"Whatever we build in the imagination will accomplish itself in the circumstance of our lives."
William Butler Yeats
The crux of Christopher Nolan’s fantasy-heist film, INCEPTION, is whether or not we can believe in its protagonist’s conception of reality vs. a state of dreaming. In arriving at a verdict, the viewer is pitted into a complexly labyrinthine landscape which not only celebrates the genesis and execution of ideas but revels in the process of collaboration on the part of its skillfully crafted characters as they navigate through elaborately architected environments that may crumble at any moment. The film is cinematic baklava and consists of layers upon layers of multi-textured concepts that logically and rather lucidly test the illogical limits of human imagination in a world where dream sharing, removing an idea (extraction) or planting one into another person’s mind (inception) is possible. As these conceits are tested and ingeniously realized on film and when, for instance, our comprehension of gravity is inverted, thankfully, the adept hands of the film’s writer/director guide us through shaky bafflements to a calming, stable ground. In so doing, Nolan deserves a compliment of the highest order; and in home-video circles, one might easily consider this his Criterion disc.
The film’s protagonist, Dominic ‘Dom’ Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), a gifted thief specializing in the extraction of one’s secrets through their dreams, is delivered from an unknown origin onto a sandy beach awash with seawater crashing against him; a visual metaphor for inception of birth, undoubtedly. This is the first sequence of the film’s many riddles wherein we are to question whether this is truly a vision of present reality, a projection of the dream world or in fact, a hint of a non-linear journey through a state of mental limbo that can potentially ensnare a dreamer’s mind for a period of decades to infinity. I believe it is the latter and acts as a bookend with the film’s climactic mission of inception. Upon closer inspection, however, the ambiguous placement of this scene showing Cobb asleep on the shore at the base of an Asian compound makes one wonder if what follows is a completely dreamed fabrication. Even as Cobb is captured by armed guards that may be mental constructs created by his aged employer, Mr. Saito (Ken Watanabe) sent to capture him on the beach, the projected landscapes, the characters that populate them and all elements therein, may come complements of Cobb’s subconscious. This is further stressed by the vision of Cobb’s two children playing in the sand who always appear just out of his reach. And the environment all too much resembles the dystopic shorelines he created in his own personal limbo and result from the memories he shared with his deceased wife, Mal (Marion Cottilard), the film’s prime antagonist.
Mal is the antithesis of Dom and their relationship with each other was immortalized in their act of dream sharing powered by their passion for creativity and engineering/dismantling entire civilizations for their amusement. The awe-inspiring element of their creations taking shape and others toppling to make way for new constructions can likely be considered one of the cinema’s great romantic delights. Mal’s downfall and eventual suicide was a result of her not being able to differentiate reality from a dreamscape which was further provoked by Dom’s ability to make the clear distinction between the two states. Dom’s regression into his memories of their lives together strengthens her existence. It is as if she is his effeminate projection of himself as both characters are cunning, anticipate each other’s moves and are able to make a clean kill in the field of battle. Technologically speaking, Mal, similar to Dave Bowman’s disembodied nemesis in Kubrick’s 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, Hal (both of whom share similar branding), may be considered a gorgeous glitch who continues to thwart Dom’s efforts and draw him closer to the dark side of his mind to be lost forever in an eternity together in limbo. That her memory had become so deeply embedded into Dom’s subconscious, her presence can only be characterized as a specter who haunts Dom’s progress he experiences in his personal reality along with his fellow business colleagues, his ‘dream team’: Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Dom’s Point Man and closest business associate; Ariadne (Ellen Page), the Architect responsible for building the elements with the dream and whose moniker significantly refers to the daughter of King Minos in the Greek Myth who helped Theseus escape the labyrinth; Eames (Tom Hardy), the Forger and skilled chameleon who can morph himself into other characters for the sake of the team’s mental reconnaissance and Yusuf (Dileep Rao), the Chemist, whose powerful potions are able to sedate the team into multiple dream levels.
