Inception: my take, part 1

I wasn't expecting too much, but I enjoyed the film immensely. It's like a re-vamped, super-stylish 'Dark City' in a way. I also really enjoyed the score - the mood of the film is just superb. It reminds me of 'Pirates of the Caribbean' just because it's so easy to watch multiple times, just for the sake of being immersed in that particular aura. I won't say that Inception's plot is particularly complex (in terms of the intellectual treatment of its themes), but it is extremely interesting. I have my own takes, below.

First, in response to a post on Slate, "The Marxist Matrix," wherein the commentator states,

"To Nolan's credit, he doesn't hammer us over the head with this theme, but it hangs over the film: Even our dreams can be annexed, colonized, and drained. This relates to a vaguely anti-capitalist critique in Inception. For starters, Cobb's mission (on the way to reuniting with his children) is to dissolve a multinational energy company poised to become more powerful than a nation-state. And we can read the telescoping levels of dreams in Inception through the lens of derivatives, each more leveraged and unstable than the next. In this view, the spectacularly disintegrating illusions in Inception echo the spectacularly disintegrating illusions of the 2007 stock market."

I can't agree with the anti-capitalist message, as articulated in the excerpt above. It is heavily insinuated that Cobb is being taken 'for a ride' by Saito, who does not represent the antithesis of an 'evil' corporate magnate, but just another corporate magnate at war with a rival. How?

a) Saito keeps lucrative track of Cobb no matter where he is / what he's doing.
b) Instead of buying out the 1st-class cabin, Saito buys the airline.
c) One phone call from Saito can allegedly erase Cobb's criminal record (which caused him to flee his native USA) .

I think, and I would argue the movie supports, the fact that Cobb is being played for a relative fool for the sake of getting his family back. What Saito is doing is not altruistic in the sense of destroying his competitor for the greater good; it is him taking out an upstart rival who is threatening his own empire, at least as powerful as his rival's. In fact, I posit that Saito's company is actually more powerful than Cobel Corp. or Fisher's company - Saito's just trying to destroy the competition.

Now, the argument about corporations becoming so powerful/pre-eminent that even our dreams become sanitized to the point where free-wheeling creativity has been largely stamped out of society's unconscious - that is a 'thesis' I can put fully support!