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
