Inception (2010)

Directed by: Christopher Nolan | 148 minutes | action, thriller, science fiction | Actors: Leonardo DiCaprio, Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Elliot Page, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Tom Berenger, Michael Caine, Lukas Haas, Tohoru Masamune

Have you ever noticed that you never live out your dreams from scratch? You always fall in half way. So it is with ‘Inception’ (2010), the film Christopher Nolan reportedly worked on for a decade and has been eagerly awaited by movie buffs around the world. Nolan was still working on his breakthrough film ‘Memento’ (1999) when he came up with the concept for ‘Inception’. In both films a tormented soul is central, who have to put the puzzle pieces of their lives in their places. While in ‘Memento’ it was about a man who suffers from amnesia and tries bit by bit to get his life back on track, in ‘Inception’ it is a fugitive who has become so entangled in the dream world that he cannot understand fiction and reality. can keep more apart. Another similarity: In both films, Nolan plays with time in an ingenious way. ‘Inception’ is the summer blockbuster we’ve all been looking forward to so much: finally we are stimulated in an original and intelligent way. The fact that not all puzzle pieces fall into place immediately is not such a bad thing. At least you have an excuse to watch it again!

Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Dom Cobb, the leader of a spy team that is hired to obtain classified information in a very special way: by breaking into dreams. The target is artificially put into a sleep state, after which the extraction takes place. Cobb is the only one in the world to venture into this remarkable form of corporate espionage, and in order not to endanger his family, he has had to leave them behind. The influential Japanese businessman Saito (Ken Watanabe), who has experienced Cobb’s arts himself, offers him a way out of this hopeless situation. To do this, however, he has to perform the impossible: ‘inception’, a reverse extraction in which ideas are not stolen from the subconscious, but ideas are planned into the dreamer in such a way that the ‘victim’ – in this case the wealthy heir Robert Fisher Jr. (Cillian Murphy) – experiences it as his own idea. Cobb takes on the challenge and gathers the best people around him. His loyal helper and planner Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), master forger Eames (Tom Hardy), chemist Yusuf (Dileep Rao) and architect Ariadne (Elliot Page), a brilliant young college student who, on the advice of Cobb’s father-in-law (Michael Caine), creates the dream worlds. and associated labyrinths.

Of course there are pitfalls lurking. Not only is inception a particularly risky venture, the team also has to deal with the shaky subconscious of Cobb, who struggles with his personal demons and guilt over the death of his wife Mal (Marion Cotillard), who still haunts him in his dream world. always chasing. Cobb finds himself at the intersection of two worlds: reality on the one hand and the dream world on the other. Desperately, he tries to cling to reality, but at any moment he could definitively slide into his subconscious. The personality of DiCaprio’s character isn’t the only complex thing about this sci-fi thriller. The plot is very ingenious – partly thanks to four ‘storeys’ in time – that it is sometimes not immediately clear what exactly is going on where. For example, the first twenty minutes of the film – like in a real dream you fall right into the action – are very confusing. Based on the young Ariadne – what’s in a name? – who, like the viewer, is new to this inaccessible world, things are clarified. But you will never get clarity. Nolan, who not only directed but also wrote the film (without his brother Jonathan), deliberately misleads his audience. It’s one of the many aspects that makes ‘Inception’ so fascinating. The highlight of this is the brilliant final scene, after which the director once again leaves the viewer full of despair. The master of manipulation strikes once more.

But ‘Inception’ is more than an ingenious plot. For starters, the action scenes and special effects are finger-licking good. For example, Nolan manages to bend and roll up a stately avenue in Paris, which produces a particularly impressive image. Surrealism is lurking, including the endless staircase modeled on our own MC Escher. Much-discussed are also the scenes where gravity has disappeared in a chic hotel. And so Nolan mocks all the laws. Of course, so much emphasis on visual spectacle also has a disadvantage: the attention for the characters is a bit lost. Apart from Cobb, they are therefore quite flat and one-dimensional. Is that bad? Not really in this case. Maybe it would have made the movie even more complicated if all the characters had their own troubles. ‘Inception’ is complex enough in itself. Typically such a film that you have to see several times to fully grasp it – as far as possible, of course. A blockbuster that will rack the brains? Nolan shows that it is possible. With ‘Inception’ he mixes the complexity of his best film (‘Memento’) with the spectacle of his most successful film (‘The Dark Knight’, 2008). The result is astonishing. Originality reigns supreme and we don’t see that often these days. Dreams will never be the same…