Inception (2010)

In graduate school, I read a book called The Craft of Thought by Mary Carruthers, which explained the way in which medieval monks were able to memorize enormous quantities of Biblical text. The monks constructed vast spaces in their minds—“rooms” in which they could store verses. To remember, they mentally walked through the structures they’d made: one room held, say, the Psalms. Another held the Gospel of Luke. And so on. Christopher Nolan’s Inception takes that idea of mental structures and uses it as the basis of a heist movie. What if a person’s mental “rooms” could be invaded by outsiders, and looted for their contents? And what if someone started messing with the architecture? Could you alter a person’s mind not with external suggestion, but from inside? What would be the consequences for them? For you?

The world of Inception accepts that these things are possible. The “extraction” of ideas from a person’s head, by sneaking into the virtual reality of their subconscious while they dream (minds are more vulnerable then), is available as form of corporate espionage—the ultimate in intellectual property theft. One of the best in the business is a man named Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), whose services have been retained by wealthy energy company owner Saito (Ken Watanabe) in order to mentally thieve some secrets. That job doesn’t go quite as planned, but Saito likes what he sees and offers Cobb a different job: not extraction (the theft of an idea) but inception (the planting of an idea). Saito wants to convince the heir to a powerful rival corporation (Cillian Murphy) to break up the empire he is set to inherit from his dying father. Inception is complicated (the film explains) because the mind, like the body, resists foreign entities. The mind will attack invading thoughts the way antibodies attack viruses. Most in the extraction business think inception is essentially impossible, but Cobb has reason to believe otherwise. Plus, Saito offers a juicy reward: he has the money and pull to clear up some nasty lingering legal business involving Cobb’s wife (Marion Cotillard) and children. Cobb takes the assignment.

What follows is essentially a caper picture, though the exact details are best left for you to discover, as Inception is at least as much about procedures as results. As usual, the mastermind—Cobb—assembles a crack team. Cobb’s team includes his resourceful right-hand man Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt); a “forger” named Eames (Tom Hardy) whose specialty is faking personalities rather than documents; Yusuf (Dileep Rao), an expert in brain chemistry; and Ariadne (Ellen Page) a brilliant young architecture student who will design the mental space in which to trap the mark. As usual, the basic plan for the heist is explained beforehand, setting up the rules of the game, as it were. And then the careful plan goes into action. But you know what they say about best-laid plans…

What elevates Inception above most action-heist pictures is its focus on the mind, and I mean that in two senses. First, of course, is that minds are the arenas of adventure here, as characters jump between levels—and owners—of consciousness much the way James Bond jumps between exotic locales. But the movie also aims (a rarity these days) at the audience’s minds. This is an action film, yes, but it requires real attention. It may not be quite the mind game that the trailers (or a few stylistic winks by director Nolan) try to make it, but you sit through this on autopilot at your peril. And like Nolan’s immensely popular The Dark Knight, Inception manages to hint at—if not adequately address—some bigger themes amidst all the robbery, gunplay, and special effects.

And the effects are impressive. The “mental spaces” can be engineered in ways that real-life physics would make impossible: cities fold up on themselves, cliffs and buildings melt and rotate, and passageways shift and emerge in ways that would make Hogwarts jealous. Nolan makes excellent use of the visual medium here to represent subjective consciousness. I can’t imagine this story being told in another format, and that’s a compliment. Inception is the second movie I’ve recently seen that really showed me a different world onscreen—the other was Avatar—and its also the first movie to take the groundbreaking effects in films like Dark City and The Matrix as foundations to build upon rather than templates to copy. The filmmakers also deserve credit for putting the thing together. At one point, the characters are immersed in at least three levels of mental world, but we never lose track of what is happening in which level.

With a cast that features the names already mentioned, along with supporting ringers Pete Postlethwaite, Tom Berenger, and Michael Caine, it’s hard to go astray. The acting is competent across the board. Gordon-Levitt continues to nudge the boundaries of his range, and is good here as Cobb’s more practical foil. Murphy, who knows his way around unsettling situations, plays it straighter than usual this time. Hardy and Rao get to produce some of the better-deserved of the film’s snickers. Page’s role is in some ways the most obvious, as the neophyte who gets trained in mental espionage, and Cotillard’s role is in many ways the most complex, for reasons best left unexplained here. The heaviest acting burden, however, falls on DiCaprio. Cobb has the most to do both in terms of plot and character development, and must seem, at different times, both trustworthy and untrustworthy as a barometer of what is going on. Yes, he’s an expert in the mind—but as in most fields, even experts have difficulty applying their insights to themselves. This plays to DiCaprio’s strengths: I find the actor is always best when he can play his tendency toward bravado off some nagging uncertainties, letting his narrow features suggest equal parts slyness and confusion. That’s the case here. DiCaprio sometimes brings depth to parts that don’t require it, creating muddled characters—but a little depth and muddle is just right for Cobb. I believe him when he says he’s improvising—up to the point where I don’t. And that’s as it should be.

Some grumbling is already beginning about the nature of the “dreams” represented in Inception—that they’re too stable and logical to be true “dreams.” Of course they are. As author Neil Gaiman notes, “dream logic is not story logic,” and Nolan has a story to tell. A literal visual transcription of a dream would be a chaotic mess. But it’s worth remembering two things here. First, the mental worlds in Inception are not true “dreams” at all, but artificial mazes created by Cobb’s team. Dreaming is only the issue because that’s when the mind lets its defenses down. Second, and more important, dreams do seem logical when we’re in them (as the movie points out), and that logic is highly subjective to the person dreaming. What Inception is really after is how we create reality—how ideas take root and what effects they have in both the long and short term. Every one of us, like Cobb and his team, try to create worlds our minds can navigate while protecting our deeper secrets. That my world and your world might conflict is, in some sense, the dynamic that powers this movie. As is the idea that my world might conflict with itself. Do we plan it that way? No. But you know what they say about best-laid plans.

Inception itself may not represent a perfect plan. It tries a little too hard to surprise us, and the fact that a few elements drop out along the way is either a flaw or an illustration of dream logic (I’m not sure which). The movie itself is like an intriguing dream: interestingly made, enjoyable to the senses, and equal parts tense and simply entertaining. And if you aren’t sure what it all adds up to when it’s over, at least it was fun to go through. There’s craft and thought here, and I much prefer an action film that plays with my mind to one that forces me to turn it off. Is Inception the stuff dreams are made of? No. The stuff box-office hits are made of? That’s more likely.