Review of the Film 'Inception'
The main theme in 'Inception' is dreams. Picture this: I have a very valuable information. Nobody can get this information from me if I simply don't speak. I can easily conceal this information. But what if let's say, I am sleeping and I am dreaming. And somebody manages to enter my dream, where my mind is completely open, and get this information from me. That is exactly what happens in 'Inception'. So Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt)are what we call 'extractors'. They are spies which use this new military technology that allows people to enter other people's dreams and get information from these people. So it's a sort of espionage but in the dream world.
'Inception' starts when Cobb and Arthur are performing extraction on a Japanese businessman, Saito. So they enter his dream and they' retrying to get some information. It turns out though that all this dream, this extraction, was actually set up by Saito, the business man in order to test Cobb and Arthur's abilities. Because what he wants to do is offer them a new type of job: he wants to do the exact opposite of extraction which is inception. Inception means planting in somebody's mind an idea, still throughout a dream. So basically they would enter the mind of another person and plant an idea in this person's mind. So what Saito wants to do is to bring down his competitor's company. His competitor is Fischer and basically he wants Cobb and Arthurto plant in Fischer's son and heir to the company, the idea of breaking up his father's company. Inception is very very complicated. You can't perform inception in any dream. The dream has to be very very long, very stable so you have to be strongly sedated. And to plant an idea even more firmly in a person's mind it will happen on different levels, so a dream within a dream. For example when you fall asleep and while you're dreaming you fall asleep again and you enter another world. That's basically what is going to happen: they're going to create different levels of dreams to plant this idea right into Fischer's mind, to get it as much as possible stuck in his mind. So it has to be a very stable dream, a very long dream. Another problem we have both in extraction and in inception is that the mind can start to realize that something strange is going on and everybody in the dream, so all the characters in the dream, the projections, will start turning on you .And fighting back to get rid of you, to get rid of the problem, of the glitch in your dream. Have you ever had that feeling when you're dreaming and suddenly you realise something wrong, like 'Wait, that's weird, that shouldn't happen' It's like white blood cells that are fighting off a virus. Another problem of this type of dream is that you can't simply die in the dream to wake up. Often when you're dreaming and you want to get out of a situation, if you die you simply wakeup. That doesn't happen in this type of dream because you might be three levels down and if you die there you will never come back. You'll stay stuck in a sort of limbo where it's hard to tell between truth and dream. And this is what happened to Cobb(Leonardo DiCaprio) and his wife Mal(Marion Cotillard) where basically they entered this type of really deep dream. And as time passes differently in a dream, so what could be a couple of hours in real life can be years in a dream. They spent a lot of time in this shared dream, down in this limbo, building a world completely from their memories, from their mind. But they started to lose track of what was reality and what was dream so when it was time to wake up and come back to reality, Mal (Cobb's wife) couldn't understand what was truth and what was not and she killed herself. And Cobb was accused of her murder. A way to know whether you're dreaming or whether you're awake is to create a totem, which is a small object which works only for you and which tells you whether you are dreaming or not. In Cobb's case he has atop which he spins and if It keeps on spinning constantly without falling, he knows he's dreaming. If the top falls over, that means he knows he is awake. In addition to all these problems Cobb's wife Mal also haunts him in his dreams and so she might also appear and distract him from his mission. Regardless of all these problems, Cobb accepts the mission because Saito promises him he will have his murder charge removed and also he will be able to see his children, which hasn't been able to see for years. So Cobb assembles a team of highly skilled people. So we have Eames, which is a very skilled identity forger. So basically throughout the dreams he can assume different identities, he can look like a completely different person. Then we have Yusuf, a chemist who will make a very powerful sedative to keep everybody asleep throughout a very long dream, without being disturbed by outside factors. Then we have Ariadne which basically is the architect. She will create everything we see in the dreams: the cities, the landscapes, everything is created by her. Saito, the businessman, also joins in on the mission to assure himself of the success of the team. When Fischer senior dies, the son, so the heir to the company brings his body on a 10-hour flight back to Los Angeles. The team takes this opportunity to have this really long dream throughout the whole flight. So they sort of abduct him and sedate him while he is on this flight, and they all enter his dream. Now basically the multiple dream world works that the whole team enter one dream. Then at a certain point somebody will stay behind and the rest of the team will fall asleep and enter another level. In this other level one person will stay behind and the rest of the team will enter a third level. The people stay behind because at one certain point they will have to bring everybody back.
