Introduction
The spinning top ending of the movie has started countless debates about whether the happy reunion is real or Cobb is still dreaming. There have also been essays and reviews commenting on Nolan’s psychological theories on dreams and subconsciousness. In my opinion, Susan Sontag had it all figured out back in 1965. In her classic essay, “The Imagination of Disaster,” she pointed out that philosophy provides a good foundation for sci-fi films as it allows for appreciating the distortion of time in dreams and reality (Mingsheng 13). Inception also expands on many Buddhist teachings such as “Life is a dream,” which are often described as a philosophy.
This essay, therefore, argues that the movie goes beyond the psychology theories and invites the audience to think about the age-old philosophical question: Is there a mind-independent reality? Nolan also skilfully included clues and techniques to provoke the audiences to think maybe the whole movie is a dream, leading us to Nolan’s own belief that any subjective reality is real, as he said in his Princeton grad speech in 2015 (White 53). Nolan creatively uses the characters to establish that dreams are facets of reality as carefully developed in the plot.
The Plot
In the movie Inception, Dom Cobb is portrayed as a robber who has the unusual ability to penetrate people’s dreams and take information from their subconscious. His abilities have made him a sought-after individual in the realm of corporate espionage, but the skills seem to have cost him everything he cherishes. Cobb is given a second shot at atonement when given the difficult task of planting an idea in someone’s head. It will be a perfect crime if he accomplishes the set task, but a formidable adversary watches Cobb’s every move.
Realism and the Mind Concept
Christopher Nolan, the author, notes that “Once an idea has taken hold of the brain, it’s almost impossible to eradicate” (Parr 17). The mind perceives reality with consciousness as a prerequisite. A such, people like Cobb, with certain levels of consciousness understanding, can explore dreams to manipulate reality and, by extension, the mind. In a typical philosophical assessment, reality is perceived to exist in close relation to the mind. Inception seems to successfully explore the concept of the mind as a vessel of perceiving reality that can be manipulated.
Nolan believes that people began to perceive reality as a poor relation to our aspirations throughout time. As a filmmaker, Nolan wishes the audience to understand that dreams, virtual worlds, and the abstractions we love and surround ourselves with are all subsets of reality. Nolan subsequently pondered, apologized to anyone who had not watched Inception, explaining that the way the film’s ending worked, Leonardo DiCaprio’s character Cobb was in his subjective world while away with his children. Cobb no longer cared, which provides a strong inference that potentially all levels of reality are legitimate.
Psychological Theories
The film is rich with implicit and explicit references to Carl Jung’s work. Freud called dreams “the royal road to the unconscious,” and Jung believed that the subconscious mind contains robust emotional processes that, when malformed or disturbed, can break through and cause immense distress to our conscious lives. In the film, the young architect Ariadne is hired to build dreams in the form of a labyrinth which is one of the central symbols in the movie. Nolan conceded that he chose the name Ariadne. She is the princess who leads Theseus out of the Minotaur’s labyrinth in the Greek legend. Jung referred to being lost in life as ‘losing the Ariadne thread’(Parr 17). There are several instances where Nolan reflects on immense distress associated with conflict and individualism.
In the movie, individualism is developed as awareness of oneself and desires. Such desire often results in levels of attention that often manifest in dreams. Several researchers have made similar observations, including Jung’s wife, a psychoanalyst in her own right, also wrote a book describing a major theme of one of Jung’s theories. The theory notes that individuation is the healthy development of ourselves as distinct individuals by resolving our relationships with those around us and the conflicts within us. In Inception, Robert Fischer’s journey ends with him resolving his relationship with his father.
In terms of conflict, Nolan also develops a perspective of Robert Fischer’s distress to develop self-awareness’s psychological perceptive. Science fiction is rife with such conflicts, commonly parental concerns, as shown by Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader in ‘Star Wars. In ‘Star Wars, Luke recognized that Darth Vader was his father, and his anger for him was changed into love and hope (Gordon 17). Like his late mother, Padmé Amidala, Luke thought that Anakin had some redeeming qualities and might be rehabilitated. In the same manner, the inceptioneers utilize emotional exploitation and the father-son bond to convince young Robert to break up his father’s monopoly — not because it is the “correct” thing to do, but as a means of resolving a conflict. They determine that the desire to do good always outweighs the desire to punish.
