Director: Christopher Nolan | Release: 2010 | Genre: Sci-Fi Action.
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.
The protagonist, Dominic Cobb is a thief with the special, though not unique ability, to extract information from people’s brains while they are asleep. He meets with a man named Saito, claiming to have the ability to extract information from the mind and offers to protect his, even during sleep from thieves who steal people’s dreams. Cobb encounters a woman, Mal, who helps him get to Saito’s safe in his mind but she ends up siding with Saito. They take Cobb’s colleague as hostage.
Cobb and his partners wake and go their separate ways, with Cobb going on the run from his current employers. Saito catches up with Cobb and makes the extractor an offer: he’ll arrange to wipe Cobb’s criminal record (which would allow him to go home) if Cobb can manage to perform an inception on one of Saito’s rivals. Whereas extraction involves stealing ideas or information already in somebody’s head, inception involves the insertion of an idea into someone’s head in a way which convinces the target that they independently conceived the idea. Cobb accepts Saito’s proposal, even though he knows it has a catch: nobody has ever pulled off a successful inception, as the targets always realise that they didn’t come up with the inserted idea.
I enjoyed scene with the elevator where Cobb goes through memorises of his wife, which I found a creative way to move though non physical locations. The use of nature was beautiful; rain in one dream and snow in another, which felt added some environmental diversity to dreams
I especially like tow fight scenes in dreams, one where a hero fought another man in a hallway without gravity and another where Saito escapes a man in a stairway then runs down it but we see this from above and Saito somehow ends up behind the man and the stairway now has an edge that Saito and pushes the man off, it is both cleverly filmed and clever of the character. It is also clever because a similar effect was shown earlier when the architect was walking up some stairs with another character, which rewards the viewers to remember that scene.
Some of the dialogue describing ideas and their resilient nature I found clever, also the concept of stealing ideas and dreams within dreams. Dreams can appear real in the film not just because there are not surreal colours, flashing lights or whispering voices, but other people are present and are explained to be creations and extensions of their mind, which I found interesting.
I also enjoyed the twist with Mal being a projection created by Cobb of his dead wife, giving Mal and Cobb a sinister but intricate dynamic. In addition, I thought the way in which the dreams and reality were enmeshed in certain scenes were very well executed. For example, the dream life Cobb was living with his wife went faster than reality, which was mentally, 50 years.
The Soundtrack, composed by the talented Hans Zimmer, was ominous and dramatic, thus fitting with the film. Finally, the ending left the audience reeling if as we are left to decide if Cobb was truly reunited with his family or merely dreaming about them. Although, I can imagine it may be frustrating for some viewers, but it worked well with me.
Rating:
Tomás 