An Analysis of Inception Complete with Spoilers

One of the best movies of the year so far, without a doubt, is the Christopher Nolan mind-bender known as Inception. The movie has created a bit of a sensation. With a summer filled with horrible sequels to worn out franchises, here is a movie that comes with no excess baggage already attached and, most importantly, no pale-but-sparkling vampires. It is a movie that has wholly new characters and one of the most original plots that the movies have seen in recent years. It is a tour de force, to use an over-used term, that should be admired by anyone who want something more than mindless silliness and unthinking action.

The problem is that there are far too many people who still seem to be confused. This puzzles me. I saw the movie its opening weekend and while I found it to be original, exciting and entertaining, I did not find it remotely puzzling. I was never once so confused that I was taken out of the movie. I let the movie wash over me, take me away, explain its rules and then admire it as it stuck to them and created something new and exciting. Sure, I had seen movies like Dark City and The Matrix, which this movie borrows from, but Inception created something entirely new, something exciting and it had me, very literally, on the edge of my seat. When the movie ended I was exhilarated and thrilled to have gone along on the journey. What I was not, was confused. Not even a little bit.

This is the part where the spoilers come in. The only way to look at this movie is to look at plot elements that give it away. So, if you have not seen the movie but plan to, then you need to stop reading now. You have been warned.

I think part of the problem with the movie is that people have heard it is complicated. So, they go in expecting to be confused and then, not surprisingly, come out acting confused. They do not want to take the movie by the rules it very clearly sets out for them. Yes, some of the rules are complicated and if you are not paying attention, you can easily be spun off into the land of confusion. The movie calls this "limbo" and if you don't want to end up there, the most important thing you can do before watching this movie is shut off your brain. Listen to what the characters say, but stop trying to out-guess the characters, figure out what the next scene is going to be or trying to predict what twists lay ahead. Nolan was working on this movie script for ten years, allow him to tell you the story he wants to tell and stop trying to second-guess him.

The movie is a heist movie. Yes, technically the protagonists are trying to put something IN someone's rather than stealing it, but the entire movie looks and operates like any heist movie you have ever seen. There is a cast of characters who each have a specific purpose when it comes to the heist that is the center of the movie.

Cobb is the character played by Leonardo DiCaprio. He has been stealing things from people's dreams for a long time. He is one of the best. He was trained by his father, played by Michael Caine, in this. Before he was just stealing he as an architect. He created the world of the dreams that he inserted his "victims" into. He was one of the best, but his experiments within the world of dreams cost him the life of his beloved wife. He tried an "inception" with her. That's implanting an idea. As Cobb states "an idea can be like a virus." As a writer, I know what this means.

When I write I often get a germ of an idea. When the idea is particularly strong it is like a worm inside your brain. Yes, I may be sitting there at my day job typing up another press release, but some part of my brain is still working on that story. It can be all-consuming at times. Cobb finds this out and it drives his wife insane. She dies and she has set him up to be a potential suspect in her death and he is on the run now.

So, now, consumed by guilt over what he feels is his fault, his wife appears, conjured by his own subconscious whenever he is in his targets mind. Since she is the personification of his guilt over his life and his job, she then sets about trying to sabotage whatever job he is on. So, when a vastly wealthy businessman approaches him to perform an inception to plant an idea in another industrialist's head, he is now a risk. He doesn't want the people he works with to know that things are getting worse within his brain. When the businessman offers him a chance to go back home it is too much to resist.

Since he cannot create the dreams anymore, he hires another architect, played by Ellen Paige. He has a long time friend who does all of the prep work played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. They also bring in a guy who can change his appearance at will within dreams to help them in their task. Then, however, they set about figuring out how to insert an idea into the person's brain so that he will think it is his own idea.

You see, if it is not done right the subject will know the idea is not his. He will reject it like a transplanted organ. If that happens Cobb doesn't get paid, he doesn't go home and he likely ends up in prison. So, to create what they need they are going to have to create a dream within a dream within a dream. Only by going that deep into their target's subconscious can they actually do a successful inception.

I think this is where people get confused. However, Cobb tells you exactly what happens. This is why the movie had to be heist film. In heist films there is always a point where the guy leading the heist team has to explain what is going on and why. Cobb does this, but I think people are letting themselves get lost, looking for answers when they are right in front of their noses. Maybe there are too many people still suffering from a post-Lost syndrome where not all of the answers were given at the end.

You see, when you go deeper and deeper into the target's subconscious the dreamer experiences time differently. While the real world is moving along at the regular pace, things are moving slower in the first level of the dream time. Things move even slower in the next and so forth. So, by the time you reach the third level or lower, it is perceived by those at that level that up to 50 years have gone by when, in real life, only a few minutes actually have.

There is a problem for this group, however. In order to get that deep they have had to use a new drug. This drug makes it so that the normal ways to bring them out of the dream will not work. Unlike other movies where you die in your dreams and die in real life, when you die in the dreams here you wake up with a jolt. Not this time, though. This time when you die in the dreams you end up in Limbo. Limbo is a kind of timeless, formless, hopeless dream space where a few minutes can seem like decades. However, in the real world, time gone by may still be only a few minutes.

So, while the original plan was to have a dream within a dream within a dream, things go wrong during the inception. As such, the team, or select members, end up having to go even deeper. Then, even deeper. But while one character looks, within the dream world, to have become old and aged, in the real world he is slumbering peacefully on the airplane.

The movie takes great pains to set up this world and how it operates. Then he sets Cobb loose with the Ellen Paige character to explain it at great length. But too many people keep expecting a double-cross. Or, they have had too-steady a diet of mindless movies where they don't have to pay attention. Perhaps they miss key sentences and statements made by the characters. If so, they are going to end up lost.

If, however, you follow the dialogue and listen to the characters, particularly Cobb, then you should not have any problem. The best way to watch this film is to let it lead you where it wants you to go. Every movie requires some manipulation of the audience. It is when the manipulation becomes too evident and obvious that things to awry. This movie manages to avoid that and creates a truly wonderful, amazing, and dazzling world where, literally, anything and everything is possible.

I like a movie that appreciates the fact I am a thinking and intelligent human being. I like a movie that requires me to think. I like a movie that is so well-written and well-plotted that I can turn my trust over to it without worrying about it. I don't have to try and be one step ahead of everything and I don't need to pause the movie to discuss it with my movie companion.

Inception requires you to think and pay attention. This is not a movie to get a huge beverage and then have to go to the restroom in the middle of things. This is not a movie to bring a date and then make out during large sections. This is a movie that, if you pay attention, allow the movie to tell its tale, and go with it then it will reward you. It will show you a world you might not have seen before with dazzling special effects, stunning action and three-dimensional characters that live and breathe and that you actually care about.

This why it is one of the best movies of the year. I just hope people give it more of a chance. It deserves it.