(USA) There are dreams, and then there are dreams. In director Christopher Nolan’s visionary new film Inception, dreams play out like an alternate reality which seizes the rein of the reality you happen to be in. And Nolan presents this dream state through a complex and dizzying tale of espionage, romance and utopianism: In short, the perfect sci-fi thriller if there ever was one.

The story: Leonardo DiCaprio is Cobb, a “dream extractor” whose job it is to invade people’s dreams, extract information and take control of it. We first see Cobb, along with his right-hand man Arthur (a brilliantly solemn Joseph Gordon-Levitt) trying to retrieve a secret from Asian businessman Saito (Ken Watanabe) during an audition for a job. The duo work their way through the mission, encountering obstacles including the unstable environment around them: Saito’s collapsing dream (literally), and the memory/subconscious of Cobb’s wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard), who shows up as saboteur to Cobb’s missions; we soon learn that Mal’s lingering presence is the result of Cobb’s guilt after his wife’s suicide. This is where audiences are first introduced to the multi-layered world of the film’s dreamscapes.

Saito then offers Cobb a huge sum of money to “incept” the dreams of the scion (Cillian Murphy) of a brutal but dying British billionaire. The Asian wants Cobb to plant the idea that the heir must break up his father’s powerful multi-pronged business, a notion that runs counter to the heir’s best interest. And with the help of Arthur and spunky new “dream architect” Ariadne (the always droll Ellen Page) [you don’t suppose the landscapes, cities and characters in dreams build themselves, do you?], Cobb must soon begin his latest inception, lest the brutal memory of Mal leads him astray.

The film keeps on going deeper and deeper into the different inception levels and their complexities (real-time apparently slows down exponentially the deeper you go. A minute in the real world is an hour in the dream—or a week in the next lower level—or a month in the level below that), it is amazing how Nolan manages to keep track of the whole she-bang and lure viewers further and further into his magnificent vision. He does so by cross-cutting the different action sequences in several layers of dreams (kudos to editor Lee Smith for that), and by creating towering and futuristic set pieces (especially noteworthy are the scenes where Ariadne literally folds the city in half, and the final, Matrix-esque action sequences where Arthur fights against a bunch of Agent Smith-like baddies in mid-gravity); the result is a mind-boggling and supremely entertaining movie experience that will linger in your memory long after you walk out of the cinema. This is a groundbreaking motion picture in more ways than one, and one of the most important to come out of Hollywood in the past decade.