Skip to main content
Inception film image; man leans overs table with a spinning top

Inception

This event has passed

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

 

Media Partner

Director

Christopher Nolan

Cast

Leondardo DiCaprio, Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy, Elliot Page (as Ellen Page), Dileep Rao, Cillian Murphy, Marion Cotillard, Tom Berenger

Credits
Country of Origin

USA

Year

2010

Language

English

Focus
19+
148 min

Book Tickets

This event has passed.

Credits

Screenwriter

Christopher Nolan

Cinematography

Wally Pfister

Editor

Lee Smith

Original Music

Hans Zimmer

Production Design

Guy Hendrix Dyas

Also in This Series

The Fall (4K Restoration)

Dir. Tarsem Singh
119 min

Shot over four years across 24 countries, cowritten by a six year old girl, and entirely self-financed by commercials director Tarsem, The Fall is such a mind- (and eye) boggling movie it's hard to believe it actually exists. Yet here it is!

VIFF Centre - Vancity Theatre

The Manchurian Candidate

Dir. Jonathan Demme
130 min

Jonathan Demme's superbly orchestrated take on Richard Condon's 1959 paranoia novel feels weirdly prescient in its anxieties around global corporate brainwashing, war profiteering, assassination and election fixing.

VIFF Centre - Vancity Theatre

Winter Kills

Dir. William Richert
97 min

An inspired black comic adaptation of the ultimate conspiracy theory, based on a novel by Richard (Manchurian Candidate) Condon. It's a lunatic riff on the Kennedy assassination(s), with Jeff Bridges finding who really killed his brother, the President. Screening in 35mm print.

VIFF Centre - Vancity Theatre

Come and See

Dir. Elem Klimov
142 min

One of the most powerful war films ever made, Elem Klimov's Come and See is an overwhelming and unforgettable experience.

VIFF Centre - Vancity Theatre