February 21st Will Be a Sad Day for Christopher Nolan Fans on Netflix

For more than two decades, Christopher Nolan has brought a rare sophistication to the world of big-budget blockbusters. His films combine an elegant filmmaking style with complex and intricate storytelling, while still being wildly entertaining. He shepherded Batman into a new onscreen era beginning with his Dark Knight trilogy, and has put his distinctive stamp on everything from war movies like 2017’s Dunkirk to high-concept sci-fi like 2014’s Interstellar. The box office and awards success of 2023’s Oppenheimer was a victory lap for a director who has set a high bar for mainstream Hollywood movies.

Fresh off the smash success of 2008’s The Dark Knight, Nolan turned his attention towards an original idea he’d been kicking around for a few years: a film about people who are able to infiltrate a person’s subconscious through their dreams to extract information. This became 2010’s Inception. Another massive success critically and commercially, the film both delighted and confused moviegoers with its intricate, multilayered plotting. Trying to “get” the movie became a cinematic badge of honor, and it’s gone down as one of the most challenging — and rewarding — blockbusters of all time. Netflix subscribers who haven’t yet visited its labyrinth only have until the 21st to catch it before it vanishes from the platform.

Inception’s Knotty Plot

Inception centers around Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), an operative who is paid to infiltrate a target’s subconscious to extract information along with his partner Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). While extracting an idea is fairly easy, planting an idea in someone’s head — the titular inception — is next to impossible. Still, that’s what Dom and Arthur have to do. They’re hired by a wealthy businessman named Saito (Ken Watanabe) to implant an idea in business rival Robert Fischer (Nolan regular Cillian Murphy) to dissolve the company he’s set to inherit from his dying father.

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They assemble a crack team to do the job. “Architect” Ariadne (Elliot Page) is tasked with designing the dream layout. “Forger” Eames (Tom Hardy) impersonates people in the dream. Finally, “chemist” Yusuf (Dileep Rao) will create the drug that will knock the target out long enough to get the job done.

To make the idea subtle enough to stick, the team has to go at least three dream layers deep. Each layer becomes more dangerous than the last, as Fischer’s subconscious fights back against the invaders. Along the way, Dom is haunted by visions of his dead wife Moll (Marion Cotillard), which threaten to take his focus off the mission.

Nolan has a lot of fun playing with the visual and storytelling language of old spy movies and heist thrillers, as well as manipulating time and space in a way that feels all his own. The final dream layer, set in a snowy fortress, seems like something straight out of a James Bond movie, with the team exchanging gunfire with parka-clad goons. Some of the movie’s most memorable scenes come when the dream world is distorted, like when Ariadne folds a city scene over on itself, or Arthur is forced to fight off a dream henchman in a constantly rotating hallway. The movie ends on an ambiguous note that leaves the viewer questioning whether they’re still in the dream world, kicking off the kind of fan discourse that’s only grown more common in the past fifteen years.

Inception Deserves to Be Revisited

While Inception was a massive success upon its release, it isn’t talked about as much in today’s film world. Perhaps it’s because blockbuster storytelling has changed so much since 2010 that the movie looks like a kind of relic. Meanwhile, Nolan’s own career has evolved to the point that Inception feels like a stepping stone on the way to bigger and better things. These days, it’s as likely to be remembered jokingly for its confusing plot as for being a great film. But for film fans who haven’t seen it in a while, or may have been too young to grasp it when it came out, it’s worth watching today.

Inception is the kind of movie that reveals more of itself with repeated watches, its layered plotting becoming easier to grasp. Viewers who may have been put off by its dense dream-world mechanics might find that it’s not as confusing as they remember, or that it’s easier to get on its wavelength after some time away. At the very least, it’s an exciting action film with strong performances and impeccable style. And as far as confusing plotting goes, it’s got nothing on Nolan’s 2020 time travel thriller Tenet, whose story makes Inception look like child’s play.

In a Hollywood landscape dominated by franchises and legacy sequels, movies like Inception feel more special than ever. It’s the rare big-budget spectacle that requires something of its audience: a willingness to embrace its knotty plotting and trust that it’s headed somewhere worthwhile. Christopher Nolan feels like the only director who could get a movie about dream-based espionage, or a three-hour biopic about J. Robert Oppenheimer, over the finish line. For anyone who might want to revisit one of his past triumphs, better do it before February 21st, when the whole thing disappears from Netflix like a half-remembered dream.