Christopher Nolan’s explorations of the human mind and the power of memory continue in Inception, a caper movie that fuses elements of noir, action, and Jungian psychology. In a world that may be parallel to our own, technology exists to enable people to infiltrate another’s dreams and steal secrets from that person’s mind. Leonardo DiCaprio is Don Cobb, a professional “extractor” who hires himself out to corporations wishing to steal trade secrets hidden in the dreams of their rivals. Cobb is blackmailed by one corporation into a job that involves planting an idea rather than stealing one–inception.
Like a lot of movies before it (Blade Runner, The Matrix, Brazil), Inception plays with our tendency to confuse dream with reality. And the arresting imagery of the film’s dreamscapes invites the audience to do the same. But what makes this film interesting is how it constructs a dreamworld with its own internal logic and rules. The characters themselves can sound a little silly when explaining dreamworld mechanics, but those mechanics also make for a taut and engaging story. Nolan trusts the audience to keep up with him and, judging from Inception‘s great box office numbers, that trust is well-placed. If only more movies respected their audiences as much.