At a certain point, when the flight is about to land they'll have to wake up. So they have to complete the mission in time. And they're going to wake up with something called a 'kick'. A kick is that feeling you have Throughout your sleep of falling, and you suddenly wake up like 'Oh my god, I was falling 'They are going to recreate this feeling throughout the levels with explosions or free fall. And they'll have to do it at the same time in the different levels. So in the first level there will be free fall with the van, in the second level there'll be an explosion, in the third level there'll be another explosion. Which will make the people have that feeling of falling and they'll all wake up from the levels to the first level. And they'll wake up on plane. So the team sets off. They enter the first level of dream. The first level of dream is a rainy city, and it's Yusuf's dream. In addition to all the problems that could happen, as soon as they enter Fischer's dream they realize he's been highly trained to defend his mind from this type of attack, so from inception and extraction. Every single person in the dream, in Fischer's mind fights back against them. And they can't die because if they die they'll be stuck in limbo and won't be able to wakeup. So they are quickly loaded into a van, Yusuf stays awake driving the van, trying to get away from these people fighting back, and the rest of team fall asleep and enter the second level of dream. The second level of dream is Arthur's dream. In which the team starts to interact with Fischer. Cobb lies to him saying that Fischer's godfather is planning something against him, he's trying to bring him down. Cobb suggests Fischer to enter a dream in order to discover what his godfather's planning. It is just an excuse to enter even more into Fischer's subconscious. Arthur stays behind and they enter the third level of dream. The third level of dream in which they enter is a snowy fortress in which Fischer's mind is fighting even more back against them because they're so close to planting the idea. The problem is that Mal, Cobb's wife appears and shoots Fischer. Fischer immediately enters into limbo because he dies. Saito is also injured by some of the people in Fischer's mind and also enters limbo. Cobb manages to kill Mal and she also enters into limbo. Cobb and Ariadne decide to enter limbo themselves as well to get everybody back before the kick starts. The problem is that in the first level Yusuf can't keep off these people fighting anymore, he just can't manage. He drives the van off a bridge and the feeling of free fall starts. And this means the kick is initiated to quickly. So the van starts to fall and in the second level there's suddenly that feeling of free fall and so there's no more gravity, every body is floating around. So Arthur has to quickly arrange a new type of kick by putting explosives on a lift. He too initiates the kick and the explosion has effects in the third level, so where the snow is, creating an avalanche. So the kick is initiated too fast, the people are already feeling that movement that's going to wake them up, so they have to complete the mission very quickly. Cobb and Ariadne enter limbo, find Fischer and Ariadne brings Fischer back into the level before and Cobb stays behind to find Saito. The idea is finally planted into Fischer's mind to bring down his father's company, the kick works through all the levels: avalanche, explosion in the lift, van falling off the bridge. And they all wake up back on the plane. Fisher has no idea that all of this has gone on, he just simply wakes up. But he has the idea now of breaking his father's company. Cobb easily passes through security because he doesn't have his murder charge anymore and he goes to see his children. Just before he turns around to see his children though, he spins his top and the film cuts to black, so the film ends just before the top falls over. So we see it slightly wobbling but it doesn't actually fall over. Is Cobb still stuck in limbo? Because we don't actually remember him with Saito, we dose him finding him because we see him talking to him but we don't ever see them coming back from limbo. In the script of 'Inception' there is: 'The top is still spinning and we cut to black'. Christopher Nolan said that the meaning of film is no twhether Cobb is still dreaming or not dreaming. The important thing is that Cobb managed to finally put all of this behind him and go and see his children, whether in a dream or not, he is finally happy .
