Inception

Inception Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page

Yet another which-reality-are-you-in movie (the best one is still Matrix). The teaser has sufficiently prepared me. The rest of this review will be spoiling. Stop reading if you care.

The key idea is that people can dream together. This technology provided the opportunity to invade someone’s dream and manipulate the victim’s conscience. The common thing to do is “extraction” which is to steal the victim’s knowledge. In the opening act, Cobb attempted to steal from Saito’s dream. But Mal, his wife, ruined it. Cobb was caught and Saito enticed him to do an “inception” job that is to embed an idea into someone’s mind: the ultimate mind manipulation. Enters the second act, and the new “dream architect” played by the delightful Ellen Page. (I have watched four of her movies so far.)

Cobb’s real pursuit is to see his kids again. Deep down, he has been tormented by being responsible for his wife’s suicide. We, the audience, were kept in suspense. Did he killed his wife? Yes, no, and really yes. So the antagonist changed from Saito, Mal, and, finally, to Cobb himself.

The ending was a bit weak. Cobb’s decision to part with his dead wife led to the second decision to save Saito (poorly set up in the opening). A logic problem further weakened the ending: to wake up, one must be kicked at a higher level, not at the dream level. Yet Ellen Page and the victim woke up by falling off to a cliff.

Of course, the story never explain how to wake up from the limbo level. One just have to “find himself.” Oh well.

I think there is a new sub-genre in SciFi called “alternative reality.” Since SciFi is already a small genre, this will be even smaller. This kind of movies have a “long tail” that people will keep on watching it for many years to come. By definition, this will be a classic then.