You are now watching: Ep. 13: Inception

A non-franchise, non-comic book Hollywood blockbuster. Action, drama, sci-fi. Directed by Christopher Nolan. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ken Watanabe, Ellen Page, and Cillian Murphy. Patrick’s rating: 7 crickets.

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Inception Trailer


THE ÜBER-LONG SYNOPSIS FROM WIKIPEDIA (W/ SPOILERS):
Dominic Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) washes up on a beach and is brought before an elderly man by guards. The guards show him that Cobb carries only a gun and a teetotum, which the mans says he had seen before “in a half forgotten dream.”

Cobb is in Saito’s (Ken Watanabe) dream, where he, Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and dream world architect Nash (Lukas Haas) are on an extraction mission, in which an individual’s mind is infiltrated through dreams and information is stolen. Extractors and their victims have to sleep in close proximity to one another, connected by a suitcase device that administers a sedative and a shared dream world built on their mental projections. In a dream world, pain is psychologically experienced as real, but death results in awakening. The extraction fails, but Saito reveals that he is, in fact, auditioning the team to work for him, and have failed. Cobb then says that despite the failure, he is still the best infiltrator in the world. Saito takes Nash away and asks Cobb to perform the act of “inception” – using dreams to implant an idea into the target’s mind, rather than the more commonplace, and much simpler, act of stealing them. Inception is largely considered impossible, but Cobb says it is possible, since he has done it once before. Once Cobb is finished with his mission, he can reunite with his children. Realizing the extraction mission’s failure and the consequence of being eliminated by their employer within two days, a mysterious firm called Cobol Engineering, they accept Saito’s arrangement.

The target is Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), son of Saito’s terminally ill corporate rival Maurice Fischer (Pete Postlethwaite). The objective is to convince Fischer to break up his father’s empire, preventing it from threatening Saito’s. Cobb recruits Eames (Tom Hardy), a forger who can change his appearance inside dreams; Yusuf (Dileep Rao), a chemist who develops sedatives; and student Ariadne (Ellen Page), who has been recommended by her tutor (and Cobb’s father-in-law) Miles (Michael Caine) who refused the job in the belief that inception is impossible. Ariadne is trained by Cobb and Arthur as their new architect, a role that requires the building of complex levels similar to labyrinths that mimic the real world. The architect must be able to recreate extraordinary amounts of detail in the environment while the dreamer provides the human projections. Along the way, Cobb observes firsthand Ariadne’s natural talent at building dream landscapes. Cobb explains to Ariadne that the human projections in a person’s dream act more or less like white blood cells. If the dreamer becomes aware that a foreign entity has entered his/her subconscious, and this could even be caused by simply being aware that they are in a dream, then the projections will become increasingly hostile. This leads to Cobb explaining a set of precautions that extractors take to prevent themselves from becoming lost in the dream world, such as never using real memories to build levels or carrying a “totem”, an individualized object carried by extractors in order to tell when they are dreaming. Cobb carries his wife’s totem, a spinning top. If Cobb’s top spins indefinitely, he knows he is in a dream; if it slows down and eventually stops, in accordance with the laws of physics, then he is not. Ariadne later tailors a chess pawn to move the centre of gravity towards the side. In the meantime, Cobb discovers Cobol agents who have been sent out to kill him, and barely escapes.

A plan is formed, and will use three levels of dreams – so to speak, two dreams within the dream. A team member is left behind on each dream level to prepare the others for their entry; Yusuf will remain on level one and Arthur will remain on the second level, and they will also have to protect the dreamers’ bodies and coordinate their eventual waking via timed “kicks”. Since Yusuf’s sedatives leave the inner ear unaffected, the sensation of their bodies falling will awaken the dreamers and so such falls are orchestrated at each level: explosives will level the hospital on the deepest level, explosives will blow the room the team is in up in the middle level, and the minibus will crash into a river. While the dreamers have forewarning of an imminent kick through music they can hear playing from the preceding level, the kicks must still be timed perfectly since each progressively deeper level of subconscious has a slower time scale.

