Summary
For more than two decades, Christopher Nolan has brought a rare sophistication to the world of big-budget blockbusters. His films combine an elegant filmmaking style withcomplex and intricate storytelling, while still being wildly entertaining. He shepherded Batman into a new onscreen era beginning withhis Dark Knight trilogy, and has put his distinctive stamp on everything from war movies like 2017’sDunkirkto high-concept sci-fi like 2014’sInterstellar.The box office and awards success of 2023’sOppenheimerwas a victory lap for a director who has set a high bar for mainstream Hollywood movies.
Inception’sKnotty Plot
Inceptioncenters aroundDom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), an operative who is paid to infiltrate a target’s subconscious to extract information along with his partner Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). While extracting an idea is fairly easy, planting an idea in someone’s head — the titular inception — is next to impossible. Still, that’s what Dom and Arthur have to do. They’re hired by a wealthy businessman named Saito (Ken Watanabe) to implant an idea in business rival Robert Fischer (Nolan regular Cillian Murphy) to dissolve the company he’s set to inherit from his dying father.
They assemble a crack team to do the job. “Architect” Ariadne (Elliot Page) is tasked with designing the dream layout. “Forger” Eames (Tom Hardy) impersonates people in the dream. Finally, “chemist” Yusuf (Dileep Rao) will create the drug that will knock the target out long enough to get the job done.
To make the idea subtle enough to stick, the team has to go at least three dream layers deep. Each layer becomes more dangerous than the last, as Fischer’s subconscious fights back against the invaders. Along the way, Dom is haunted by visions of his dead wife Moll (Marion Cotillard), which threaten to take his focus off the mission.
Nolan has a lot of fun playing with the visual and storytelling language of old spy movies and heist thrillers, as well as manipulating time and space in a way that feels all his own. The final dream layer, set in a snowy fortress, seems like something straight out of a James Bond movie, with the team exchanging gunfire with parka-clad goons. Some of the movie’s most memorable scenes come when the dream world is distorted, like when Ariadne folds a city scene over on itself, or Arthur is forced to fight off a dream henchman in a constantly rotating hallway. The movieends on an ambiguous notethat leaves the viewer questioning whether they’re still in the dream world, kicking off the kind of fan discourse that’s only grown more common in the past fifteen years.
InceptionDeserves to Be Revisited
WhileInceptionwas a massive success upon its release, it isn’t talked about as much in today’s film world. Perhaps it’s because blockbuster storytelling has changed so much since 2010 that the movie looks like a kind of relic. Meanwhile, Nolan’s own career has evolved to the point thatInceptionfeels like a stepping stone on the way to bigger and better things. These days, it’s as likely to be remembered jokingly for its confusing plot as for being a great film. But for film fans who haven’t seen it in a while, or may have been too young to grasp it when it came out, it’s worth watching today.
Inceptionis the kind of movie that reveals more of itself with repeated watches, its layered plotting becoming easier to grasp. Viewers who may have been put off by its dense dream-world mechanics might find that it’s not as confusing as they remember, or that it’s easier to get on its wavelength after some time away. At the very least, it’s an exciting action film with strong performances and impeccable style. And as far as confusing plotting goes, it’s got nothing on Nolan’s2020 time travel thrillerTenet,whose story makesInceptionlook like child’s play.
In a Hollywood landscape dominated by franchises and legacy sequels, movies likeInceptionfeel more special than ever. It’s the rare big-budget spectacle that requires something of its audience: a willingness to embrace its knotty plotting and trust that it’s headed somewhere worthwhile. Christopher Nolan feels like the only director who could get a movie about dream-based espionage, or athree-hour biopic about J. Robert Oppenheimer, over the finish line. For anyone who might want to revisit one of his past triumphs, better do it before February 21st, when the whole thing disappears from Netflix like a half-remembered dream.
