Inception was released on July 13, 2010 and was directed by Christopher Nolan. It has won many awards including the Academy Award for best sound mixing. In the movie, Dom Cobb, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, is a thief with a rare, interesting skill: Cobb is able to enter into people’s dreams and steal their secrets from their subconscious. Around the world, people have mixed feelings about his skills. Some people appreciate his abilities and some do not agree with it and train themselves to protect their own subconscious. The climax of the movie begins when a man asks Cobb to not steal information from someone’s subconscious, but to plant an idea in their mind. If he succeeds, it will be the perfect crime, but a dangerous enemy anticipates Cobb's every move. This dangerous enemy happens to be Cobb’s deceased wife “Mal”. Throughout the course of the movie, the viewer discovers that Mal died because she could not love the real world after traveling into dreams with Dom for long periods of time. In a dream, if one dies they wake up so Mal thought that by killing herself, she would return to the dream world. Cobb’s battle against his own subconscious and other peoples makes an interesting, riveting film that can confuse any viewer from reality and dream.

​

Overall, I liked the movie. My favorite parts were when the characters “kicks” kicked in. In the movie, “the kick” is the thing that makes the person wake up from the dream. For instance, in one scene Cobb is woken up by being dumped into a bathtub filled with water. Simultaneously, in the dream world, his surroundings begin to flood with water. This subconscious analysis was appealing to me because of the way it was pieced together to show reality versus subconscious. The only thing I did not like about the movie was that it was a little hard to follow. Even from the beginning scene, it was hard to feel an introduction to the movie: it almost felt like the viewer was starting the movie from the middle of the film. Similar to being in a dream and then waking up, the viewer never knew if the scene they were watching was reality or dream; they kind of just hopped into the middle of it. The story was really creative and appealing to me because it was so complex with emotions and the uncertainty of life. After Mal died, Cobb created a dream world where he could visit her with some of their best and worst memories. I thought this was also very creative. The lighting and shots of the film set the tone and emotion: dark and heavy. Even if the characters were in a dream, something would start to explode or immediately darken. This captivated me because it made me feel like I was in that dream with the characters. 

 

I would recommend this film to anyone who likes sci-fi, freaking realization movies. It is not a light movie and I still think about what our reality as humans really is. However, it was incredibly well done and expressed love, sadness, hope, lies, etc all in one. I would give this movie an 8/10.