Image courtesy inceptionmovie.com.

Title: Inception

Directed by: Christopher Nolan

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ken Watanabe

“Inception” was intentionally marketed in such a way that viewers, upon seeing the trailer, would have little idea about the plot of the movie. One thing is clear: This film is unique, monumental and, quite possibly, complex.

The movie portrays a world in which technology has been developed that allows individuals to share dreams. In the advent of this technology, individuals such as Cobb (DiCaprio) and Arthur (Gordon-Levitt) make a living as extractors, or agents who enter the dreams of others to obtain classified information. On one such mission, the procedure goes awry, but rather than being killed by their target, they are offered great rewards for the use of their services in a dangerous operation.

Their work is complicated, however, when Cobb’s own subconscious starts trying to wrest control of the situation. Cobb is a man with a deeply troubled past (one might draw correlations to DiCaprio’s role in “Shutter Island”), and that past has been locked away in his dreams. To the danger of Cobb and his fellow extractors, that past has every intention of breaking out.

Though the intricate details of the “dreamsharing” process are not explained in the film – how would one explain a fictional technology? – the mechanics by which the process operates are. The time spent in a dream, the “kick” needed to pull out of a dream, the construction of a dream world and its population by one’s subconscious, all play a part in the movie. The last one in particular leads to rather surreal scenes in which dream worlds are shaped as the dreamers are within them.

The great thing about these mechanics is that they are not relied upon as a means for escaping plot holes. Rather, they become elements of the plot themselves. For instance, the characters explain early on that dying in a dream will cause one to wake up. When one becomes trapped in a series of dreams within dreams, losing one’s sanity and grasp on reality, the idea of escaping by a bullet to the head sounds absurd. The characters become restricted by the mechanics of the dream world rather than manipulating them as if they were magic.

“Inception” is, if nothing else, a suspense film, and it does suspense well. At a certain point in the film, different characters are operating within three different “levels” of dreams, a dream within a dream within a dream, each moving at a different relative speed. As the main action occurs within the deepest level, time moves incredibly slow at the outermost level. A good part of the movie occurs as the characters, in the outer level, are tumbling in a van toward a river – and the viewer is occasionally reminded of this through inserted shots of the van falling at an incredibly slow speed. The tension of such scenes, elevated by the soundtrack, is compounded by the fact that, within each level, specific actions must occur in sync with each other to guarantee the safety of everyone involved.

Add to that a subconscious that is trained to fight back against intruders within the dream, as well as a world that can alter and crash at any moment, and you have yourself quite the thriller. Like many gun-filled thrillers, though, “Inception” suffers from the same trope of (mostly) bullet-proof good guys, in which the enemy troops can fire bullet after bullet at them and not hit a single target as they are picked off, one by one, by the main characters.

“Inception” is a rather long film – spanning almost 2 1/2 hours – but it is paced well. At no point does it dally for too long. In actuality, the film has a lot of exposition going on, and it might have benefited from even more time spent in explanation. While the viewer is dumped into the dream world with no explanation as to how it operates at first, a somewhat lengthy section of the movie is spent introducing the key mechanics as well as the key characters.

Even so, I can’t help but feel that the film might be too complex for some viewers. It is a film that requires patience and an open, active mind. For those willing to take the time and effort, though, it is certainly worth viewing.

Anyone who does not want to think too much while watching “Inception” may be drawn in by the action. One mechanic of the dream world is that factors such as gravity on one’s sleeping self affect the world around one’s dreaming self. So, in one scene, as the van full of dreamers is tumbling down a hill, the gravity in the dream world is turning on end. This distortion makes for a particularly amazing fight scene in which Arthur is running across walls and engaging in free-falling hand-to-hand combat with enemies in a hotel hallway.

One aspect of the story that I got hung up on was the convenience of the character Ariadne (Ellen Page). She joins the team of extractors as an “architect”, one responsible for constructing the dream worlds, though she has no prior experience. Regardless, she takes to the concept rather quickly. Likewise, she becomes aware of Cobb’s personal trauma and makes it her mission to understand its depth, to the extent that later on in the film, she is standing over his shoulder and giving him advice as if she were a psychiatrist who had sat with the man through several sessions. At times, I could not help but feel that her character is used as a sort of foil for Cobb, giving him another person to voice his innermost thoughts so as not to leave him talking to himself.

Regardless, the movie is suspenseful, the characters are clever, and the story – though hard to follow at first – is unique and worth the time investment.

Below is a trailer for the film. It is the second trailer, and it gives a bit better of an idea as to what the movie is about than the original teaser trailer.