Inception

I have a pretty active subconscious. When I was studying film, I once had a dream which ended with rolling credits. More recently, I've had political science dreams in which claims are backed with footnotes and citations. I have some common recurring dreams - the naked-in-class dream (although in mine, thanks to a surfeit of modesty, I'm usually in boxers); the driving-from-the-backseat dream. And I have dreams which reference previous dreams; recently, it's been a sequence of half-remembered ones in which I've travelled extensively to Venezuela - and it usually takes me a few minutes after waking to remember I've never been there in my life.

Maybe it's that last series, which in the intense moments between sleep and wakefulness feels like a whole parallel existence, which explains why I liked Inception so much. That's not the only reason, of course - I'll get to the others momentarily - but the idea of a separate dream universe to which we travel back and forth from the comfort of our beds seems more than an intellectual exercise to me. Those parallel universes are the backbone of this movie, which manages to roll together an exploration of the nature of human consciousness and compelling, intricate story.

It's difficult to explain the plot of the movie without spoiling some aspects, but the basic outline is that Leonardo DiCaprio plays Dom Cobb, an 'extraction expert' who specializes in using newly developed 'shared dreaming' technology to steal ideas from the minds of targets when they're asleep and most vulnerable. His team (including Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Ellen Page) are hired by a Japanese tycoon (Ken Watanabe) to do something even more difficult - inception, or placing an idea in the mind of a target. Of course, it being a Christopher Nolan film, complications ensue and tricks are played both on the characters and the audience. To say more would be to spoil, so I'll stop here.

Normally when I write these reviews, I list some positive aspects of the film and move on to the critique. That's difficult here, as I've been wracking my brains for a critique and can't come up with much of anything. The writing is brilliant, the acting is devoid of a single major weak spot, the pacing hides its 2.5 hour length, the visual effects are stunning, and the music and editing enhance the experience without getting in the way. Most critically, the film signposts: for a story in which multiple realities are layered on top of each other, I rarely felt truly lost (except for during the film's intentionally confusing opening sequence). It works as pure entertainment, as a simulacrum of dreaming and as a thought piece. The film's internal rules are - mostly - consistent, and any plot holes that seep through are trampled down with ferocious efficiency.

My only complaint - and an entirely subjective one at that - is that the film doesn't come close to exploring the thematic possibilities of different types of dreams. A fairly major plot point involves the possibility of training the subconscious to resist incursions; in the film's mythos, projections of other humans act as white blood cells, swarming intruders who disturb the dream too much and eventually killing them, causing them to wake up. These projections are usually depicted as mercenaries of some kind. That's all well and good, and provides a justification for a series of creative fight and chase scenes, but it misses a larger possibility: nightmares. I don't know about anybody else, but I'm pretty confident that my subconscious is capable of summoning scarier guardians than men in suits with rifles.

But that's just my impression. The thing I appreciate most about Inception is that for a $160 million blockbuster, it feels remarkably personal. It feels like the alternate dream universe I occasionally slip into without paying for a ticket, except I can remember the details this time. For that, it's worth the price of admission and maybe a whole lot more.