(Caution: contains spoilers. Sort of.)
Inception is a great film for two key reasons. One: it attempts to investigate some of the deepest parts of the human subconscious, those relating to the nature of one’s dreams. Two: it fulfils this goal less during the film than during the audience’s period of reflection in the film’s aftermath. Indeed, it is of principle importance that it does not reach any definitive conclusions during its runtime, that it does not offer any concrete answers. That, even if you know how everything has happened within the narrative, you still don’t know how everything has happened.
Now, to say that it is great, really great, is not necessarily to say that Inception is as brilliant or nuanced in its understanding of human nature, or of the emotional connections people form and break and form again as some recent films have been, such as DiCaprio’s other big-budget effort this year, Shutter Island. Nor is it to suggest that it gets everything right. However, I would argue that, in a similar way to Citizen Kane, its chief faults, if one wishes to term them that, are in its flawlessness, are in its rigid adherence to an intricately mechanical sense of construction.
Kane, of course, is still regarded my many as the finest film ever made (not that I am claiming that of Inception, but bear with me), and yet it is, for most of its running time, emotionally distant. Or perhaps a better way to say it is that it is not a particularly warm film. The ending should leave a smile on one’s face, I think, but one stemming more from understanding rather than from happiness (perhaps in the same way as Inception’s should). Welles’ film is, however, incredibly knowledgeable about emotions, and interrogates and analyses them in a manner almost without equal in any film I’ve seen. It is expertly composed in order to fully convey its findings, and to ask its questions on human nature, without ruining or drawing away from the narrative arc. It is perfect in a supremely clinical way, and yet the viewer does not become fully aware of how completely well-fitted its parts are until it is over, because its characterisation is, both despite and because of the aforementioned distance, so evocative and compelling as to render proper thinking-time within the film near-impossible.
Both films are, then, atomic-clockwork masterpieces, long-in-the-planning overtures rather than perfect pop songs played out in 3 minutes flat and written in not much longer. If they were paintings or prints they would be by M.C. Escher rather than by Van Gogh.
Indeed, the mention of Escher in relation to Inception is, by anyone familiar with his works, inevitable. The mathematical theorems and impossible figures so vividly present in that work are echoed and re-presented within Nolan’s film, from the two not-fully-there staircases, to the vast spectacle of Paris folding in upon itself and running rightways-up on several different intersecting plains at once. Moreover, however, the Escher comparison is fitting when relating to the entirety of the dreamspaces within the film – many of Escher’s greatest pictures seem otherworldly somehow, and yet all are, upon consideration, mathematically precise. These are not Dali’s surreal visions, at once realistic and yet also wild and untrammelled by the harsh constraints of worldly reality. Escher’s are visions which are always grounded within that reality and yet exploit it, calculatingly, almost academically. Much as, it could be argued, Nolan’s are within Inception.
This does not, in the long run, mean that those visions are any less impressive, or less effective, but it does mean that the audience is constantly aware, albeit unobtrusively, that what they are watching has been shaped specifically for them to watch. Escher, at possibly his most ambitious, created two pieces entitled ‘Metamorphosis I’ and 'Metamorphosis II', and the latter of these consists of a progression from one highly detailed tessellation into another into another, etc – the links between these objects, and the thoughts and feelings they stimulate, are not mathematical, but the construction of them is, (c)overtly so. With the exception of one segment – that dealing with a lighthouse (his own addition) on a coastline in Italy, which (in an odd parallel to Dali’s love of his childhood views) he fell in love with when he lived and worked there for a time in his youth. The startling break from the expected progression is present only briefly before returning to the tightly-planned order by way of fusing that lighthouse into a chessboard replete with similar-sized pieces, but it is present.