Divergence from Psychology towards Philosophy
Nolan, however, does want the movie to rest on the psychological laurels. This section elaborates, with examples, how the movie goes beyond the psychological aspect and gets more philosophical. It is important to note that while psychology is concerned with the mind and behavior, philosophy is concerned with the underlying nature of knowledge, reality, and existence. In the movie, for example, Cobb makes the statement, “Well, dreams, they feel real while we’re in them, right? It’s only when we wake up that we realise something was actually strange” (Thompson 22). Cobb attempts to reflect on reality and existence from a philosophical perspective.
Cobb also references the philosophical question of time, reality, and existence. He states that “In a dream, your mind functions more quickly… therefore time seems to feel slower… the five minutes in the real world gives you an hour in the dream” (Thompson 27). This again echoes the Buddhist saying: On the day in the mountain—thousand years on earth. The Buddhist philosophy considers time as subjective and has a mind-dependent existence that can access both the conscious and the subconscious worlds that seem to run on different timeframes. Nolan appears to anchor most of his approach to mind and dreams to such philosophical interpretations of existence.
Buddhist teaching also talks about letting go of the past and attachment. Cobb’s wife Mal is his samskara – an imprint in our minds created from the past that prevents us from happiness. Cobb feels guilty that he has planted the suicide idea into Mal’s mind, so he is responsible for her death. This guilt prevents him from creating dreams from fulfilling his tasks. Yet, he continues to build dreams using their past shows his reluctance to let go. In the movie, Nolan uses the elevator metaphor as the deepening levels of Cobb’s subconscious. This is a meditation technique employed by Buddhist teachers. Students imagine an elevator in the chest working through different levels of their subconscious until they finally reach the bottom of their gut, revealing their most vulnerable and most profound hurt.
Buddhist Idealism and Plato’s Allegory of Cave
According to Buddhism, we ultimately do not know what reality is and what is merely in our minds. That is similar to Platos’ Allegory of Cave, where people are trapped inside a cave, chained and unable to move. All they have ever known is they take it to be reality. Shadows in the wall to them are the reality. In Inception, Cobb actually says to Mal,” You are just a shade of my real life, just as the shadows of reality Plato talks of in the cave. Mal is also an example of Plato’s Allegory. Over time, she does not know which world is reality anymore. By this, Nolan also alludes to the danger of illusion which when the film was shown, there was many incidents of video game addiction deaths.
Another philosophical clue Nolan gives us is the twelve sleeping men in Yusuf’s cave. When asked if they came to be put to sleep, the man replied: “No. They come to be woken up. The dream has become their reality. Who are you to say otherwise?” The conversation shares some philosophical similarities with the “Allegory of the Cave” coined by Plato to ponder the nature of belief and knowledge (Ostergaard 23). According to the metaphor, there are inmates chained together in a cave. The captives observe these shadows as if they were genuine. According to Plato, a single prisoner may become free from the thought that the shadows could as well be their version of reality. Nolan seems to take advantage of such a perspective of reality and knowledge, together with nonlinear storytelling, to engage the audience fully.
Effective Narrative and Filming Strategies
The nonlinear storytelling works well to add to the suspense and further provokes us to think if the movie is all but a dream. As Cobb says in the movie, “Dreams always start in the middle of the action.” The cold opening with Cobb waking up on the beach bewilders the audience as no context is given for the events in the oriental mansion scenes. Nolan’s blend of cross-cutting and flashbacks to Mal creates a context for the audiences and still leaves them surprised at the big reveal. This construction is called Enigma Codes and helps to “delay revelation, to dodge the moment of truth…delaying final disclosure until the ultimate moment” (Lacey 73). The nonlinear storytelling approach helps Nolan convey a more expansive version of the tale.
