Inception is the emotionally stimulating and technically innovative psychological thriller directed by Christopher Nolan. It is about the small group of intellectual adventurers who invade the dreams of their clients to solve some of their problems. In this particular case, two of the best dreams extractors, Cobb and Arthur are hired by one of the very wealthy businessmen with a goal to convince one guy to dissolve his father’s monopoly.
Technically, the movie impresses the viewer with its astonishing soundtrack by Hans Zimmer and capturing in-camera effects by Wally Pfister. Inception gets our attention from the opening scene with the crashing ocean waves and then it flies by keeping us engaged for almost three hours. Lots of hand-held camera work is used during dialogues between characters just like we saw in the previous Nolan’s movies. Sometimes the characters even get slightly blurry that can be result of intentional or unintentional effect of being in a dream.
Gravity-shifting scenes are the most entertaining parts of the movie, as they are the result of excellent directing skills and fascinating visual effects. However, visual part is not something that makes Inception an outstanding work. Instead, it is the conceptual side of the movie. Inception uses ideas of Sigmund Freud and Rene Descartes that they expressed talking about the nature of human’s psychology and the nature of dreams, respectively.
Descartes, for instance, had an idea that the dream is indistinguishable from the reality because what experience in the dream feels the same as it if it was while we are awake, so that all experience could still be a dream and all our supposed knowledge of the world could still be false being a part of our imagination. He came up to the conclusion that it’s impossible to think that you might be dreaming while you are actually dreaming, so that you have to be awake to have such a thought.
Actually, in the movie the main characters are unable to distinguish the dreams from the reality, so they have to use special totems that can always tell them whether they are awake or not. The problem, that they are deceived by their senses, proves another Descartes’ idea that we cannot trust our senses. These are just a couple of messages Nolan sends to the audience in Inception. All in all, the content of the movie is so deep and innovative that makes it stand out as a masterpiece compared to the other modern films. Everything has been built up perfectly and the way the story unfolds is something you have to view with your own eyes.