Likewise, Inception is at its most complex and intriguing, for me, when the memories of its chief protagonist, Cobb (DiCaprio), seem to bleed into the meticulously constructed dreamscapes, perturbing the logic of those constructions, challenging their true role and purpose. Now, at this point, I could well delve into a deep analysis of just what exactly each such rising memory indicates and tells the audience about the story and the characters on the whole – I have after all, been bouncing ideas related to that about my head and off the thoughts and words of others ever since I saw the film – but I do not wish to do that here. This is because what concerns me primarily at this juncture are more the mechanisms by which such memories are set in motion.
As I said earlier, during the film, there is not so much time for complicated analysis of what is occurring – that comes afterwards – and yet there is ample time for complex and multi-faceted reactions to the events and practical demonstrations of ideas unfolding upon the screen. Of course, this is how the human mind works, on a basic level, with regards to present happenings (what follows is not a detailed scientific explanation, but a simple description of how the process seems to me - if any more learned person than I could outfit this piece with more accurate, less guess-worky explanation, please feel free to suggest one). It is fed a picture of what is happening and it reads that for signs of what the picture means, picking up even the vaguest association stimulated by certain facets of the image, in the midst of concrete facts that it can ascertain from the surroundings (i.e. the road is wet here; there is a wall over there; Marion Cotillard looks amazing). It performs basic practical analysis of the given situation, reacts to impulses regarding what may happen next, based on what has happened previously – a fixed physical memory of the world is key to this process. If something in that image is replicated from something it has encountered before, or reminiscent of something, it will recognise it, and certain ideas associated with the prior encounter will be, potentially, brought to the surface, and interact with fresh ideas about what this new encounter means.
Within the film, we see this in action most fully upon Cobb’s face any time an irregularity occurs (his wife’s reappearances, the intrusion of a freight train into a traffic-packed street, etc.) – these are things he and his team must react to even as he considers their direct relevance to him. However, the film throws a remarkably ingenious complication into this process, by having these irregularities occur within a dream. When he sees his wife, it is not as though he is seeing a vague doppelganger of her walk into the same restaurant where he happens to be taking his evening meal. In the dreamscapes, the only way in which she can enter is as, it is explained, a projection from his subconscious. Ditto for the curiously off-the-rails train. Therefore, his mind is forced into running in circles when it reacts to these irregularities. He reacts to the reappearance of his wife in the present, but then, when his brain delves into the mass of associations related with her appearance in that present, it reaches the reason why she has reappeared. And yet, within the dream, she is arguably as real as any other person or object. Following this, there arises a very problematic question – is he seeing only what he’s thinking about seeing, or is he seeing what is actually there? Is his view dictated by his responses to it, or are his responses dictated by the view?
Now, obviously, I am getting more into the territory of (over-)analysis that comes when the film has finished, when I am no longer viewing it as it unfolds, within my own present. That being the case, I’m going to pull back slightly and jump out into looking at that question from the point of view of myself as a member of the audience, in relation to one section of the film in particular.
That the chosen section concerns Cobb demonstrating the construction of dreams/dream labyrinths to Ariadne, is fitting, I think, because this really seems to me to be at the heart of the film’s most challenging (and potentially maddening) ideas. This is the sequence in which Ariadne bends Paris into the Escher-referencing dimension-breaching shape mentioned-above, but it is two things she does to her reconstruction of the city after that which interested (and drew a reaction from) me the most, at least up to that point in the film. Firstly, the two of them jump from one market-lined street to a passage underneath a bridge, and this bridge was, like the Escher imagery, something visually in the film that really sparked a deep-set connection within me. Before I venture further into that, however, it is interesting to note that, within the film again, this is the point where the issue of a(n enforced) division between memory and dreams is first properly raised – it is even more interesting to note that it is Cobb giving the lecture on the issue to Ariadne on how including architecture from memory can trigger further subconscious projections which may compromise the integrity of the dream, as she has brought the bridge into play due to the fact that she walks under it each day in order to get to college.