Nolan also uses character dialogue for omniscient narration to tell his complex story. For example, Cobb explains to Ariadne how our minds work during dreaming. The scenes’ characters continuously talk about what dream level they are in and how much time is left to finish the task. By using slow motion, musical cues, and distinctive. Set design, audiences will clearly understand the different dream layers they are seeing. The slow-motion technique creates the illusion of time slowing down. The method gives the audience a sense of distorted time.
Today, such techniques have been broadly accepted in film production. When films were adapted only from novels and stage plays in the past, modern-day cinema draws on influence from video games, the internet, and popular culture (Jenkins 2008). Jenkins (2008) refers to this as “Transmedia storytelling, “a response to media convergence “that places new demands on consumers and depends on the active participation of knowledge communities.” In Inception, Cobb’s team must go through different stages, like how players must go through different levels in a video game to claim the final victory. Jenkins (2008) also writes that “Transmedia storytelling is the art of world making.” The spectacular scenes in Aridane’s dreams with folding-over buildings and people walking on roads in the sky exemplify the encompassing attraction to the cinema.
It is also largely accurate that the film’s shoddy editing, which involves a quick jump within scenes without transitions, is Nolan’s way of implying that the whole movie is a dream, thereby illustrating his philosophical thesis that life is a dream. There is no such thing as a mind-independent reality. As Kyle Johnson said, the most telling hint is the music dreamers choose to indicate the conclusion of a dream. When the song is completed, the dream comes to an end. The recording duration is 2 minutes and 28 seconds throughout the film. Inception lasts precisely two hours and twenty-eight minutes. This is likely Nolan’s method of informing us that our shared dream, the film, has come to an end.
As established, by using a non-linear storyline, a cold opening, and an ambiguous ending, complemented by “Transmedia Storytelling’ elements, Inception appeals to today’s multimedia society with a thought-provoking story. The special effects and clues peppered throughout manifest Nolan’s belief. In his own words,” The way the end of that film worked, Leonardo DiCaprio’s character Cobb — he was off with his kids, he was in his own subjective reality. He didn’t really care anymore, and that makes a statement: perhaps, all levels of reality are valid,” ideas that are also shared with Socrates (Ostergaard 23). According to Socrates, the body is a manifestation of the imperfect, perceptible world, but the soul is a manifestation of the perfect, actual world. The sensible world is what we perceive all around us, yet it is a figment of our imagination. Although we cannot see the true world, it is where the Forms reside. The Forms are entities that establish norms for us.
Conclusion
Few movies can match Inception’s degree of inventiveness in exploring the mind, the existence, and reality. It is a masterpiece of intricacy, intellect, and aspiration. Dreaming has always been an eternally intriguing topic for films as it presents an avenue for unconsciously manipulating the victim’s subconscious mind. The movie brings up the sensation that everything is possible, and almost everything can be made to manifest. It is clear that the difference is prevalent between fundamental worlds or zones of existence. Even though their borders are varied, the separation between material and mental worlds is widely acknowledged as a critical area of debate by most philosophers and scientists.
Works Cited
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Gordon, Andrew. Star Wars: A myth for our time. Routledge, 2018.
Jenkins, H 2008, ‘Introduction: Works at the Altar of Convergence”, Convergence Culture: Mingsheng, Gu. “Art, Style and Modern Consciousness in the Work of Susan Sontag: An Interview with Leland Poague.” Foreign Literature Studies (2018): 03.
Lacey, Narrative. “Genre key concepts in media studies” Palgrave Hampshire (2000).
Ostergaard, Edvin. “Echoes and shadows: a phenomenological reconsideration of Plato’s cave allegory.” Phenomenology & Practice 13.1 (2019): 20-33.
Parr Emily. “Inception Movie Timeline.” Student Research Proceedings 3.2 (2018).
Thompson, Symeon J. “Inception: Wending the virtual maze back to reality.” News Weekly 3072 (2020):22.
Where Old and New Media Collide, New York, New York University Press, pp. 1-24.
White, Daniel. “Janus’s Celluloid and Digital Faces: The Existential Cyborg—Autopoiēsis in Christopher Nolan’s Memento.” Film in the Anthropocene. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2018. 15-55.