close your eyes at night.

Kenneth Turan, LA Times

One of those films, like Blade Runner or 2001 A Space Odyssey, that will repay many viewings in order to grasp all the intricate details of these multi-layered trips into the dreams and nightmares of the central characters.

David Stratton, At the Movies

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