Film Review: Inception

For some reason, mostly in parts in the duration of the film, Jamiroquai’s Virtual Insanity video, Citizen Kane’s Rosebud, heist flicks and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: Space Odyssey all but formed a juggling reflection of inspiration for Christopher Nolan’s Inception. Even Mc Escher was in the mixture. Kants and the Heideggers might even find this amusing because of the Existentialist theme.

Here was a unique plot of just blowing through dreams of some poor individual and harbouring whatever important file tacked beneath the endless limitations of the mind although the goal reverses when the lead cast tries to implant ideas through the subject’s dream. This is like what Matrix could have been if it met heist films like Ocean’s Eleven or whatever there may be.

The brilliance lies in the complexity of how Inception took in all unreal possibilities and train wrecked it into the subliminal and how the subliminal became the true setting while the real physical world is relegated to the bullpen. Christopher Nolan exemplified much of this when you have to account Physics into your dreams: So you have no gravity when this happens in your first dream? It delves even deeper when the subliminal gets differentiated when you have to dream inside a dream. There’s too many layers you wish you can group them Photoshop style.

Inception is one of those films where you have to watch twice to fully appreciate it, not only for the narrative but for the non-superficial. Some dialogues will probably require further dissection because the first time you encountered it might be when you’re digesting what’s happening while trying to locate that loose popcorn on your inner button holes.

The scoring is a tour de force. You have no time for the crescendo; it goes directly in the middle of the chorus. Just like in dreams, you always start in the middle not knowing where you were previously. The scoring is an African elephant parachuting directly into your lawn while your family is having garden barbecue. Relentless and unsettling.

The ending is one for the year. But it’s not as if it’s going to be as blurry and unanimously indecisive like Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: Space Odyssey. There’s been lot of analysis about the conclusion or rather the inconclusive ending and it’s mostly an open-thread debate. These are the kind of analysis where one enjoys watching a group talking about this and then one individual takes all responsibility as he rises to the occasion to explain it once and for all as if the rotation of our planet depends on his opinion.