blogs_blog_1207

After watching it two and a half times, I like to think I understand it all. You just half to pay attention to what they're saying all the time.

I don't really get what there is to not understand. From memory:

 

Leonardo DiCaprio/Cobb and his original group first enter Ken Watanabe/Saito's dream, going down two "levels." This was something of an "audition," which they fail by not obtaining his secrets (since the carpet was wrong a group of projections entered too soon). It is during the second level of the dream that we first meet Marion Cotillard/Mal. (Oh, and Cotillard has a great first line.) Still, Watanabe offers the job of inception.

 

DiCaprio gathers a team consisting of JGL/Arthur, Ellen Page/Ariadne (omg symbolism), Tom Hardy/Eames, and Dileep Rao/Yusuf (oh man this is some deep stuff).

 

Page plays around for a little while to give Christopher Nolan extra interesting footage and to let us know how these dreams work. The audience responds favorably to Page's character not just being a perpetual "how-does-this-work?" machine.

 

Afterwards, Hardy joins on and DiCaprio confronts Rao about making him a sedative that can go down to a dream within a dream within a dream. There is a chase scene around here that draws on dream imagery, and a man who administers mass dream-things mentions that the line between dream and reality blurs, and asks DiCaprio if he dreams. DiCaprio rushes out but doesn't get to see whether his top falls.

 

The group reconvenes in Paris to discuss the method of inception. Positive emotion is deemed better.

 

Page discovers that Cotillard committed suicide while intruding on DiCaprio's drug-induced dream. We hear the first train speech. Page coerces DiCaprio into letting her tag along.

 

Watanabe buys an airline.

 

Level One: The group enters the dream with Cillian Murphy/Robert Fischer. They then kidnap him, and a train flies by because DiCaprio has baggage from Cotillard's death.

 

DiCaprio provides exposition in the form of an angry conversation about the possibility of slipping into Limbo and going scrambled-egg mind. Hardy gets angry. JGL gets angry. They ignore it because they can do nothing else.

 

Hardy assumes the role of Murphy's father's lawyer or something and insists that Murphy's father always loved him and wanted him to do something more than he (as the father) had.

 

The group, posing as thugs, go down a level deeper. Rao takes the car and does some cool action movie stuff throughout the next thirty minutes.

 

Level Two: DiCaprio becomes "Mr. Charles," a protector trying to make Murphy aware of the dream to combat the extractors. A glass breaks. Children laugh and turn away. Murphy willingly goes under, thinking DiCaprio and his group are with him.

 

Level Three: Page and DiCaprio act conveniently like foolish people, allowing Cotillard into the room where Watanabe and Murphy (and maybe Hardy) are. Cotillard shoots Watanabe, sending him into Limbo (as the drug is so powerful dying does not cause one to wake up).

 

DiCaprio and Page go down to Limbo. DiCaprio reveals that he actually incepted Cotillard to get her to be willing to leave Limbo, leading to her eventual suicide.

 

Catharsis.

 

Page self-administers a kick in the form of jumping off a building.

 

JGL creates a kick in the form of sending an elevator against the floor through explosives.

 

Rao creates a kick in the form of driving the van off a bridge.

 

DiCaprio swears to find Watanabe, leading to the very first scene wherein the two kill themselves as kicks.

 

The entire cast is awake (probably, assuming it's not all a dream) and exits the plane, leaving the airport. No one's brains are scrambled eggs, and DiCaprio returns home.

 

The children's actors are different--older--, and the top spins. But that doesn't matter, because DiCaprio has faced his inner demons and believes himself truly to be awake.

 

(Those of us who watch credits hear the kick music. Oh, that Christopher Nolan sure is funny.)

 

We realize that we haven't stopped talking about this darned movie for two years and that it's just an entertaining action movie that fortunately has an actual plot that isn't as useless as "Whose Line" points.

That ^

I love movies that make you think, so naturally, I loved Inception. But the ending, when we didn't get to see if he was really awake or not will be a thorn in my side for ever and ever. ugh.