Due to the plan involving powerful sedatives and creating multiple dreams within each other, an in-dream death will not awaken the dreamer but instead send them into a limbo dream world where their mind will remain trapped for an indeterminable amount of time. In Cobb’s mind, Ariadne discovers that a vision of his deceased wife Mal (Marion Cotillard) continually haunts him, sabotaging his missions. His children also haunt him – he never sees their faces when he sees them, and this always distracts him. Cobb reveals to Ariadne that he and Mal spent fifty years in a limbo forging their lives. After waking, Mal remained convinced that they were both still dreaming and committed suicide to return to reality, hoping to force her husband to join her by incriminating him in her death. Cobb refused and was forced to flee the U.S. and leave his children to avoid murder charges. In return for completing the mission, Saito promises to clear the charges and reunite Cobb with his children.

When the elder Fischer dies in Sydney, Saito and Cobb’s team share the flight with Robert Fischer back to Los Angeles and drug him. They enter Yusuf’s dream, a rainy downtown area, and kidnap Robert. However, they come under attack by Fischer’s trained projections, since Fischer has been trained to fend off potential extractors. In the ensuing shoot out, Saito is badly injured. Eames impersonates Peter Browning (Tom Berenger), Fischer’s godfather, to extract information from Fischer. This does not work, though, so they try a hostage situation, and ask him for a safe combination. Neither of them know, so when asked for random numbers, Fischer says 528491. Except for Yusuf, who must remain on the first level to drive and administer both the kick to wake the team up and the next dream, they then enter the minibus and sleep into the next dream level.

They enter Arthur’s dream, a hotel where the team tricks Fischer, who is talking to a blonde who has just provided him with her number (528-491), into believing that the kidnapping on the first level was orchestrated by Browning. Cobb convinces Fischer to enter Browning’s subconscious in order to find out his motives, but, in fact, the team enter deeper into Fischer’s. Arthur remains to provide the kick by planting explosives on the ceiling of room 491, which would blow the team into the ceiling of room 528 directly above.

The third level is Eames’ dream (though Fischer believes it is dream-Browning’s), a hospital located in the mountains, which Fischer must break into to reveal the planted idea. The first kick strikes – the minibus hits a barrier on a bridge and begins to fall. The kick causes Arthur to fly backwards in the hotel (then the falling motion causes a loss of gravity on this level), and triggers an avalanche in the mountains. During the operation, Fischer is killed by Mal, causing him to go into limbo. Ariadne and Cobb follow Fischer to this fourth level in an attempt to salvage the mission and confront Mal. Level four is Cobb’s dystopia, and Mal attempts to convince Cobb to stay with her by making him question his reality as he was chased by agents that could have been projections. Cobb reveals that he was the one who had planted the idea in Mal’s mind to wake while they were in limbo, but which unfortunately persisted even after she did wake and made him indirectly responsible for her suicide. This is how he knew inception was possible. Mal attacks him with a kitchen knife, but Ariadne shoots her. Cobb then tells Mal of a promise he made to her – that they would grow old together, and that they did, but she did not remember because it was a dream. Fischer and Ariadne return to the mountain fortress by jumping off the building, where Fischer opens a strong room where his terminally ill father is still alive. He reaches the intended understanding that his father had wanted him to be his own man, and retrieves a will from the safe next to him, using the password 528491. Cobb remains in level four.

A wounded Saito dies at the snow fortress, as the kicks take effect. The explosives planted around the hospital complex level the place, then in the hotel – where Arthur has improvised with the zero-gravity by wiring everyone together in a lift, snapping the cables and blowing it towards the top of the shaft with the remaining explosives – and the minibus hits the water.

Cobb washes up on a beach, carrying nothing but his spinning top and a gun. He locates an aged Saito, the old man from the start, and tells him to escape back to reality. Cobb suddenly awakens to find everyone on the plane, including Saito, awake and well. Saito honors their arrangement, and Cobb enters the United States without any incident, and is greeted by Miles. When he arrives home, he spins his top as a test, then sees his children’s faces again at last as Miles attracts their attention. As Cobb reunites with them, the top begins to wobble, but is not seen to fall, implying that he may still be in a dream.