Inception (2010)

Christopher Nolan’s “Inception” is not for every movie-goer. It is a brain-expanding, mind-blowing trip so far down the hole of human consciousness it makes “Alice in Wonderland” and “The Matrix” seem quaint. This is a film for cinema lovers such as myself who obsessed over “LOST” because it wasn’t easy just entertainment, it required handing ourselves over body and soul to a unique visionary’s imagination, a story, and becoming part of a puzzle. This isn’t a film to ask, “What’s it about?” The question is: “What do you think it’s about?” As with "LOST" or David Lynch's best works, the answers are wide, complex and likely unanswerable.

As director and screenwriter, Nolan returns to the themes of his earliest films: “Following,” “Memento” and “Insomnia.” The plot is hung around a very basic genre concept – here, the haunted criminal on one final job – and turns the box inside out, and upside down. The mystery here lies in the seeker, the film’s protagonist, not in whatever crime he is trying solve, undo or commit. Even “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight” were warm ups to this game. Nolan asks the audience with “Inception,” What makes us us? Our memories, our past sins, or our dreams? All those together? Can a person’s dreams become so solidly entrenched in his or her mind, they become as real as the memories of schoolyard games and or one’s wedding? Take over his life? Swallow him whole?

Leonardo DiCaprio is Dominick Cobb, a thief who breaks into people’s minds as they dream while sedated, and sets out to trick or force their subconscious into letting loose vital secrets, data and ideas. He works for and against multi-billion dollar corporations, apparently for the highest bidder. Among his team are Joseph Gordon-Levitt (“G.I. Joe: the Rise of Cobra”) as a planner and Lukas Haas (“Witness”) as a dream architect, with Tom Hardy (“Bronson”) as a “forger” and weapons man.

The film opens with Dom and his crew targeting a wealthy Japanese business man (Ken Watanabe), who quickly turns the tables on the crew. The corker: He hires the group to usurp a rival up-and-coming tycoon (Cillian Murphy). The plan is not to steal an idea, but covertly plant one. Hence, inception. This is all just the set-up. The payoff cannot be described.

As with “Memento,” there is no central villain. The hero’s mind is a scrambled mess, and that is enough of an obstacle to overcome. Dom’s wife is dead, and he is self-exiled from America, where his young children live with his former in-laws. Nolan slowly pulls back the layers of Dom as his own memory-warped dreams smash into the custom-designed dreams of his targets. His wife (Marion Cottilard) appears, alternately seductive, desperate and completely unstable. When a train appears to crash out-of-control through L.A. traffic, it is only a hint of what’s going on inside Dom’s head, where his grip on reality is tenuous at best. Ellen Page (“Juno”) playa an alternate architect, who knows Dom’s troubles.

With the freedom of the unlimited dream-state imagination, Nolan creates cities that fold onto themselves as if they were paper boxes, entire buildings move and twist and tumble as the dreamer’s body is thrown about a moving car. Thankfully, he avoids the crappy, acid-sucking ruin of the dream-heavy "What Dreams May Come." In the movie’s tour-de-force action sequence, Gordon-Levitt fights several gunmen in a hotel hallway where the rules of gravity do not exist. Nolan also plays with time, knowing that the sleeping brain’s timer does not adhere to real, defined time. The further one sinks into dream states of subconscious -– three, four, five levels down -- time crawls. Minutes are decades, and can drive a man -– or a woman -– mad.

With “Memento,” Nolan shattered the rules on how a story can be presented, creating a murder mystery told backward and then sideways, from the perspective of a man with no apparent short-term memory. He shatters the rules again here, picking up on the unfulfilled promise of “The Matrix,” by making the characters on screen, and the audience as well, not only question the “reality” on screen but that of our own existence.

Hanz Zimmer’s buzzing, thumping score and the ironic use of Edith Piaf’s “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien” as a major plot device further breaks down the walls of reality on screen. Cottilard won a best Actress Oscar for playing Piaf in a French-language film. As well, a mysterious series of numbers – 528491 – take on the importance of those hatch numbers in “LOST.” As with that now-gone show, Nolan does not see the need to provide answers. Let the puzzle lay unsolved. DiCaprio’s most recent role in “Shutter Island” adds a weird layer as we grapple with trusting our protagonist in the first place.

All of this is mixed in with massive decaying cities, mind games and a snow-bound action sequence worthy of 1970s-era James Bond. With a sharp edge that is constantly off balance. Multiple viewings, I think, are required. The very final image will be debated among hardcore movie fans (nerds?) for years. The kicker isn’t the image itself, though. It’s the idea of the image. Love it or hate, or don’t get it, Nolan uses “Inception” to burrow deep inside our own heads. The movie isn’t about inception, it is an Inception. I've seen in three times, and still am awed. A