That bridge was not only from her memory, however. It was from mine, as a filmgoer, and perhaps from those of other filmgoers as well (and obviously those of people who actually do walk under it each day, but that would complicate the point). Because it seemed to me to be the same stretch of rail-bridge that Marlon Brando walks under at the start of Last Tango in Paris. Even if I’m wrong about that, it is a similar bridge, and, regardless, the ideas related to my feelings on that film and its characters were already rushing back into me head – my subconscious was bringing its own projections into play with everything occurring on the screen. Indeed, as soon as Cobb’s wife, Mal, reappears briefly later in that scene, I began to link and look for parallels in their relationship and the relationship(s) at the centre of Bertolucci’s film, particularly in their evocations of grief. I started to see these links everywhere, even as I was taking in the film’s happenings on a separate, clearer level. Most tellingly, perhaps, I noted the way that Cobb tried to keep Mal locked within a sort of prison of memories within his mind, in the same way that first, Brando’s Paul tells Jeanne, the younger woman with whom he has embarked upon an affair, that they are only to see each other within the sparse apartment where they first meet; and second that Paul’s dead wife is confined, within the timeline of the narrative, to lying surrounded by flowers on her old bed, and presented so viciously with Paul’s memories of her and their time together.
Backing up a little to that scene beneath the bridge again, however, I was presented with a reminder of another film, a few moments after the first, when Ariadne begins to push mirrors she has installed between the stanchions of the bridge into a position that allows them both to stand and see themselves reflected at either side into infinity. This is an optical illusion which will have had its genesis, and many other uses, I’m sure, in various stage shows and other films with which I am unfamiliar, but the one that it brought to my mind was, fittingly enough, Citizen Kane. In that film, the illusion occurs when Kane is shambling along the halls of his deserted mansion, Xanadu, and is only onscreen for a couple of seconds, but it was clearly, for me, an indelible sight. Feeding this back into Nolan’s film, I began to see this scene in terms of loneliness, and now, enhanced by retrospective distance, in terms of how the ability to control and dictate the happenings of much of one’s own environs cannot necessarily breach or solve or even cure those problems that cause such loneliness to fall upon a person.
Here, of course, one might reasonably ask a similar question to the one I asked earlier of Cobb, i.e. whether I was putting ideas into the film or the film was putting ideas into me. Whether I was seeing what I wanted to see in order to make the film more than it is.
But, in many ways, that is a moot point. After all, that is what our minds are always doing, isn’t it? Filtering given information through the backlog of what we already know about the world, the accumulated mass of what we’ve already experienced, and thenceforth trying to find some sense and/or beauty to it. Indeed, one of the peculiar triumphs of Inception, I think, is that it actively encourages such a thing, rather than encouraging an escape and avoidance of oneself as many films do (not that I am by any means against escapism). It accepts all feelings and responses as valid, (particularly regarding the ending) in a way that stands out from a lot of the things I've seen recently. So, when a reviewer says that certain scenes remind him of Bond films, or, in the same article, says that it lacks ‘genuine heart’ such criticisms perhaps come from the unexpected nature of this acceptance – perhaps the reviewer sees them as faults because he has not expected his reactions and input, and yes, even ‘heart’ to be as integral as Nolan allows it to be. Whether one smiles with joy or understanding upon the film’s closing is, arguably, down to what each viewer has chosen to personally invest in the tale, and in the character of Cobb – whether they have seen him as a kind of everyman, or just as an isolated, unlinked projection from someone else’s mind.
And, when one considers that the comment about Bond films, specifically in relation to the snowbound ‘action sequence’, is by no-means an lone example of such a response, then a further consideration rises to the fore, in relation to both the characters within the film, and the perception of them as they relate to our society now. After all, one of the film’s main conceits is that the dreamscapes within it are ones that have been consciously created in order for subconscious ideas and issues to be stolen/implanted/explored. Ergo, does it not follow that the creators of the dreams could well have been influenced by ideas and scenic considerations placed in their heads by films they have seen, by images presumed present in their world that they have come into contact with, and which have been brought more fully into play by some stimuli elsewhere in their environment as they have been at work on the design? Outside of the film, I guess, the main point that such reviewers are trying to make is that these images have clearly been placed in Nolan’s head, and he is acting upon them, either consciously or subconsciously. But to accuse him of unoriginality, or of directing like Michael Bay(!), is to miss the essential truth that we are all composites, to admittedly varying degrees, of our experiences and influences – if we deny the impact of the things that influence us then there is no point to them, or to our ability to receive and react to them as influences (and, correspondingly, no point to reviewing anything, and even less to mentioning those influences ourselves in reviews).
