#15 - Inception

 

A reel dream.

Before watching Inception it had never stuck me before how much a dream and a film have in common with each other. They are both formed through an idea, an idea which may have formed itself within the sub-conscious, they are both a form of alternate reality and escape from the real world, they are constructed and they can both be destabilised and have multiple meanings drawn out of them by the self and others.

For many people both dreams and cinema is a profound means of escape from a life that may seem dull, monotonous or unsatisfactory and are looking for a new existence. Look at James Cameron’s 3D spectacle Avatar, which with it’s ground-breaking 3D environments and lush, attractive scenery drew many, many people to immerse themselves in the world of Pandora and watch the film repeatedly, wishing to once more experience a world unlike their own.  For over 100 years cinema has created worlds that are both fantastical and familiar and which, when one is completely immersed, are not questioned but simply experienced.

“Dreams feel real while we're in them. It's only when we wake up that we realise something was actually strange.”

This passive viewing of a film or dream engages with the immediate “feeling” of the inhabited world; in a nightmare you would feel just as afraid as if you were watching Jack Nicholson terrorising Shelly Duvall in The Shining or you may be as emotionally involved in a dream featuring loved ones as you may be whilst watching It’s a Wonderful Life. When you are immediately engaged with the created world you don’t question what created this world or why it exists, you just exist with it and become a part of it. It is as soon as you begin to question the world and realise that it is a construction that you begin to destabilise it. In a film you could become suddenly aware that you are watching actors assisted leaping around a bright green stage, and not a seasoned cop dodging a violent explosion by mere centimetres.

When Ariadne first realises that she is not actually sat in a quaint Café in central Paris but actually within a shared dream, the world around her begins to collapse, with shops, streets and buildings destabilising and breaking apart. It was only when she realised that the world was not real that it began to fall apart. This carries over to film where there whole areas of criticism devoted to highlighting and destabilising the constructedness of a film and understanding how it creates it’s convincing world within the viewers mind. When the artifice of film and dreams is understood it can be manipulated to great extent, with both film-makers and Cobb’s team creating great impossible worlds that feel real to the viewer. It is not only in the visual or the palpable that films and dreams exist; they also exist on a deeper level, with vast under-currents of meanings, desires and ideas flowing below the surface.

“You mind telling your subconscious to take it easy?”

Dreams, and the study of dreams, have been around for as long as humanity has walked the planet. They were seen as messages from the gods, revelations of secrets and sources of divine inspiration, but in recent centuries they have been seen as they key to the human psyche, with many psychoanalysts peering in and deconstructing dreams to reveal the hidden forces that drive the self. This approach to the hidden meanings within the dream has been carried over to almost every form of human communication and has become a staple in the analysis of films. We search for the hidden meanings, not only in people, but also in films. It is in the highlighting of this deconstruction and expansion that we find the ideological core of Inception; the notion of “The idea”.

“Your world is not real!”

Ideas are what have shaped humanity. They have given us the ability to create vast structures, complex machinery and advances that have brought us to where we are today but where do they come from and is it possible to put an idea in someone’s mind? The plot of Inception revolves around the task of implanting a fully convincing idea within the mind of a business rival. To do this they create worlds, replicate and repeat a specific set of numbers and employ a plethora of trickery and façades in order to plant the single idea that he is not his father. This process is strikingly similar to the construction of the film itself. Firstly, There is the idea that is created by the screenwriter (Saito), which is then passed on to the Director (Cobb) who then assembles of team to work with, including; a producer (Arthur), a production designer (Ariadne), an actor (Eames) and an audience (Fischer).

Taking this approach then, that every film is capable of performing inception, what influence has film held over our lives? Is it possible to say there wouldn’t be as many scientists if it wasn’t for films like 2001:A Space Odyssey?

There is, though, an inherit danger in taking this approach to films as it does put films in the position of being used (by either film-makers or active viewers) as a tool or weapon to justify a particular ideological stand point. You can visit almost any news page and see claims of violence in games or films being to blame for real life acts of aggression, but this is not interpretation, but rather, manipulation. Every film will invariable have it’s own moral, social, ideological or political compass and in examining and highlighting how that compass is constructed we can actively see, and explore, the value and integrity of the film’s (or dream’s) idea.

For Cobb, the artificially crated dreams in Inception have become the only way he can dream and I think that may also apply to me. For whatever reason, I very rarely remember my dreams and when I do they are half forgotten fragments. The only way I can dream is by willingly, and actively, immersing myself in another’s dream, and through these I can not only understand how their dream is made but also in seeing what I take away from each film I can better understand who I am and how I work.

“I just want to understand.”

Ariadne