Inception
Reviewed by Deirdre Barrett, PhD
In Chris Nolan’s film
Inception, thieves can
enter other people’s dreams via IV drug drips. They exploit the
technique for industrial espionage to “extract” trade secrets and
for “inception” to plant an idea which the victim will think is his
own. This is a heist film: the audience is set up to root for
Leonardo DiCaprio’s character and his fellow thieves.
Unlike the films of David Lynch or Tom DeCillo, Inception is not
rambling, surreal--or even very
dreamlike.
Rather, dreams are a plot device which affords more
dramatic visuals than stealing diamonds from vaults ever could.
Instead of the loose logic of
the dream, there is a tight and intricate thriller plot.
The thieves are lucid dreamers (i.e. they know they are
dreaming) but they—and even the dream world--still obey physical
laws. The team must
laboriously scale a cliff on ropes, not just float to the top. They
must unlock doors, not walk through walls. Nolan has even added
specific laws just for the dream world: you can’t dream you die, you
would wake up. When one goes from a simple dream into a
dream-within-a-dream, dream 1 continues with a sleeping body
present. Each dream level slows time down subjectively by a factor
of ten—progressively as you enter
dreams-within-dreams-within-dreams. In the classic heist film,
thieves carry out elaborately timed maneuvers as a clock ticks on
when the guard will come around or when the alarms will sound. Nolan
has created a world where his thieves carry out four different sets
of intricate maneuvers against four clocks all ticking at different
speeds. The team skis down a mountainside exchanging gunfire with
their enemies in one dream level; in another, they sleep in a hotel
whose halls crawl with similar armed assassins; while in yet a
different dreamspace, their sleeping bodies are driven through a car
chase scene; and in the physical world, they sleep on a plane flying
toward a country which will arrest the protagonist for an
at-first-unspecified crime unless they achieve their dream tasks at
all three dream levels before arrival. The story is ingeniously
constructed with split-second timing of amazing stunts and special
effects.
None of this overall structure is very dreamlike, but there
are individual moments of
Inception which do capture the dream world beautifully.
Nolan is especially
fascinated by lucidity—in interviews, he describes himself as a
lifelong lucid dreamer. There is a wonderful scene when Ellen Page’s
character first becomes lucid.
Her awe at the realization that her mind is creating all this
and the way some details hold up perfectly while others fragment on
close examination—this is exquisitely evocative of a lucid dream.
False awakenings are handled well, with a character losing lucidity
until something strange intrudes on the supposed waking world.
Sensory incorporation shows up—the careening van in one dream world
triggers odd balance effects in another; a sleeping body falling
into a bathtub produces a huge wave pouring from a building as an
intrusion into another dream.
And some of the most realistic details are in the personal
aspects of the plot—DiCaprio has lost his wife traumatically and the
way in which his practiced content-control of his dreams is derailed
by grief, survivor guilt, and the deceased beckoning him to join her
all ring true. The film is also sophisticated about how one might go
about implanting an idea to make it fit the target’s own personality
and interpersonal relationships in such a way that it would flower.
Even potential weaknesses—vague and clichéd aspects of the plot—are
turned to clever advantage when one character, trying to shake
DiCaprio’s conviction about what is waking reality, asks him if he
doesn’t think it odd that he’s being chased around the world by
armed strangers and accused of a crime that he doesn’t think he’s
committed--doesn’t that sound rather like a dream?
IASD members might prefer less gunfire or more surrealism,
but Chris Nolan has a perfect instinct for the blockbuster. I love
the idea of millions of action-film fans the world over leaving
theaters asking each other if they’re ever had a dream in which they
knew they were dreaming--or whipping out their smart phones and
Googling to find out if you really can learn to influence dream
content.
(Inception opens July 16th internationally. Directed by
Christopher Nolan. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt,
and Ellen Page. 147 minutes,
rated PG-13. Warner
Brothers.)
Other reviews of
dream-related films appear at
http://www.asdreams.org/videofil.htm
