July 17, 2010 -- The basic plot outline for “Inception” is vaguely similar to that of a 1984 film called “Dreamscape.” There is nothing new under the sun, including “Inception.” I thought this film was going to be a real brain-twister like “Memento” or “The Prestige,” two of director Christopher Nolan's earlier films, but “Inception” is not all that complicated. It is fairly straightforward until a slight twist at the very end (see the spoiler section below for a discussion of that twist). Some have called this movie an overlong bore, others, a timeless masterpiece. I come down in the middle. It is certainly no masterpiece, but I found it held my interest right up to the end, and it also seemed to go by pretty fast, even though it is fairly long at nearly two and a half hours (248 minutes).

The world of “Inception” is about invading and manipulating other people's dreams in order to obtain industrial or political secrets. In this world this is a common enough practice that there are corporate espionage types who specialize in training executives how to protect their secrets in dreams. The movie opens with one such attempt at espionage by a team of dream warriors (or did I hear that term in a “Nightmare on Elm Street” movie). Despite the team's failure to get the information, the head of the team, Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio of “Shutter Island”) is offered a job (and it is an offer he can't refuse) by the very man who defeated his plan. The job is to pull off an even more audacious dream scheme, inception. To accomplish inception, Cobb will have to plant an idea so deeply in the mind of a powerful industrialist, Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy of “The Dark Knight”) that Fischer will break up his industrial empire of his own free will, not just in a dream, but in the real world too.

Inception is said to be impossible, but Cobb says he has done it before. There all sorts of strange rules involved in these dream invasions. Some of them almost make sense. For instance, a person manipulating another's dream is seemingly not allowed to make himself invulnerable to knives and bullets in the dream, for instance, even though that would be useful. I guess part of the reason for this rule is so as not to tip off the intended victim that this is a dream and not reality. There is a fundamental difference, however, in trying to pry secrets loose from somebody in a dream, and trying to change their behavior in real life after the dream is over. In the first instance, it is better for the target not to remember the dream, in the second instance, he must remember the dream in order for the ploy to work. This little distinction is not discussed in the film. In some cases in the film, people remember their dreams perfectly well. In other instances, not so well.

Cobb recruits a team to try inception on Robert Fischer, who is about to inherit a corporate empire. Cobb approaches his mentor, Miles (Michael Caine of “The Dark Knight”) for a recruit, and he recommends a young girl, Ariadne (Ellen Page of “Juno”). It is Ariadne's job to literally build and maintain the dream world where the dream will take place. This business of designing dreams, complete with stories, landscapes and time lines, is similar to building a virtual reality game, at least that's what these so-called dreams seem like in this film. This movie should appeal to gamers for that reason.

A long-distance jet flight is chosen for the place where the inception will take place. It is a three-level dream. Fischer will be aware he is in a dream, and will go into another, deeper level of the dream to get what he thinks is secret information about his late father's wishes about the family company. It is a risky gambit. Because of the level of sedation everyone is under, a special “kick” of falling has to be scripted into the story to wake them from the dream. The “kick” is yet another one of those wacky little dream rules. If anyone is killed in this dream, they may not wake up, although this is not the case in most dreams (another special dream rule). Even more dangerous is Cobb's mental instability due to his guilt over the death of his former wife (played by Marion Cotillard of “Public Enemy”). He could slip into a deep dream state from which he cannot escape (another special dream rule for especially deep dream states). The deeper the dream state, the faster time seems to pass for the dreamer. He can spend what seems to be years in a dream that lasts only minutes in real time (yet another dream rule).

These special rules of dreaming seem to exist mainly to make the story work. The effect of these special rules is to make dreams seem more like reality than dreams in some cases, and less like dreams and more like video games in other cases, such as the exceptionally strange cause-and-effects rule which causes people in free fall in one level of a dream cause people in another dream level to fly about as if there is no gravity. It makes for interesting visual effects to say the least even though it makes no sense. Despite the weirdness, the story advances in a fairly straightforward manner, which is probably a good thing. It makes the story easier to follow and to keep all those confounded dream rules straight. This is an engrossing film with great visuals, adequate acting and an interesting story. The biggest weakness is that the characters, aside from Cobb, have very little depth. They are not particularly interesting. The story is more compelling than the characters who inhabit it. This film rates a B (more in the spoiler section below).

The ending of the film gives a strong hint in the form of a spinning toy top that it takes place in the real world. The image cuts to the credits just as the top is about to topple, indicating reality, but the top doesn't actually fall, creating some doubt. This is yet another one of the story's special rules. The spinning top is a supposedly infallible indicator of Cobb's existence in the real world (if it stops spinning), or in a dream state (if it keeps spinning). Every character in the film supposedly has one of these reality tokens to let them know whether or not they are in a dream. This makes no sense. What's to stop the top from spinning in the dream state if Cobb really wants it to stop so he can remain in the dream, especially if that's what his subconscious mind really wants? How come his wife wasn't convinced she was in a state of reality by her own special reality token?

Given Cobb's mental instability and his desire to be back with his family, I'd be willing to bet that Cobb is still dreaming, despite the toppling spinning top, but that violates one of the movie's supposedly infallible dream rules. There are so many of these special dream rules that it severely taxed my ability to accept the story. The rules seem more like a cheat to keep an ailing story afloat than something that really helps the story's believability. If the movie is not going to stick to its own rules, it loses its already thin credibility.

Another hint about the ending is the age of Cobb's children. Given the amount of time he's been out of the country, they should have aged, but at the end of the film they still seem to be the same age as they are in his dreams. This could mean one of three things, one that Cobb is still dreaming, and that's why they haven't aged, or two, that he didn't really spend much time away from his family in the real world, but spent a lot of subjective time away from them in a dream state, or three, the filmmakers didn't want to try to cast children who were slightly older but looked very similar for whatever reason. Most of the characters in the film have no depth, but there is a ready explanation for this if it is all a dream: Cobb is the only real character in the movie. This does not really help the film, though. Interesting characters are needed to go with the story.

The not-quite-falling top at the end of the movie could be seen as a hint that Cobb is still dreaming and that he has not, in fact, been reunited with his family. This is the sort of twist I was expecting by the time the end of the film came, but it is less than impressive, nothing like the “wow” factor of the ending of “The Sixth Sense.” Is Cobb dreaming or not? Who really cares? Cobb is so messed up that he can't really dream anymore without drugs. If he's so messed up he'd rather stay in dreamland than be with his family, maybe he and his kids are better off if he stays in a dream state. I think a sign of a good father is one who knows whether or not he is awake when he is taking care of the kids. In another part of the film, a dream master tells Cobb that maybe his clients are better off living in dreams than they are living in reality. Maybe that's true for them and maybe it is true for Cobb as well.

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