Inception

Just got back from watching Inception with my wife. We both really liked it, and it has kept me thinking about it trying to figure it out. If not for the final scene, it would have been pretty cut and dry, despite the tricky rules that the film operates under. That final scene makes you look back and reexamine your assumptions about the story.

Recently, I've come to appreciate works of fiction that leave me thinking about them afterward. I value this attribute highly, especially when it is not due to me trying to dig holes in the plot. Take a film like Van Helsing for instance (first one to pop into my head). I saw that film with my buddy and his family. I actually liked it initially. I appreciated the references to the old Universal Studios monster movies in the first portion of the film, and felt that first scene in black and white was definitely the right move. But after the credits rolled, we all started ripping it apart. At first I tried to be an apologist for it, saying to give it the benefit of the doubt, but there ultimately was no saving that movie. That is the wrong kind of thinking about a film afterwards. What I've been doing with Inception is the right kind.

Initially, the storytelling is a bit confusing. Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) washes up on a beach where a couple of Anglo children are playing. But he is soon taken by asian security forces to a chamber with an old asian man, presumably the master of the land where Cobb has washed up. Then we are taken to a flashback that seems to take place in the same room, when the old man was much younger. Cobb and his associate Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) are proposing the idea of training Saito (Ken Watanabe) to protect himself from dream extraction, which they are the masters of. These scenes are interspersed with flashes of Saito, Arthur, and Cobb sleeping while some kind of mob presses closer and closer to the building they are in. The scenes in the mansion start to unravel and it is revealed that they are all in a dream state as each one begins to wake up in the building with the mob. But there begins to be flashes of them all sleeping in a train compartment. It is soon revealed that the scenes in the building are also a dream state, with the scene on the train the real world.

For this first portion I was trying to explain things to my wife, and to myself at the same time. But once the rules for the dream state were established, it was easier to keep everything straight. At least until that final scene.

There are scenes of violence, but they are never gory. The little blood we do see is not excessive. Most of the violence takes place in the dream state, and we are assured that all the nameless people that die are just projections of the mind. If the named characters die in the dream state they just move to another state of consciousness. There is some brief language issues that take place in scenes of great stress, but this is also not excessive. There is a scene of suicide as a character in the real world is convinced that they are still dreaming, wishing to go back to reality. There are no scenes with any kind of sexual innuendo.

The acting is top rate as is the cinematography. The special effects are mostly practical in nature, meaning that most are not computer effects. Each layer of the dream-state is easily discernible from the others once the rules are established, so you are not taken out of the story by anything taking place on screen.

I'm really quite impressed with the trailers for this film. They set up the idea for the film, but did not give anything away. This in contrast with some film trailers that seem to show all the best scenes and lines and plot points in a minute and a half.

This is a film that deserves a second viewing. I give it an A.