[Someone got there first— I fully agree with this guy except for his reference to Leonardo DiCaprio as an “actor”.]
If your mind was blown by the movie “Inception” you may not want to keep reading. But I beg you to look up a movie called “Wings of Desire” and watch it carefully and then ask yourself if “Inception” ever was anything but a sequence of suggestive disconnected strings of shit.
Dominic Cobb is allegedly a brilliant man, but, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, the suspense about that is over in a flash: he is actually an utterly self-absorbed nimrod, a dink, a twerp, a pretentious little wienie. But the film thinks you believe he is profound, so let’s proceed. Nimrod Cobb is allegedly the greatest dream hacker in the world. He is able to insert himself into someone’s dream. In order to convince you that Cobb is actually a deeply sensitive, intelligent, thoughtful man, we learn that there is a MYSTERIOUS reason why he no longer does the dream extraction himself, which makes it inevitable, in this lame plot, that he will. A Japanese man named Saito hires Cobb to penetrate his own dream, in order to test his ability. What he really wants him to do is penetrate the head of Robert Fischer, son of the owner of a company Saito wants to see broken up.
So Cobb assembles his dreamy team of people we are supposed to believe are amazing, because we are told they are, through casting and lighting and camera angle and music. They are Eames, a conman and identity forger; Yusuf, a chemist who concocts a powerful sedative, an achievement so startling it’s hard to credit it in this movie; and Ariadne, an architecture student who is so brilliant, well… well, she just is, damn it: and she is played with pouty discipline by Ellen Page, one of the least likable actresses in the movies. When she is recruited, she doesn’t even know that hijacking someone’s dream is possible, but somehow she acquires the ability to construct architectural landscapes within the dream. The connection between technique and theory here is so absurd I wonder how any audience could have sustained the suspension of disbelief required to enjoy it.
Ariadne indulges in some “dream-sharing” with Domie. She founds out he’s really very, very deep because he has a very dark, very mysterious, deep, dark, dark, mysterious secret, involving DEATH. There. Are you fucking intrigued? This is going to be very deep.
Is the idea that Dom wants to go home sensible? Home is where? I’m going to reread the plot summary to see if I figure out what the movie thinks I want to think about Dominic’s home. My theory is that it’s just a generic touchstone to evoke cookie-cutter emotional links to something like real feelings.
Anyway, the older Fischer dies and Robert flies to Los Angeles with the body, so the team, including Saito– seriously, the buyer wants to participate?– fuck this — sedate Fischer and “take” him into a dream, which has various levels, apparently. Why? Because you can do more special effects and chase scenes, which adds time to the thin plot, as far as I know. At each level, one member of the team hangs around to make sure the other members, who are “deeper” into other dream levels, can get back. Again, isn’t that wonderful metaphor for something? No, it isn’t.
So they break into Fischer’s head but they are attacked, because if the concept of the film isn’t stupid enough for you, Fischer has actually prepared for this invasion by implanting body guards in his own dreams. Like you do when planning your summer vacation.
Saito comes with them. Yes, I’m not kidding. And he is “wounded” in the dream, which means he might not wake up. “Of course,” you think. “The powerful sedatives needed to stabilize the multi-level dream will instead send a dying dreamer into ‘limbo’, a world of infinite subconscious”. Come on, people, you can be serious with this shit, can you? This is your favorite movie?
You know what– I’m not even going to bother. “Inception” is so infantile, obvious, and shallow that it does not deserve another word.