4/5
Inception
Trigger Warning: Suicide
The movie Inception was written and directed by Christopher Nolan. The movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio playing a character named Dom Cobb. Dom has special technology that allows him to synthesize dreams and enter a specific person’s subconscious. Before the story, Dom and his team mainly work as thieves, stealing peoples’ memories or ideas and selling them to their employers. However, the movie’s premise is for Dom to plant an idea in someone’s head. He must insert this idea so that the dreamer and other dream characters do not detect him, or else he will be booted out of the subconscious, causing the mission to fail.
There is also a subplot involving Dom’s family. Dom used to have a wife, Malorie, and two children, Phillipa and James. Mal, her nickname in the movie, and Dom get trapped in their subconscious for about 50 years and build a life within this realm. Eventually, they discovered that death was the only way to escape the subconscious space. To accomplish this, they must lay down on train tracks. When they wake up from their dream, not much time has passed. Their lives return to normal at first, but Mal struggles to determine when she is dreaming and awake. Eventually, Mal succumbs to her delusions and tries to convince Dom to commit suicide with her so they can travel back to the waking world. Dom tries to convince her that she is awake, but Mal refuses to listen and throws herself out a window. Her death sets off a chain of events that leads to Dom fleeing the country and starting his idea-stealing business.
This movie is connected to dreams and nightmares because most of the movie takes place within the subconscious. Multiple scenes can be classified as either dreams, nightmares, or a mix of the two, as the content of the dreamer’s subconscious is not always positive or negative. In fact, at the end of the movie, it is unclear if Dom has escaped his subconscious or if he is forever stuck in a dream. I enjoy the movie’s ending, as it does leave itself open to interpretation. The movie asks the viewer to think about the content and clues given to you throughout the piece to decide Dom’s fate. I also love the imagery seen in this movie. At one point, the city within Dom’s subconscious gets flipped around and folded on top of itself. It’s a visually stunning scene, and it’s cool to see the scenery manipulated in such a way.