Inception Analysis - Part 1

I've decided to do a series analyzing Inception. Here's Part 1.

Inception (2010, Christopher Nolan) appears to be a complex, difficult movie to figure out, but it’s really a straightforward film. What makes it seem complicated is the pace and speed. Lots of information and story points are given to the audience very quickly and the story keeps moving forward. Spoiler alert: The last shot of the film is the top spinning and it makes it seem as though the entire film might have been a dream. I have watched the film with this in mind and it is not the case. Everything is what it says it is. When Cobb is in reality, it’s reality, when they say they are in a dream or another level of a dream, they really are.

THE WORLD

In the world of the film, there is a technology that allows people to dream together and to communicate in their dreams. The dreamers take a drug that puts them to sleep. There is reality and below that the dream world. One person is having the dream and others can join in. Another person can be the architect of the dream and can build the world of the dream. Nolan does a great job at adding layers by having the characters have dreams with in dreams.

Now a movie about dreams and dreams within dreams is very cool to me, but could very quickly get very artsy and too far out there for a large audience. A great choice Nolan made was to make the film a heist movie. The dream world is interesting, but not a story. So Cobb (DiCaprio) uses the dream technology to extract and steal information from people. This is called extraction. The first sequence of the film is an extraction attempt. The film goes to another level when Cobb is asked not to extract something, but to give someone an idea, plant a thought into their head, a process call inception.

In the dream world, if you die, you wake up. You can feel pain, but if you die the dream ends. An added brilliant complexity is that in the inception attempt, the drugs the group is taking to sleep are so powerful that if you die in the dream before the drugs wear off, then your mind goes to a very deep level of dream space. When you wake up to reality, your mind will essentially be mush.

A problem the group has is that they thought it would be a safe dream world. However, Robert Fischer (Murphy), the one they are trying to incept has been trained in dream world defense. Someone has taken him into a dream to train his mind to have defenders if he is taken into a dream without his knowledge.

There are very strong defenders with powerful weapons in the first level of dreams during the inception attempt. So in a normal dream, it’s fairly safe and if you die you wake up. In the inception attempt, very dangerous and if you die your brain is mush.

Time in a dream is longer. So five minutes in reality is an hour in a dream. If there is a dream within a dream, the time is exponentially increased. An hour in the first dream is a week in a dream within a dream, and so forth. This is seen in the cross cutting between the van falling, Arthur moving the group, and the battle in the snow.

For the dreamer, the one whose dream and mind everyone is in, the dream must feel real or the dream will destroy itself and the other people in the dream. The people in the dream from the dreamers subconscious will see the people joining the dream. The people in the dream are part of the dream’s subconscious. This is why when Ariadne (Page) first realizes she is dreaming at the café everything starts exploding. She knows it’s a dream so it deteriorates quickly. Part of the architect’s main job is to keep the dream real for the dreamer. There is a scene where Cobb is dreaming and Ariadne is walking around Paris changing things. Cobb is the dreamer and Ariadne is in his dream as the architect. Ariadne is changing all kinds of things, putting bridges where they aren’t normally and folding the city onto itself. (Which is very cool.) Cobb’s subconscious people turn on and kill Ariadne.

The reason the creation of a maze is important because if the subconscious can find the dreamers, then the dream will fall apart sooner. So if the dreamers invading the dream can hide from the subconscious by making the world a maze then they will have more time in the dream.

The importance of this aspect of the film does two things. One is it means the film can’t have the wild and crazy dreams that we all have because if the dreams change too much, the dreamer will know something is wrong and will destroy the dream.

The second is that it keeps the film more realistic. I was a little disappointed that the film didn’t have much more imaginative and creative dreams. We have dreams that are emotionally true, but can be crazy. Like everything is purple, we are talking to a bird and flying a plane, although we may not be pilots. So this choice to keep dreams real keeps the film real. I also think it allows for a more mainstream audience. A dream movie can get very out there quickly. Nolan has been very successful. Dark Knight was the second highest grossing film ever at the time, and he was allowed freedom to make his next film. I applaud that he decided to make a big budget, original, action/dream film. However if he had made it extremely dreamy and wildly artsy, then his audience would have been smaller. If the film doesn’t do well and it has a huge budget, he would lose is reputation. Also on the bigger scale, Hollywood has become a product factory, and not making films. Transformers is made and makes hundreds of millions, but forget that the story is terrible. Nolan didn’t use his clout to make another product, but to make a big budget, original film. If Inception as an original, big budget film, is successful, it might change the movies that are made. While I wish and think the film could have been even more imaginative, I appreciate how the choices work on a larger scale. The reasons for the choice to make the dreams realistic are also worked into the script in a big way. It becomes a source of conflict as the characters have to make the dream realistic or else the dream fails.

The characters use a totem to let themselves know they are not dreaming anymore. A totem is an object that only they know the weight of. Cobb has a top, Arthur (Gordon-Levitt) has a loaded dice and Ariadne has a chess piece. No one else is allowed to touch it because then they could put the item into a dream of the owner of the totem. Then they could be fooled in a dream.

There are a few other complexities in the film. Cobb’s failed extraction at the beginning of the film puts him in debt to an unseen company he was working for called Cobalt. Saito (Wanatabe) offers to get him out of debt if Cobb can complete an inception. This is one motivation for Cobb to attempt inception. Saito also offers to get Cobb out of the legal trouble he is in.

Cobb has a dark past that is slowly revealed in the film. It works great that it’s given to the audience piece by piece because it slowly lets us know the danger they are in and how messed up Cobb is. Mal (Cotillard) was Cobb’s wife. The two experimented with dreams and made their way into “limbo” or “unstructured dream space.” Which lasted a lifetime and the two could create all the worlds they wanted. At first they had fun, but Cobb knew it wasn’t real and would end at some point. Cobb tries to convince her they need to wake up and go back to the real world, but it doesn’t work. I wonder if Mal lost her grip on reality because she designed houses and buildings from her past. Cobb finds Mal’s totem, it’s the top he now uses, and spins it. The message for Mal is: “Your world is not real.” This works to get Mal out of the dream world. They both get hit by a train to wake up. The problem is that Mal still believes “Your world is not real,” even though she is in reality. Later she kills herself, thinking that will wake her up, but she has really died. Mal has herself declared sane by three doctors prior to this and that Cobb was abusive. Cobb is now wanted by the United States for murder and cannot see his kids anymore. Saito’s promise is to clear the charges if Cobb can do the inception.

No one thinks inception is possible because it’s too hard to fool the dreamer that the idea is real. You have to get the dreamer to think they came up with the idea. Cobb knows it’s possible because he incepted Mal. A good choice by Nolan is to make inception hard to do so that it’s not something that can be done all the time.

Cobb hasn’t grieved Mal and forgiven himself. He goes into his own dreams and puts memories of Mal into a prison with levels that he goes to by elevator. Ariadne figures this out. What compounds this problem is that Cobb’s subconscious pops out at difference times. This is why Mal comes in at different times in his dreams and destroys things. This explains why we see Cobb’s children at particular times and when the train comes in at the wrong time. Cobb is unstable and it endangers his dreams, the dreamer, the team members and the reality of the dreams. It even endangers Fischer who doesn’t even know what can happen to him.

One of the things that Cobb ultimately needs is to heal from the death of Mal. This is not part of the job of inception, but part of his character. Cobb will deal with this in the deepest dream in limbo.

Part 2 will cover the story structure.