Rating (4/5)
You design the game, set the rules, architect the stadium, choose your players, and set the time limit. At the end of it stands your mission, accomplished.

What if this is to be done in a very very short time? Impossible! We say. And in dreams? We breathe easy and think it's possible. If there is a payment involved at the end of it all in the real world, we jump in joy and try to give it a shot without thinking any further. But hold on! Dreams suddenly start and end abruptly. They are sporadic and beyond our control, often hard to remember and narrate. This makes the job tougher and even harder to imagine and conceptualize, isn’t it? But that’s what Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) does in Christopher Nolan’s latest mind-bending, intriguing offering, Inception.

‘What if dreams can be scripted?’ is the premise on which the story is developed. Inception would not have been the talk of the town if it were just a series of dreams or a single dream, and typically leaving the end part for the audience as the film actually does. But we have Christopher Nolan, the master narrator who won rave reviews for his complex screenplay in Memento. He goes beyond our imagination and deals with the concept of Cobb planting an idea in the mind of a businessman for his rival, who promises Cobb an uncomplicated journey back home. Cobb assembles a team which embarks on achieving this task through multi-layered dreams - each dream is interconnected, need-based and is the result of the consequences of its predecessors and successors.

The beauty of the movie lies in the way the story is narrated. The director doesn't bother to explain the technology and the equipment involved, instead uses the time to elucidate and convince audience of his concept. The way the concept is unfolded, or should I say the way Cobb explains the concept and the rules of the game to his new recruit Ariadne (Ellen Page), allowing CGI to dominate is brilliant. The use of totem to distinguish between living in someone’s dream and reality is simple yet effective.

The transition from one dream to another, back and forth, is so well presented that the audience is never disconnected from any of the dreams. In every layer of the dream, one character is awake to take care of the the happenings as the rest of them sleep err dream. The script takes a sudden twist when the team prepares for an unprepared new dream in the third layer. The way the director keeps the audience posted of the happenings across the four dreams is a huge challenge, and Nolan does it effortlessly. Some characters trying to break the rules - forgetting they are in dreams - confusion about whose dream they are in and the sudden emergence of objects which are not actually part of the dream, make it a special experience for the viewer.

There is logic behind every frame, every shot and every scene. Tight screenplay keeps audience interested throughout (except the last 15-20 minutes where the movie appears a bit dragged). There is always a hint provided for the audience whether the sequence is a dream - characters remind themselves that they are working in a dream.

Wait wait wait! Nolan’s best is yet to come. The viewers would be under the assumption that all is well with Cobb by the end of the movie, but dig deeper into the story it will leave us with many unanswered questions, a la Memento experience. Did Cobb ever comeback to reality from limbo or did he go deeper? Are Cobb’s team, Saito’s promise to free Cobb of his murder charges, Mal’s death, etc., real or Cobb’s projection for a happy ending?

That's Inception for you.