“You’re waiting on a train. A train that will take you far away. You don’t know where it will take you, but it doesn’t matter where or why…” (dialogue from film)
Inception is a dream maze. It’s never beyond grasping if one is keen to its twists and turns. However, this is not to say that its themes and symbolisms are as easily understood. One has to be prepared to be a bit mystified by this film. The visuals play with the architecture of our world and the unexpected turns of the story play with the architecture of plot that we have come to expect in films.
It starts with a very different type of corporate espionage. Leonardo DiCaprio’s Cobb is a master thief who has made a business of extracting important secrets from reticent minds while they are in vulnerable dream states. His latest job has him not extracting precious information but, rather, placing an idea in the head of an adverse target. His employer wishes for the heir of a monopolistic corporation to dissolve his father’s assets upon his impending death. However, it is explained that the mind is incredibly resistant to invasion. This means that Cobb and his team of specialists must fool the target’s sleeping brain into thinking that this idea originated and was cultivated within its own folds. There is one more ultimately important piece to the story: This is Cobb’s final job if it is successful and, because his employer promises to expunge his criminal record, he will be able to see his children for the first time in years. We have all the components for a great heist movie, but this particular heist movie has an infinite number more layers than usual. We dive into the maze along with Cobb and his team.
The experience is truly engrossing, but it is not a film without issues. I guess I’ve read a lot of chatter on feminist sites that Inception is a movie that marginalizes its female characters, romances them or leaves them as only carving points for the mold of the male lead, Cobb. These two characters are Cobb’s wife, lurking about in his subconscious like a true femme fatale and a young, brilliant architect, who is to build the dreamscapes for the job. But in my opinion, it’s not only the female characters that are marginalized but also every character in the movie besides Cobb, including his associates and his enemies. This makes sense in terms of the themes of the movie. There are suspicions by critics that this is all Cobb’s dream. Of course, then it is going to be built to feature his desires and the obsessions of his sub-conscious. It is his memory that builds this dream, what he remembers and how he remembers—the colors, the sounds, the people, the beauty of it, the angle of a glance, the pitch of a laugh or sigh.
Inception is not necessarily the most thoughtful or meaningful film one will see this year. However, it certainly is a well-crafted vehicle of its own with ideas both confounding and lucid. Nolan made me feel as if I was on a runaway train during the story; it had a destination, that much is certain, but where exactly is never clear. Nor is the why or the how. There is an ending, but it happens to be ambiguous and very quick. It also depends upon how one interprets the story and the place that story may have taken one’s thoughts. We each bring some much of ourselves to a film that a single critique is never possible and it’s also quite unreasonable to expect. One thing I can say about Inception, it does take you far from your own reality and where it places you upon arrival is completely up to your own mind.
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