One film I especially love is the science fiction film featuring multiple Hollywood stars, Inception. The film is seemingly set in the near future, and it takes place in Paris, Japan, Mombasa in part, but most of it takes place in dreamworlds. Some explaining is done at the beginning about this rather novel and unique concept. Leonardo Di Caprio and Joseph Gordon-Levitt can enter other people’s dreams in an attempt to steal secrets. But like a website on the internet each dreamworld is hosted by a single person who has some influence on the fictional world. The film also features Tom Hardy, Michael Caine, Cillian Murphy, Marion Cotillard and Elliot Page. After the film briefly explains the premise of the film it is revealed Di Caprio needs to carry out a big job on the heir to a massive corporate empire (Murphy) to be reunited with his children in the US. The job is to plant an idea in Cillian’s head, that he should split up the company rather than achieve a monopoly, the direction that the company seems to be moving towards. And therein lies the reason for the name of the film: Inception. The planting of an idea.

The film itself has a lot of guns and action like a typical Hollywood blockbuster however the best part of Inception is the theme. A direct quote from the film: “An idea is like a virus, resilient, highly contagious. The smallest seed of an idea can grow. It can grow to define or destroy you.” Throughout human history ideas have brought down the strongest of monarchs, emperors, institutions such as the Roman Catholic Church. In 1517 Martin Luther the German monk published his thesis which criticised the Catholic Church. The Church responded by outlawing Luther. However his ideas survive in 2024 with a huge number of Christians today identifying as protestants. In 2017 the MeToo movement spread like wildfire across the internet influencing people to stand up to misogyny and sexual harassment in the work place and elsewhere. Today women of all ages are more likely to be listened to by the authorities.

Ideas can turn the people closest to you against you, break the most stable of relationships. So far I have mentioned positive ideas but negative rumours can cause chaos, disruption and destruction such as the anti immigrant England riots in 2024. In the US young isolated men such as Elliot Roger in 2014 have carried out murderous rampages using freely available automatic firearms to devastating consequences. In the 2020 US election Donald Trump encouraged his supporters to descend on the Capitol building in Washington D.C. Conspiracy theorists such as QAnon followers were among those who turned up.

Inception ends with Murphy waking up from his dream with Di Caprio’s team having successfully planted the idea in his head. The final scenes are quite moving with Murphy’s relationship with his father in the spotlight something most of us can probably relate to. In the very final scene Di Caprio is united with his children back in the US but the film ends on a cliffhanger with regard to whether Di Caprio himself is still in one of the dream worlds.