Inception is the most original film since The Matrix

The concept of people sharing—and experiencing—their dreams with one another might come off as implausible, but so far as I can tell, Nolan’s take on it in Inception is without flaw.

Through dream sharing, Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) can break into someone’s mind and steal their secrets. His trade is known as extraction and to aid him in his heists, he enlists the help of his friend Arthur (Joseph Gorden-Levitt.) As a researcher, Arthur finds out all he can about the target, including their relationships, and whether or not they’ve been taught how to keep their secrets secure.

Being exiled from his country and longing desperately to see the faces of his children, Cobb takes a job with a different description. He is asked to perform inception, which involves planting an idea in a target. For the idea to stick, the target has to believe it is originally theirs, demanding additional manpower and research.

Eames (Tom Hardy) is the first recruit. He's a confident and crafty forger, who like an actor, assumes the identity of someone else during a shared dream. The final recruit is Ariadne (Ellen Page), who, as her Greek name suggests, constructs the world of the dream. Ariadne is a prodigy, a whiz kid at the top of her class, and she creates some magnificent cinematic spectacles that could only be justified as 'dreams.'

With the team assembled, they target Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), the heir to the throne of a global corporation, aiming to construct, infiltrate and plant the idea of him splitting his empire. Ensuing are multiple dream levels, each dream within a dream delving further into Fischer’s mind.

The further they delve into the subconscious, the slower time elapses. Five minutes in a single dream takes twenty, but in a dream within a dream, the same five minutes elapses at the rate of an hour. In addition to the distortion of time is the seeping of one dream’s factors into another, like the exposure to water at one level manifesting itself as torrential rain.

This intelligent movie demands the audience's attention, but what really allows the movie to transcend mediocrity into genuinely great film territory is the depth of its main characters. Cobbs’ complex past brings an emotional depth that propels the entire story. The authenticity of DiCaprio’s performance makes us care about his character, and so the risks of inception are just that much more expensive.

Experiencing this original action thriller feels surreal, because although the audience is being educated on something foreign, familiar characteristics—like the sensation of falling when waking up from a dream—are present, and give this farfetched concept credence. And because anything is possible when dreaming, the action sequences couple with the emotional fabric seamlessly, and the two resound of one another in harmony, producing a spectacle that fascinates—titillates—long after the credits role. It is the unique culmination of its intelligence, performance, romance, action and production (which are all of the highest quality) that deem Inception be remembered as a great movie.

By Tony Ibrahim

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