In a film brimming with so many fantastical elements where the line between reality and the dream-state is blurred while fusing with devices of advanced technology to capably perform industrial mental espionage, the near future as envisioned by INCEPTION may be more narrowly characterized as ‘post human and elegant cyberpunk’. By the team’s entering dreamed simulations (the thorough process of which is never fully explained: it consists of a push of a button in a device which fits snugly into a silver briefcase that releases a sedative through filaments connected to one’s wrist in order to enter the shared dream world) targeting their mark, Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), the heir to a competitive business empire of Mr. Saito, further shows how much farther humans are trying to leave the real world in search of an unexplored, typically disorienting, non-organic future. Physical human life is therefore expendable once entering the artificial/virtual world that exists in the mind of the person who’s responsible for dreaming the environment. In this post-industrial age, bulky, mechanized machinery has been sacrificed for more ‘elegant’ micro-circuitry that’s often able to fit into one’s pocket or the confines of a briefcase and can hardwire into the human network within moments without showing signs of entry (after Dom’s first journey of extraction into Saito’s mind, upon waking, Saito is unable to find on his wrist the entry point of the wire Dom’s team used). The film’s wall-to-wall, non-diegetic score is metallic and steely and reminiscent of a fusion of science, mathematics, technology and an organic world at odds. Musical notes punctuate the film space and plucked guitar strings depart like faded memories into the ether. And the inclusion of Édith Piaf’s “Non, je ne regrette rien” in the film’s diegesis not only resonates as a sublime, anthem-like yearning for moving forward with no regrets, but helps to reinforce Dom’s strategy of maneuvering through the levels of a dream: the only way to move forward and be successful is to go deeper, not in reverse.
Human biology and technology intermingle in a way that this vision of the future may be defined as post human. In the dream world, human constructs can become chameleons and bend their gender just as the concept of time is accelerated during each dream level that is penetrated. Identities are altered in a way like most people change their shirts and the dreamers can choose to either maintain or abandon any likeness to their original identities. Likewise, artificial environments are created as close to resemble the real world with the addition of cleverly architected mazes to not only give the space more dimension, but offer Dom’s team an edge against hostile projections with which they may have to engage in combat. The fictional realm into where the dreamers travel consists of memories and projections of one’s subconscious that can lash out at visitors to a dream-state when threatened. Biology and conscious existence are tested in that when one dies in a first-level dream-state, they wake up. However, when one is multiple dream levels deep and experiences death, the cost is a trip into limbo where rational thinking in the real world is lost and one is destined to remain for decades to an eternity.
Greed, an aged concept, continues to exist and control the extent of how far/deep/often one is willing to travel or invest in these experiments. The rich who become financiers for the enterprising of extraction/inception will claim ultimate dominance in this, the futuristic utopia. Saito, who expenses Dom’s activities is relegated to being ‘a tourist’ so that he can first-hand witness his investment in their professional endeavor. Christopher Nolan may be anticipating the Chinese will become the new global power, thus making the film somewhat anti-American. The concept of dream sharing is not only reserved for the upper class, but also utilized by those in a lower echelon as depicted in the basement of Yusuf’s chemical laboratory. The proceedings in Yusuf’s lab reminded me of the hallucinatory sequence in Sergio Leone's ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA when DeNiro's David/'Noodles' puffs away in the opium den during the film’s bookends. Although we are meant to believe that everything that has preceded this opening moment has occurred (e.g. David’s meeting the other boys in his crew of gangsters, engaging in a life of crime and corruption, etc.) who's to say that the events of the film ever happened? As in INCEPTION, there are henchmen (projections?) creeping in the shadow puppet theatre (there are puppets projected on the screen canvas as walking projections navigate in front of the screen) looking for Noodles which makes one wonder if the filmed events are real or not. Perhaps Leone’s film was induced through the opiate just as the events in INCEPTION are brought on by a mechanized-induced sedative into the bloodstream.
