Inception can be summed up in one word: confusing. The movie doesn’t explain most of what goes on, but it trusts the common man to understand how everything works in the world of dreaming.
The summer blockbuster garnered in over 800 million dollars worldwide, along with eight Oscar nominations including Best Motion Picture of the Year.
Although Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight and Memento) was snubbed from the Best Director category once again, he did a hell of a job directing one of the most mind-bending movies ever made.
The movie is all about fighting our way through enveloping sheets of reality and dream, reality within dreams and dreams without reality.
Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is in a word, a thief. He infiltrates the minds of other people to steal their ideas and find out secrets they are hiding by using the process referred to as extraction. The opening of the movie has him performing this on a billionaire named Saito (Ken Watanabe). After this “test” fails, Saito hires Cobb and his team to do the opposite, and makes him an offer he can’t refuse, and offer that would end Cobb’s forced exile from his home and family. He wants Cobb to plant an idea in someone’s head by making them believe it was their own thought. This is called Inception.
Cobb’s team is made up by Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), his long time associate; Eames (Tom Hardy); Yusef (Dileep Rao), a master chemist and their new recruit Ariadne (Ellen Page), a brilliant young architect who is a protégé at creating mazes and spaces.
Cobb’s assignment is the “inception” of a new idea in the mind of another young billionaire, Robert Fischer Jr. (Cillian Murphy) heir to his father’s (Pete Posthlethwaite) empire. Saito wants him to start ideas that will lead to the surrender of his rival’s corporation.
Cobb needs Ariadne to create a deceptive maze-space in Fischer’s dreams, so that new thoughts can slip in unnoticed.
They explain that Cobb cannot know how everything is planned because of his late wife Mal (Marion Cotillard) who lives in his subconscious trying to destroy what happens in the dreams of others.
This movie is an adventure through the reality and dream worlds of not just Cobb, but every character as Cobb tries to get back to his two young children after his wife’s death, which he is being blamed for.
But what all fans and viewers of Inception really want to know is if Cobb is dreaming or not. Christopher Nolan allows the viewers to predict the answer.