“Inception” combines a fast-paced heist film with serious psychological and ethical questions.Photo by Jeremy Nguyen

You fall into a dream without knowing how you got there. You dream that you’re falling, but not hitting bottom, and then you wake up—that’s called “the kick.” You can also wake up by getting killed in your dream. How do you know that it’s you who’s dreaming? Your totem. It’s a small weighted object that is yours alone so you know when it’s your dream you’re in, and when it’s someone else’s i.e. dream sharing.

You got that?

With only a few exceptions, 2010 summer flicks have been a bit of a snoozefest. Where are the explosions? Where are the mouth-gaping shots of vast foreign places with the heroes emerging over the horizon? Where’s the adventure, the fast cars and the big guns? Leave it to Christopher Nolan to put out just what you’re asking for. But “Inception” is more than an adventure on foreign soil; it’s an adventure on land that we’re all foreign to: the mind.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Dom Cobb, the best in his profession of extraction. With the technology to enter people’s subconscious through their dreams, extractors go deep into people’s minds and find and steal information. It’s a kind of theft that leaves no fingerprints, only a remnant of something you can’t be sure even happened when you wake up.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is his pointman, Arthur. Gordon-Levitt has been on a spell of indie movies, playing anything from a calloused gay prostitute to a hopelessly romantic greeting card writer, so the only surprise in adding this role his resumé is that it’s not something you can see at the Sundance Film Festival.

Although often playing a quick-witted angsty youth in films like “Juno” and “Whip It,” Ellen Page is the architect on this team of dream pioneers. Her character, Ariadne is hired to work on the next near-impossible assignment: inception.

Instead of stealing an idea, inception is planting an idea. While it sounds simple enough, “no idea is simple when you have to plant it in someone’s mind.” Inception is pure inspiration and therefore must be buried so deeply in the subconscious that it can’t be traced. It needs to look like an original thought or it will not stick. It’s a feat most find impossible, but Cobb (DiCaprio) and his team take on the challenge.

The client: Saito (Ken Watanabe), a major player in the business of energy.

The goal: To implant an idea into the head of Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), the leader of an opposing energy corporation. This idea is intended lead to the end of his father’s energy empire, which borderlines that of a world superpower.

While attempting inception, Cobb must battle his own memories, his wife and the guilt of his past in order to make a future for himself and his children. Inception can be his way out of his own tunnel of dissatisfaction with reality.

Big money productions are charted territory for DiCaprio, star of “The Departed,” and more recently “Shutter Island.” Just like in those roles, DiCaprio is entrancing as the lead with a mysterious past and a torturous motivation. Page’s character is more openly compassionate than any other roles we’ve seen her play, and while she was only ten when DiCaprio starred in “Titanic,” she shows no lack of experience acting alongside the blockbuster icon.

It’s no surprise to see Gordon-Levitt in his role as Arthur, or any role, really. He continues to play characters who push him in a different direction than he’s tried before. Marion Cotillard (Oscar winner for Best Actress in 2008 for “La Vie En Rose”), has an elegant, but villainous and disturbing performance as Cobb’s wife.

Other than the paternal, British guidance we expect from Michael Caine, his name on the poster doesn’t seem to be more than a nod to the fact that this is a Christopher Nolan film. But it’s not hard to see that this is written and directed by the same guy who did “The Dark Knight.” The movie is big. Big names, big chase scenes, big explosions, big crime.

The film is, at it’s heart, a heist movie. A team is assembled, each with their own expertise. A plan is devised. Research is done. There are glitches, bad guys and guns along the way. But when nothing in a dream is quite as it seems, the next move is harder to predict.

When you can live in your dream, and build it up or tear it down at will, reality seems foreign and confining. In this place where you acknowledge all of the possibilities of your subconscious, you can create a new reality, but it’s all still in your mind. Five minutes in the real world is an hour in your dream, so you can live for hours, days, even years, and wake up as though you’ve stolen time. So if you had the option of that escape, would you take it? And how far would you let it take you?

It’s a question which I challenge anyone to try and tackle while finding yourself deeper and deeper into the dream realms Nolan has created. “Inception” takes the audience to a world where the subconscious is not a state of mind, but a location more concrete than we can comprehend. “Inception” is complex and imaginative without boundaries. At times, the complexities have you feeling a little perplexed, but you are in the careful hands of the man who brought you “Memento” and “The Prestige” and before you know it, you can take a deep breath, and you’ll surface all the wiser having seen the unreality of a dream.

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