When determining whether INCEPTION is entirely a dream or not or if Cobb is trapped in limbo to dream forever, even as he walks through the baggage claim and his teammates look directly at him (just as the projections did in the previous dreams of the respective characters), the participants could be sharing a present plane of reality, but I believe that they are merely projections of Cobb’s subconscious. The totem Cobb continually references (a spinning top which falls when he is awake) may be an altogether dreamed extension of his denial that he is trapped within a dream; whether it topples or not, is of no value. And the ambiguous ending of his top wobbling neither proves or disproves he is awake or dreaming because it is in Cobb’s dream that the object is powered to spin incessantly, wobble or topple. Cobb is able to eventually see the faces of his children in the film’s climax, but that action could've also been produced care of his dream-state. For someone who made a living residing in and spending much of his life in the dream world, as Yusuf’s colleague mentions about their clientele, many of them seek Yusuf’s assistance in order to be woken up. On the first occasion that Cobb samples Yusuf’s sedative, there is a hint that he could still be under the influence of his drug-induced dream state: as he spins his top on the precarious corner of a sink, Cobb never sees it completely topple and more importantly, he witnesses an illusion of Mal against the reflection of the bathroom mirror. And never for the remaining duration of the film does his top completely come to rest.
Upon the film’s screening for critics, Nolan was questioned whether or not he was influenced by Alain Resnais’ enigmatic classic, LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD. It is true that both films feature ornately designed (and moments of crumbling) architecture through which snappily dressed characters often have difficulty maneuvering and a male protagonist who is obsessed by a woman he once knew in his past (or in his dreams), but the major difference lies in the films’ narrative structures. In the trailer for MARIENBAD, audience members were invited to become co-authors of the film and play the “truth game” by digesting important visual clues given by the director to shape the cinematic puzzle to a desired conclusion. What is truth or fiction, past or present is blurred and the concept of time is open to interpretation as the events that occur typically do so from multiple memories and points of view. What cannot be denied is how closely the film resembles a non-linear ghost story in its use of organ music that echoes through endlessly dark corridors and past extensively mirrored hallways by which well-dressed spirits are destined to stroll. And just as there are several games to be played in Resnais’ film (Nim, checkers and shooting sports), Nolan supplies Cobb’s core team-members with game-like totems (a top, a loaded die and a chess piece) while both directors pit their characters into a cinematic maze.
In this still from MARIENBAD, notice how the chateau’s guests (ghosts) cast shadows, but the topiaries do not.
Notice the visual similarity in the spatial relationship of characters in the prior image with those in this sheet-poster for INCEPTION:
One of the most striking cinematic similarities with INCEPTION (besides ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE in the film’s action sequence in the snow-capped mountains) is Satoshi Kon’s anime film, PAPRIKA, in which a group of scientists use a device called a “DC Mini” allowing them to engage in dream therapy by entering the dreams of patients to cure their ailments and anxieties. Once the device falls into the wrong hands, the characters’ dreams enter the real world and run amok with the concept of reality hanging in the balance. There is also a brief nod to Nolan’s own BATMAN BEGINS as a sedative is dripped onto Fischer’s hood which immediately knocks him into the next dream level, a behavioral reminiscence of his hooded ‘Scarecrow’ character who sprayed his enemies with an equally powerful neuro-toxin to send them into a hallucinatory state bringing on their deepest fears. Fischer literally walks into a direct homage to 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY when he approaches his father’s deathbed: Victorian and wooden furnishings are in contrast with the sterile and cubed floor and wall composition which bears an uncanny resemblance to Dave’s dwelling in the finale of Kubrick’s film. In the same scene, Dave accidentally knocks over a wine glass from his table that shatters on the floor which mirrors a broken champagne flute on Mal’s hotel room floor. Then seconds later, the appearance of Dave’s older self makes me recall the aged make-up of Mr. Saito in the opening moments of INCEPTION.
Despite these similarities in Nolan’s cinematic peer group, he has managed to manipulate the traditional laws of cinema to craft a film so intensely surreal, that the inspiration of ideas on the part of the viewer far outweighs frustrating bewilderment. Your imagination is also not only soothed, but you may leave the viewing feeling as if you’ve witnessed a new breed of film ultimately realizing that the act of inception is possible - - as you undoubtedly fell under its spell and allowed the idea to enter your own consciousness. As we currently live in a society tempted by ‘plugging in’ and doing it often, a repeat visit to experience INCEPTION is truly a dream come true. You just have to remember to wake up or risk being lost in the dream forever.
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