Told you that Christopher Nolan would make it on this list again! And to explain why it fits here, this was another movie that I wanted to catch up on shortly after getting back from my mission in 2011, but it must have been at the end of a long day because I passed out shortly after it began (ironic, considering the film’s plot line). I’ve seen it multiple times since and have been quite awake through it each time.
This was a bit of a mind bender, somewhat like the last Nolan film I put on this list. But not in such a way that it’s problematic to understand: dreams are explorable and exploitable landscapes, with multiple levels of “depth”, and an idea being planted deep enough in someone’s dream can potentially make them feel like it was their own idea. Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, Cobb, leads a team through someone’s dreams to pull off a huge business move for their employer. Simple enough, until Cobb’s own dreams and memories of his deceased, crazed wife end up meddling with their plans.
One point of the movie that comes up quite often is that in dreams, we’re able to shape reality however we want it. And the deeper in the dream you go, the more time you can pass in the dream with the same amount of time in real life passing. For instance, a few hours of real time could equate to years of dream time if one were deep enough. Now, if you can control a dream for that long, living however you want, who wouldn’t jump at a chance like that? Cobb’s wife actually shows the danger of living that way; she became so obsessed with the dreams she and Cobb had that she convinced herself that her actual time awake wasn’t real, and she jumped out of a building to “wake up.” Her obsession drove her insane, and serves as an important lesson for anyone who may be dependent on certain things that they only think makes them happy.
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