Inception - Will Blow Your Mind!!!!

Inception is one of those few movies which not only offer the pleasures of sight and sound but tops it off with the intense pleasure of thought. It is a movie that will enthrall you if you enjoy ‘thinking’ the movie as much as ‘seeing’ the movie. If you thought Matrix was based on a complex idea, Inception will probably blow your mind. It is a movie which having prior about the underlying thought the movie is based on will help some folks to sit back and enjoy the movie without having to tax their brains trying to understand ‘what the heck’ it is all about.

The movie is not just about dreams, the movie is about an idea, as Mr. Cob (DiCaprio) says "the single most potent thing in the world is a simple resilient idea that will not die". The sub-conscious human brain is so powerful that if you can get it to believe one very simple resilient idea, that idea can ‘define or destroy’ the person. ‘Shared dreams’ is just the media through which the idea is implanted into the mind of a person. The ideas implanted deep in ones ‘sub-conscious’ mind, if it is simple and resilient enough, will have consequences in the real world outside. The process of implanting this idea into the mind of the subject through multi-layered world of dreams is called ‘Inception’.

Mr. Cobb’s expertise is ‘Inception’. In the movie Mr. Cobb tries go into the world of ‘shared’ dreams to implant an idea into the sub-consciousness of an heir of a business empire that would ‘redefine’ his outlook and impel him to break-up his empire. A breakup of that business empire would benefit Mr. Cob’s client’s business conglomerate which otherwise would get swallowed up by the monopoly that the heir is trying to create. The problem with Inception is that once a person enters into the Freudian world of the sub-conscious, controlling the realities of that ‘shared’ dream world becomes difficult because the sub-conscious mind of the recipient reacts violently to the idea that is being implanted into it.

As Mr. Cobb’s mind dreams a reality where he can make the heir's sub-conscious gullible enough to allow him to place the idea in the heir’s mind, the heir’s sub-conscious mind works against Mr. Cobb’s to resist the control Cobb is seeking over his sub-conscious mind. So Cobb has to create a reality in the ‘shared’ dream world where the heir will make his own sub-conscious mind implant the idea into itself. To do this, Cobb needs to go into ‘nested dreams’ - multiple dreams within a dream. He recruits a team that will work with him in the new realities of the nested dream world. Controlling the complicated world of multi-layered dreams makes the movie super-exciting and original.

Though the concept of inception may seem alien to us as it involves manipulating dreams, it really is not. When Cobb and his team plan Inception on the heir, they strategize that “the idea needs to be implanted deep within the sub-conscious in such a way that the recipient believes that idea was actually his own…  so when we plant the idea, we need to give a ‘positive’ feel. We need to give him an 'emotional' connection” and make it appear that the 'positive' idea is his own. Doesn't this happen to us everyday in the TV ads? Don’t advertisers aim to implant brand names and images with a 'positive' feel about them? Don't these positive images have a big role to play when we do to the movie theatres and say, “hmmm I need a coke”?

The movie novel as it is, has so many aspects which are manifestations of the deeper truths and questions about life and human Nature. It delves into questions about advertising psychology to Freudian guilt complexes to Metaphysics of life. One of these questions I think is worth some appreciative contemplation… What makes the movie super-complicated and worthwhile is that Cobb has his problems with his own sub-conscious mind. Mr. Cob goes back and forth between the dream and the real world. When a person is in this business, he loses his ability to recognize what world is real, the dream world seems just as real. Mr. Cobb and Mrs. Cobb are a great loving couple, but they have a major difference of opinion. They are not in agreement about which world is the real one. Mr. Cobb thinks the world outside is real. Mrs. Cobb thinks the dream world is real enough. Mrs. Cobb actually gets back into what Mr. Cobb thinks is the real world, but kills herself thinking that it isn’t the real world, hoping to enter into another level of reality which would be more real. As Mr. Cobb goes into different levels in the dreams to implant ideas on behalf of his clients, his sub-conscious mind can’t help recreating Mrs. Cobb. The version of Mrs. Cobb his sub-conscious creates works against him to spoil his inception plans. The complicated love between the two adds a whole new level of mystery.

In the dream world, Mr. Cobb and Mrs. Cobb argue about what reality really is. They dabble over the question of Metaphysics. Mr. Cob says that though he enjoys playing God in the dream world creating his own realities, he can’t go on that way forever. Mrs. Cobb thinks differently. When Mr. Cobb says that the dream world they live in is not real, she replies, “You are talking about what you ‘know’, I am asking you to ask yourself what you believe and what you ‘feel’. Don’t you feel happy in this world”.

At a very deep level, the struggle between Mr. and Mrs. Cobb is a struggle between the modernists and the postmodernists and the pop-culturists. The modernists are rationalists. They believe there is ‘one’ truth which needs to be rationally pursued. The postmodernist believes that truth is what you think it is or make it to be, there is no ‘one’ truth to be pursued. The pop-culturists don’t give a hoot about reason or truth they want to have the ‘Black Eye Peas’ kind of ‘good time’. Mr. Cobb is the modernist who thinks there is ‘one’ real world where their children really are waiting for them. He thinks, 'where Truth is there his real Home will be, for his children will really be waiting there'. Mrs. Cobb is a postmodern pop-culturalist. She has a ‘good time’ in the dream world and is satisfied with the version of children her sub-conscious mind has created for themselves in the dream world. After all, it does not matter whether it is real or not as long as it is ‘feels’ good right? Or, maybe not?

This is the central but unstated dilemma of this movie. What is real? What really matters? Knowledge or Feeling? Truth or Perception? Playing God in an unreal secluded world or being human in the real shared world? In a brilliant piece of cinematography, the movie leaves that question open-ended. It will blow your mind off. I would wish there is a sequel to this. If there were an Inception II, I would be the first guy in queue for the 1:30 AM show, just as I was on the day Inception got released.