Pace, plot, effects. The psychological thriller Inception is a masterclass in them - the suspension of disbelief effortless. Plus, there's this intriguing deployment of dreams.

The film interprets them as a Freudian - focusing on Oedipal conflicts; dreams as residues from the every day; the role of wish fulfillment; the notion of the dream within a dream perhaps similar to Freud's distinction between manifest and latent content. (And I loved the doctrine that if you interfere with someone else's dreams, then their projections grow in antipathy towards you.) But I came away wondering about the big message, consciously or unconsciously embedded in the ideas-blockbuster of the summer.

I think it's to do with freedom, namely that we're far less free than we think we are. Our conscious life is, in large part, shaped by the unconscious. The question is how conscious you are of that. The film is quite clear that reality matters: to live in dreams is to lose your life, much as the addict loses their life to drugs. (In the film, dreaming is induced by mainlining opiates.) But freedom can be found by understanding the unconscious, for then you will not be split, like a fragmented dream, but know better how to live well.