Conception.

"You mind telling your subconscious to take it easy?"

- Ariadne, Inception

Although I didn't eat any dinners alone during my trip to Toronto, my afternoons were pretty much my own time. As such, I overcame my long-term aversion to Leonardo DiCaprio and trotted down to the Scotiabank Theatre on Richmond Street to see Inception.

The concept behind the film is simple enough - a professional thief is hired to insert something rather than steal it. The difference in this case is that rather than diamonds or money, the thief in question steals information from people's minds while they're asleep, and he and his team are attempting to place a foreign idea into someone's head, against the active and deadly resistance of the subject's subconscious mind.

It's difficult to avoid comparisons to the Matrix films, there's a similar combination of layered realities and surrealistic environments.  Inception also raises echoes of Memento, writer/director Christopher Nolan's staccato masterpiece from 2000.  But in many ways, Inception is more of a strange science fiction equivalent of Ocean's Eleven or The Italian Job, a sort of fast-talking hit-and-run heist flick set in REM space rather than Las Vegas.

As such, the actors faces some odd acting challenges, such as pretending to be fast asleep in the back of a speeding van while it dodges gunfire, flips over, and crashes through a guardrail backwards.  Regardless, everyone in the ensemble cast does a good job of dealing with the film's odd combination of shootouts and slumber.

His ability to feign sleep aside, Leonardo DiCaprio has matured well and is well en route to overcoming the legacy of his early pretty-boy days.  He gives the role of dreamthief Dom Cobb a sort of brooding, almost depressed desperation which is completely appropriate to the character.  Ellen Page is also growing nicely into her talent, although I have to think that in the long term she may face some issues.* 

Inception isn't perfect, and it doesn't hold up to stringent analysis in some areas, but overall I found it to be an entertaining and clever piece with some interesting concepts.  I was intensely impressed by the carefully ambiguous and beautifully timed final seconds of the movie. It's rare that a five second difference in an ending would completely alter if not ruin a film, but in this case the conclusion is timed to a razor fine line.

The unfortunate part is that since seeing the movie I've heard several people explaining - or trying to explain - the ending to someone. Sigh...it must be disappointing to Mr. Nolan that he took a break from Batman movies to make a smart little science fiction flick, and people don't get it.

My only real objection to the basic concept is that I doubt the ability of even the subconscious mind to populate a world with varied and unique projections of people and places. I think that we're very much creatures of repetition, pattern and cliché, and as such it's difficult for me to accept that anyone would be able to create a world of such detail and complexity that it would be accepted as real. Frankly, I suspect that most of us would end up with something more like those endlessly repeating backgrounds from Fred Flintstone's living room.

- Sid

* With the best will in the world regarding her abilities as an actress, Ellen Page is well below the height limit for success in Hollywood. Good luck with that, Ellen - if Tom Cruise can make it, so can you.