By the time this film ended (minutes literally take an hour) I'd forgotten my philosophical objections - I couldn't completely suspend disbelief because I was thinking, not feeling and then I got confused about what I was thinking and started questioning myself.
What is reality? That's the question being asked. Take my advice: you don't want to sit next to a kid crunching chips and rustling and slurping for two hours here. Get up and move.
It's the question at the heart of Buddhist philosophy that teaches that this life we live is only a dream - what we experience is a perception of true reality, a dream.
Inception only almost gets it right - unlike the beautiful Japanese animation Totoro, a tree spirit seen only by children.
Inception takes us to the shore of the subconscious - a nice idea. Trouble is if you actually reach that place then I believe your mind is still and you are at one with the universe - not a separate consciousness building, loving, feeling, killing, wanting ... that's the whole point of the end of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. He forgoes the thing he has worked for all his life - release into perfect enlightenment - to remain in the realm of hungry ghosts because his love for her finally overwhelms him on the brink of death. Too late. Now that's tragedy. Inception just doesn't get it right.
Leonardo DiCaprio is great - though he doesn't reach the level of his performance in one of my most favourite films, Blood Diamond.
And Ellen Page is distracting - she's a charismatic leading lady and this is a minor role that goes nowhere.
Director Christopher Nolan has shot extraordinary action scenes with suspended gravity effects - it had me leaning in my seat. Thank God it wasn't in 3-D or it would need a health warning.
Absolutely perfect finale - the ultimate finale that is.
But the "revelation", the story resolution, the last piece of the hero puzzle isn't a surprise ... what is surprising is fact that they shatter a woman's entire reason for being and she just let's it go as if it's nothing much really to her that the man she loves has betrayed her in a horrible, horrible way. Interesting reality that is.
Ideas are best when they are simplified to their essence - I'm paraphrasing a line from the film.