“Your world is not real.”
It’s been ten years since we’d first heard that piece of dialogue spoken by Marion Cotillard’s character Mal, a line that ultimate encapsulates the most basic concept of Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi heist thriller Inception. It’s a simple thought, but a powerful one that rocked everyone’s minds and continued to linger there, that even a decade later we’re still wondering whether Cobb is still dreaming by the end of the film.
Or is it us that’s dreaming right now, and we’re desperately waiting for the “kick” that would jolt us back to reality? See, in a normal world, Nolan’s latest potentially confusing film Tenet starring John David Washington and Robert Pattinson would already be out by now in cinemas, and we’d be there, maskless and sitting happily right beside each other eating some popcorn. And I bet it would be the talk of the town among entertainment websites, movie critics, and film buffs. We don’t live in that world, sadly. It’s 2020 and things are very much complicated. As much as Nolan insisted on keeping Tenet‘s original July 17th release date amidst the pandemic, Warner Bros. has finally decided to delay the film indefinitely for now, after repeatedly pushing it back every two weeks.
So now we find a comforting recourse in another Nolan movie, one that happens to be celebrating its 10th anniversary of successfully bewildering our minds, that it even reached new heights in mainstream pop culture. Inception memes were all over the internet in the early half of the 2010s, and its trailer’s iconic BRAAAM! brass noise spawned countless trailer parodies. These are partly why I consider Inception to be the film that truly cemented Christopher Nolan as a must-watch director, much more so than The Dark Knight trilogy. He became a category in itself that his name alone holds enough weight to sell an entire film nowadays, plus it definitely helps that he seems to be one of the remaining Hollywood blockbuster auteurs to produce original stories, instead of endless sequels, adaptations or remakes of old IPs.
I still remember seeing Inception for the first time in a crowded theater, relishing the complex peculiarity of a dream within a dream, and leaving with a persisting feeling of awe and confusion. What did I just see? Are we in a dream? Can you really go layers deep in dreams? Regardless, I was thoroughly impressed and entertained, and my immediate reaction was that I had to see it again. After all, rewatchability is one of the film’s strong aspects, and one can really benefit from seeing it a few times to fully take the complexities, helped by its penchant for handing out every plot point you need to know in a silver platter. Seriously, much of the characters’ clunky dialogue is either explaining the ins and outs of layered dreams, or just simply telling each other what needs to happen next. Subtlety is not one of Nolan’s strengths, and it’s a trait that gets more apparent with a few rewatches. And even then, you might still have questions.
Ten years on, it’s safe to assume most viewers don’t even remember the most specific details that make up the movie’s labyrinth of a plot, even with the majority of the film dedicated to straightforward world-building. Inception centers around Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), a professional thief that infiltrates people’s dreams to extract valuable information for high-profile clients through dream-sharing. If you want to know the future plans and secrets of your competitors, then he’s the man you hire. After failing his most recent job (a big no-no in corporate espionage I presume), a wealthy businessman named Saito (Ken Watanabe) offers him a chance to return home safely to his children and finally live a normal life, in exchange for “one last job” present in every other crime/heist story. The catch, however, is Cobb has to perform an “inception” – planting an idea in one’s subconscious – instead of the usual “extraction” gig. Because apparently, an idea is the “most resilient parasite” according to Cobb.
Joining Cobb is an ensemble cast of A-listers and Nolan’s usual suspects: Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Eames (Tom Hardy), Ariadne (Ellen Page), and Yusuf (Dileep Rao) all aid him in successfully pulling an inception on a sedated Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy) to break up his father’s empire, while having to get to have cool nicknames like the Forger, the Architect, and the Chemist. Each one of them I find to be more interesting than Cobb’s tormented husband/father schtick – a character arc the film further explores when there are a lot of mysteries presented as established facts it could’ve dived in a little further. Who are Cobol Engineering really? Perhaps we could’ve learned something more about them, or even the dream-sharing device’s mentioned military background and how it even actually works. And how come Cobb’s father-in-law (Michael Caine) is happy enough to just hand over a graduate student to be part of the corporate heist of a lifetime.
I found myself pondering these details and other kinds of questions on my most recent rewatch. Things that didn’t even come up to me during my initial few viewings, and only do once you’ve really familiarized yourself on the main story. Because Inception is all about the journey and the memorable moments that make trip worthwhile. The film has some of the most stunningly innovative set pieces in recent memory that still pack a lot of punch even a decade after: a destructive freight train plowing down cars on a city street, and the following rainy car chase. Ariadne making a Parisian city literally fold on itself with precision. The snowmobile shootout that feels like something out of a Bond movie. And of course, Arthur’s rotating low-gravity hotel brawl, an action sequence that’s probably the best of the bunch. It’s these moments that make Inception, for me, one of Nolan’s gems in an already strong filmography.
No matter how in-your-face the dialogue may be, how needlessly intricate the plot is, or what other “Nolan-isms” are present, Inception has Hollywood blockbuster spread all over it, even if it forces you to engage conversations over a spinning top. Because the truth is, it just seems to be more profound than it actually is. When you really break it down, the core of it all is about professional criminal wanting to come home to his children, all wrapped up in a seemingly philosophical vessel of dreams.
At the same time, it’s an accomplishment that’s built for endless rewatchings, helped by its ensemble cast, masterful filmmaking, and quite simply, the hours of fun and entertainment it delivers. And that’s what really matters at the end of the day, right? Because every time I see Inception, I’m always hooked to the screen.
The Talking Screen 