Just as there exists the potential of a back-and-forth in the interplay between film and dream within Inception, therefore, there also exists that same potential outside of it. As mentioned earlier, it is clear that certain parts of my subconscious are somehow fused to things I have encountered in films and then linked, often by way of actual, physical experiences, to emotions and ideas. I imagine, and know in some instances, that a great many people feel the same. This may stretch from simply remembering how Saturday mornings used to feel when you were seven at the mention of some now practically-archaic cartoon, to the way in which you actually find yourself framing the world as you look upon it, tilting your head to a certain angle to experience a sight in a very particular and more personally-appealing way. Furthermore, in relation to the actual construction and compilation of films, Inception provided me with several interesting thoughts on just how the composition of dreams, at least in memories of them, have influenced that, and, potentially, the other way round. For example, when Cobb mentions to Ariadne something about the odd way that, in dreams, it is possible to go from one setting to another with absolutely no idea of how you travelled the distance in between, I was instantly jolted to think how often such a question may arise to the film-viewer, when confronted with an apparently unexplained scene-change (a thought I may have had before, but which is, for the time being, tied intrinsically to my reading of Inception). This then, probably not-unintentionally, serves to complicate the viewer’s perceptions of just which parts of Nolan’s film are intended as dream and which parts intended as reality.
However, some have pointed out that, whether due to the fact that they are intended as pre-planned dreams or not, because of their clarity, and, at-times, hard-to-differentiate-from-reality nature, they do not come across as particularly accurate evocations of a dreamlike state. They do not come across as being naturalistic. Perhaps this is because of the limits placed on the role of memory within them, perhaps simply because that did not fit with the aesthetic direction in which Nolan wanted to take the film. Perhaps not. It does not matter particularly why they aren’t naturalistic, only that they aren’t. But there are numerous other films that could be suggested to fit that demanding criteria, such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Brazil, and to fit it well. Yet, even those cannot, by their nature as planned and edited pieces of film truly and completely evoke the dreamscapes we each encounter in our heads. They can, however, influence the way in which we remember our dreams and respond to those memories. We can more easily relate those filmic dreams to our own grand illusions. Indeed, if I were to have a dream tonight that includes flying, I do not think my first port of call in the afterthought period would be to Freudian analysis, but to those first fantastical dreams in Brazil.
Still, further to that, I know I have not only had dreams that included locations from films, but have also semi-consciously kickstarted such dreams, often in some attempt to remember or, perhaps, relive the film in question, only to find that other issues and images intersect and disrupt that process. Or, maybe more bizarrely, I have, whilst not fully awake, attempted to envision films in full having only seen their trailers, or posters, or heard of their premise and which actors they include, and the cuts and scenic jumps within those visions have come about from me, fitted in on subconscious impulses of just where it feels right that they should go... But, then, are these impulses not based on ideas that films have placed inside my head and made me believe are coming from my own mind?
Well, films and other sources.
And, indeed, Inception is a great film because it takes those other sources into account, in relation to its characters, its creators, and especially its audience. Like Citizen Kane, it consists of an impeccably-structured labyrinth, and yet leaves a different route through that labyrinth for each individual viewer – they are each likely, and entitled, to reach their own conclusion, whether positive or negative, with regards to the film’s happenings. You don't have to like it, but you should appreciate it, I think, because it’s one of those too-rare films which knows, and accepts, that ‘inception’ is never just a one-way street.
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