Inception (Revisited)

*There will be some spoilers in this review, so you’re free to skip this post if you want to. If you’re okay with reading the spoilers, then enjoy.*

To welcome myself back into the fold of writing film reviews, I decided to revisit a film that I saw for the first time three years ago. Inception was first released in theaters in the summer of 2010, which was the summer after I had graduated high school. Back then, I was very much a film newbie, so there were a lot of films that I had never seen because I was never interested in seeing them. I had my preferences when it came to watching films, which differed from many others that I came to know in the film department at the University of Central Arkansas. However, it was during my time studying film in college that my mind became open to many films. I was willing to give them a chance because there was more to the films than I first thought by just glimpsing at the trailers or even hearing the titles being spread by word of mouth. It also helped that I was around people who showed me the possibilities that these films had to offer.

So for the next few months, I will either be revisiting films or watching new films that I was never interested in seeing when they were first released. Then I will explain how these films were able to either change my view of them for the better or for worse. 

Going back to Inception, I first saw this movie with my husband a few months after we began dating. My husband is a film composer, so he was telling me a lot about Hans Zimmer’s score for the film. I actually poked fun at it because I had seen people all over the internet talk about how Hans Zimmer liked to use a loud horn section in a lot of his film scores. That is not to say that Hans Zimmer is a bad composer, because he has created some very passionate and memorable scores for a lot of films. The Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy and the Dark Knight trilogy are the first few that come to my mind. However, for Inception, one key fact that I remember my husband telling me is about the music that was used in all of the dream scenes. According to my husband, Hans Zimmer explained that the low, loud horn beats that were playing in the background during all of the dream sequences was actually the song “Non je ne regrette rien,” by Édith Piaf slowed down. This was the main song that was used throughout the film to announce “kicks” right before they happen.

I will explain more about the kicks later. For now, let’s start from the beginning. The film starts on a beach where we see a character by the name of Cobb (played by Leonardo Dicaprio) wash up on shore. He is then captured by some kind of military man and is taken to another room where he meets an elderly gentleman that questions Dicaprio about his intentions as to why he is there. From there we jump to another point in time where Cobb is discussing with Saito (played by Ken Watanabe) the idea of extracting an idea from someone’s mind along with Cobb’s partner Arthur (played by Joseph Gordon Levitt). From there we jump to another location where there we find that Cobb and Arthur are unconscious and hooked up to some kind of machine, while chaos is happening in the world outside of where they are residing. This brings me to my first problem with the film. Watching this for the second time I was able to understand that all of these moments that we were cutting two were different dream sequences in and of itself. However, when I watched this for the first time, I was completely lost. I had no idea what was going on and why we kept jumping to these different moments in time. You really have to pay close attention to the dialogue to understand what is happening. But even still, it will leave you asking certain questions. 

However, one thing I will say that I liked about the film was how certain elements within each sequence were incorporated into others. For example, in the beginning, when Nash (played by Lukas Haas) is trying to wake Cobb up from the dream state where Cobb and Arthur are trying to extract information from Saito he hits Cobb on the side of his face. After that, we cut to Cobb in the dream state that is starting to collapse, and see him fly off the stairs and onto the floor. Another example from that beginning scene is after the slap does nothing to wake Cobb, Nash then pushes Cobb’s chair backwards causing it to tilt and fall over into a bathtub full of water. We get a slow-motion sequence of the chair falling over into the bathtub while cutting back and forth to Cobb in the dream sequence. However, once Cobb in the chair hits the bathtub, we see a flood of water in the dream sequence bursting through all of the windows eventually swallowing Cobb which causes him to wake up in the previous scene.

My favorite scene of this movie is when Cobb explains the concept of dreams and building the dream itself to a college student by the name of Ariadne (played by Elliot Page back when he went by Ellen Page). To me, this entire scene showed the level of creativity that director Christopher Nolan put into for the concept of dreams. Being able to warp the physical proportions of the world created by our minds. Adding things like bridges and pathways, while facing the ramifications of altering the world that is inhabited by another’s mind. It’s a very complex idea, but it opens the door to numerous creative possibilities. And Nolan implicates all the right choices.

From here, the film follows the steps of any typical heist film where we see a team of people coming together, going over the details of the mission, and how they will achieve their end goal. In this case, it’s convincing Robert Fischer (played by Cillian Murphy), who is the son of a business tycoon; Saito’s biggest competitor, to dissolve his father’s company. This is the “Inception” because they are tasked with planting the idea in the son’s mind, which is practically impossible according to Arthur. This is because the idea that gets implanted in the originator’s mind will not come from the originator. For example, when Arthur explains this to Saito, he gives Saito an idea by telling him not to think about elephants. When he asks Saito what he is thinking about, Saito responds with elephants (which is what anyone would think when they are told to either think about something or in this case not think about something). Arthur then goes on to explain that the idea is not Saito’s because he knows that Arthur gave it to him. The mind can trace the origins of some of our thoughts, which is an interesting concept. However, in a later scene when Cobb is meeting with another character by the name of Eames (played by Tom Hardy) Eames explains that attempting Inception is possible, however, it’s difficult because the simplest version of the idea needs to be planted in the mind so it can grow. From there, they plan out what the idea needs to be in order to successfully plant it in Robert Fischer’s mind. Taking the general goal of dissolving Robert Fischer’s father’s company and simplifying it down to something more emotion-based, like Robert Fischer’s relationship with his father. The reason they go down this route is because whatever idea gets planted in Robert Fischer’s mind could change everything about him which either could result in a positive or a negative reaction depending on the idea itself (as we will come to find as the film progresses). There is a risk that comes with invading someone’s mind and planting an idea.

I know that this is a lot of information to grasp, but this is my best way to summarize it all down to digestible terminology. And even still I doubt that this is enough to cover what is going on in this movie, because there is a lot. As I mentioned before, the dialogue is very complicated and the film’s point could be made in much simpler terms for the average person to understand. Or, since this is a movie, you could even show the meaning of some of these ideas, which the film does well for some of the points like the scene I mentioned earlier.

Another area that the film does well is with establishing the storyline of Cobb and his wife Mal (played by Marion Cotillard). We see her in bits and pieces throughout the film from the beginning to end and the story behind who she is and what happened to her is told really well in my honest opinion. It gets explored in depth when Ariadne jumps into Cobb’s mind to try and understand him and why Mal has such a firm hold over his mind. In the end, it’s revealed that Cobb knew Inception was possible because he had successfully attempted it on Mal. However, the result proved to be grave as Mal’s mind became trapped in the idea of her constantly questioning her reality. To her, death was the only way for her to get back to reality, because even though she was awake, in her mind, she was still stuck in the dream world. She was constantly searching to break free and return home. Similar to what Cobb is going through throughout the film while running away from his guilt of putting his wife through the Inception. This alone is a very strong story that is told perfectly throughout the film as we get bits and pieces that give us somewhat of an idea as to what had happened to Mal, but when it gets revealed is a great way to tie all of the pieces together.

Overall, there is a lot to this movie and I have told my husband that I was going to try and summarize my thoughts in this review. But the problem is because a lot is going on in this movie that it is hard to summarize it all into one review. There are so many different ideas that this movie gets you to think and even question your own reality. Especially if you’re like me and you end up falling down the Inception rabbit hole. All in all, my viewpoints of this movie have changed, because there are things that I like about this movie and things that I don’t. It’s complicated, but when it gets stuff right, it does it well and it really gets you to think.