Only a dream? Chris Nolan’s Inception is heady stuff

Film of the Week: Why dark and thrilling Inception is this summer’s ‘brainy blockbuster’

Warner Bros executives must be pinching themselves. Could Inception, Christopher Nolan’s beguiling and bewildering film about dream states, be this summer’s sleeper blockbuster hit? Released nationwide this Friday, the psychological thriller should appeal to a wide audience on many levels – from its smart and moving plot to its stunning photography and A-list ensemble cast.

Of course Nolan, the 39-year-old British director who made his name with his ‘film in reverse’ Memento (2000), is no stranger to box office success as the man who resurrected the Batman franchise. Nonetheless Inception stands out against the current crop of remakes, reboots and sequels as a particularly brainy blockbuster which has already been dubbed a “metaphysical heist”.

Nolan takes the cliche beloved of primary school students and daytime soap scriptwriters, ‘And I woke up and it was only a dream’, and turns it inside out, subverting it and stretching it across multiple levels of reality.

While the plot takes twists and turns that are as intricate and outlandish as a surreal REM session, the basic storyline involves Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), an agent of a new style of corporate espionage in which ideas are stolen or ‘extracted’ via dreams. Dom is hired by powerful businessman Saito (Ken Watanabe) to carry out the reverse process – the dream-raider’s holy grail of ‘inception’ which involves planting an idea in another person’s mind.

In classic heist-movie tradition Cobb assembles a team around him that includes Juno star Ellen Page who designs the dream