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‘Inception’ is Double Bubble magic

Over the weekend I was in Ketcham, Idaho, walking the aisles of Iconoclast Books , and I picked up a copy of Philip K. Dick short stories. Titled after one of the stories, “Minority Report,” the book shows Dick at his best: strange, offbeat, uncomfortable, yet always accessible.

My favorite Dick book, “Ubik,” was one of the first books I’d ever read that involves characters interacting through their dreams — though Dick takes his time letting you know what is happening.

“Ubik” comes to mind because of “Inception ,” Christopher Nolan ‘s blockbuster and followup to his 2008 hit “The Dark Knight.” Let me see if I can give a short synopsis (but watch out for spolers).

Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) washes up on a remote beach. He is taken to the lair of an elderly man. We discover that Cobb is capable of entering the dreams of others, the purpose of which is usually “extraction” of some secret. Cobb works for whomever will pay him for that secret information. On a mission to extract information from a Japanese businessman, Saito (Ken Watanabe), Cobb and his team — which includes Arthur (Joseph Gorden-Levitt) — end up being hired by Saito to help foil a rival’s attempts to corner the energy market.

When one of his team proves unreliable, Cobb looks for a new “architect,” a person talented and imaginative enough to create dream worlds for the extraction targets to navigate. With the help of his former teacher (Michael Caine), he recruits Ariadne (EllenPage). Only this time the task is more difficult: Instead of extracting information, the team’s charge is to do an “inception” — that is, to put a suggestion in the subject’s mind in such a way that he believes the idea is his own.

Which is how the new team comes to kidnap Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), the son of Saito’s dying rival. What they want to do is convince the younger Fischer to break up his father’s empire, giving Saito and others a chance to break the energy monopoly.

To do this, however, involves an intricate plan whereby the team has not only to go inside Fischer’s dream, but to go down two more levels. In other words, they have to go in a dream within a dream within yet a third dream. Each stem becomes more perilous, with the result being  psychologically dangerous: In ordinary circumstances, dying in a dream causes the dreamer to awake. But inserted more deeply, the dying dreamer falls into a deep psychological fugue, where he (or she) can linger for what may be only minutes in real life but can feel like decades in dreamland.

The complicating factor — which, of course, has to exist — is that Cobb is a haunted man. His former wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard), haunts him, showing up during his jobs in a way that proves problematic to everyone. In the Fischer job, only Ariadne knows what is troubling Cobb. But for various reasons, she says nothing.

Overall, “Inception” owes a deep debt to Dick. In the sense that no idea is unique, Nolan doesn’t exactly steal from the author, who died in 1982. But the difference between reading one’s mind (and, in the process, altering reality, which is the basis for “Ubik”), and doing so in that person’s dreams is relatively slight.

Still, Nolan is a singular talent. He proved as much with his 2000 film “Memento,” in his two Batman films (2005’s “Batman Begins” and “Dark Knight”) and, now, with “Inception.” Dream stories are easy because you can cover a gaggle of plot problems by just resorting to the whole “dreams don’t make sense” argument. But Nolan keeps things moving so quickly, powered by Hans Zimmer ‘s pulsating musical score, that you don’t have time to ask nagging questions.

It’s unfortunate that “Inception” so closely follows Martin Scosese’s “Shutter Island,” in which DiCaprio stars as a federal agent who falls into a similar kind of psychological purgatory. But Nolan’s story, while more fantastic, is nevertheless more successful at creating a world that feels authentic — instead of pop-psychology hamhanded, the way “Shutter Island” came across.

Spokane Public Radio film critic Bob Glatzer loves to call the films he loves “delicious.” Well, “Inception,” as a film is pure bubble gum. But it’s really delicious bubble gum.

You need to bite off a chunk.

Below : The trailer for “Inception.”

* This story was originally published as a post from the blog "Movies & More." Read all stories from this blog