Inception may be the first movie I've seen this year that will be nominated for best picture and, considering that there haven't been too many great movies released this year, it could very well win. So far it's the best movie I've seen this year and unless something else comes along to blow me away I can't see there being any other movies that could beat it. It probably won't win, Science Fiction hardly ever wins Best Picture, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't win.
The movie is about a team lead by Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) who had the ability to enter people's dreams. They do this on a as hire bases so they can extract information from the person's mind. Normally they're hired but rival companies to get insider secrets from the company rivals. But one man, Saito (Ken Watanabe) wants to his Cobb and his team to plant an idea into a rivals head. So, instead of extraction it's an inception that he needs. The idea is a simple one, Sabio wants a rival energy company to break up before they become too powerful to compete with. So, Cobb assembles his team (which includes Ellen Page as a new member of the team, a brilliant architect who they need to help construct the dream land they need to infiltrate, she also acts as an audience surrogate so we can learn as she does.) gets the plan together so they can enter the mind of Fischer ( Cillian Murphy) who's father is on the verge of death. He'll take over the company when the father dies (he's on his deathbed when the movie starts) so there would be no better time to make their move right after that happens.
And, of course, Cobb has a secret he won't tell anyone, a secret that could kill him and anyone else while in their dream state. What I do like about the movie is the rule that if you die in your dream all you do is wake up. I always hated the idea that if you die in your dream (or if you're connected to a complex computer matrix *cough*) that you die in real life. Seriously, I've died in my dreams and I've either woken up, not actually died, or returned as a ghost. The ghost thing has happened to me in at least three dreams I remember, but mostly I just wake up.
To make things more tense in the finale they sort of drop that rule a bit and instead of dying in real life you fall into Limbo or a permeate sleep state that you can't wake up from.
This is a movie you need to see a few times I think to really understand it. The plot was pretty easy to follow, it's pretty much a complex caper movie, but there were things along the edge that need to be examined further. Cobb's relationship with his dead wife, Mal and how he perceives her in him subconscious is really complex. The idea of limbo and dreams within dreams within dreams is fascinating. I loved how they played with time, how five minutes on the real world equals about one hour in the dream world and how as you dive deeper in the levels that 6 to 1 ratio follows you so that if you're three levels deep five minute would equal six months on the third level. The way that played in the climax had me glued to the screen (not even the laughing teens behind me, who obviously were not interested in the movie other than some explosions, didn't bother me much.) Just like the dreams they were infiltrating this movie had many layers that could only be understood with multiple viewings.
