INCEPTION (2010)

By 2008, Christopher Nolan was a popular filmmaker within public consciousness for his highly proficient and stylish neo-noir Memento (2000), and if not for that, then for his monumental cinematic comic-book masterpiece, The Dark Knight (2008). This was due in part to his skilful manipulation of cinematic elements, employing techniques and approaches that created a temporal continuity with his storytelling. This signature of Nolan’s would go on hiatus for the foreseeable future, as his success with both Batman Begins (2005) and The Dark Knight would inspire him to venture elsewhere as a filmmaker. This brings us to 2010, where Nolan would release what is considered a beloved favourite amongst film fans and Nolan stans: Inception.

In its world, oneirology — a branch of psychology that studies how dreams relate to brain functions, memory formation, and mental disorders — and dream interpretation never ceased. With years of accumulated research and dedication, this branch of psychology sparked its own enlightenment, causing psycho-technology to advance at an accelerated rate and eventually bringing forth a device that allows one to probe another’s dream. Nolan’s premise for Inception is inventive yet rather familiar.

Although it’s never directly said by Nolan himself — as I sure as hell couldn’t find anything — Nolan’s been quoted admitting that the late Satoshi Kon’s last feature-length film, Paprika (2006), was a huge source of inspiration for Inception. To be frank, there’s no need for legitimate confirmation from the man; watching Inception is sufficient enough as proof of its influence. Yet despite Inception’s dream-based technology, Ariadne’s (Elliot Page) referential wardrobe, surrealist hallways and lifts, and references to Greek mythology, Nolan is far from a cinematic biter.

Inception takes the idea of oneirology-centric technology and uses it for cerebral heists. Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) has been forced into exile from the US due to an incident in which he was framed and is looking for a way back to see his children once again. He and his highly proficient, meticulous, and antediluvian heist partner Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) are hired by a profoundly powerful businessman, Saito (Ken Watanabe), to perform a cerebral heist, but instead of stealing information from the target, Saito wishes Cobb and Arthur to plant an idea into the target’s mind-a process called ‘Inception’.

In traditional film noir practice, Cobb and Arthur must assemble a team of skilled thieves and the like to execute the task accordingly. If successful, this job will be Cobb’s last, as Saito’s promised to nullify any and all legal issues for him to finally return home to his kids. The job is complex, requiring Cobb and his team to implant in Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), the son of Saito’s competitor Maurice Fischer (Pete Postlethwaite), the idea to dissolve his father’s company so Saito’s biggest competitor can be out of his way.

Inception’s premise is intriguing. It’s built around the structure of a heist film that employs impressive practical and digital visuals to create a surrealist neo-noir. Fresh, right? Well, only so on paper, as the film is infuriatingly inconsistent, built on a flimsy structure, and involves shoving expository dialogue down the viewer’s throat over and over again, ad nauseam.

Before throwing you into my maelstrom of written disdain, I’ll pay respect where it’s due. Inception’s concept of dream-sharing and manipulation has always fascinated me. The newly evolved oneirology, in the world of Inception, is a field of study at universities, and it appears that roles within this discipline, like that of an architect, are areas of specialisation within it. Whenever Cobb and the gang enter the dream of another, the architect provides the structure of the dream — essentially a prebuilt level of a video game — for the dreamer to enter, which the dreamer fills with projections of their subconscious: illusory replicants of people, some of whom they know.

An architect can manipulate the dreamscape in any way they choose; however, doing so while in the dream may cause the dreamer’s subconscious projections to become aware of their presence, prompting the projections to take action against them. There’s an amazing moment in Inception involving dream manipulation where Cobb is testing Ariadne’s prowess as an architect, in which we see a beautifully created sequence of the streets within the dream curl upward on itself-an homage to F.W Murnau’s The Last Laugh (1924) — just before a series of consistent large changes that warrant Cobb’s reflections to respond accordingly.

A common criticism I come across regarding Inception is that its portrayal of dreams is sterile and unimaginative due to how low-to-the-ground the dreams appear. While the formers open for debate, the latter just simply isn’t true. I’ll ask this: have you ever had a dream before where it mirrored environment(s) familiar to you? I’m sure you have, as have I. They appear familiar and sometimes slowly evolve into something unrecognisable yet still familiar, while other times the smallest elements change.

These dreams sometimes trip me out more than ones accompanied by visuals people collectively perceive as surreal. I think the plethora of art directors Nolan has at his disposal orchestrated a great approach towards the manipulation of dream elements. Moments like the one mentioned previously are ingenious ways to properly portray a dream as close to reality as possible: the environment may shift, twist, or turn, but it’s still recognisable.

Unfortunately, there isn’t as much manipulation in this film as I’d like. While, yes, there are moments that show the fragility of dreams-how interference from the outside world, or the upper dream layer in some cases, can cause the physics of the dream to shift or break entirely-the wealth of computer-generated imagery during Ariadne’s training with Cobb, and the use of paradoxical strategies, they just don’t push them as far as they could.

The intricacies of dream manipulation can be explored to make the film Kafkaesque based solely on the seemingly untapped potential in doing so. If you ask me, the presentation of the fragility of dreams can be portrayed as more than just crumbling structures and the movement of gravity. It can go as far as complete Escher-inspired landscapes. The same can go with paradoxical strategies, as Nolan only employs the infinite staircase as the go-to strategy for one to get out of sticky situations involving subconscious projections.

The lack of paradoxicality in its visuals was more than likely a decision by Nolan to balance its surreal and film noir identity, possibly not to remove the audience from the experience. If so, I scoff at this; it shows Nolan lacks the confidence to get creative, creating custom limitations on himself to sell seats. These low-to-the-ground dreams that people have experienced can most definitely be Kafkaesque, so wouldn’t audiences become further immersed in this cinematic experience if Nolan went in this direction? I think so. I would have found it more appealing than using CGI to show off cool explosions and particle effects of the 2000s while mixing it with slow motion, à la The Matrix (1999).

I’m also fond of Cobb’s character arc. He’s a man who has met the cold indifference of the absurd and lost someone close to him, which in turn has psychologically scarred him. We’re shown throughout the film that the trauma from his past surfaces from his unconscious, tainting whatever dream he’s in during the job, and sometimes interacting with it and causing the whole thing to fall apart.

His inability to maintain stability is affecting his work, yet he approaches alleviating these issues as though the option doesn’t exist; he instead runs into a brick wall, figuratively speaking, until he reaches his aim. There’s no time to stop and heal for Cobb; he just keeps moving until he can see his kids again. It’s illogical but a very human thing to do.

No matter how many times I see Inception, I will always feel for Cobb. Unfortunately, I can’t say I feel the same about the platonic, teacher-to-student relationship dynamic Cobb has with Ariadne, as it feels unnatural. That’s probably because Cobb confides in Ariadne, someone he just met and hired for a job, about his trauma, and in response Ariadne assists him throughout the duration of the film so he can progress through his character arc, even though they don’t know Cobb from a hole in the wall.

There’s no rapport between the two, nor a sense of camaraderie; no common ground or paralleling and/or divergent schools of thought when it comes to the practice of dream manipulation; we just get a convenient match that works itself out-it’s mechanical. There could have been a better means of exploring this character dynamic.

Arthur knows of Cobb’s woes, and for all we know, he has tried to assist him in the past, but what makes Ariadne so special that someone like Arthur, someone Cobb has worked with for what seems to be many years, couldn’t help him out? Does the character need to be a student? Can’t they have been found through other means?

This is a neo-noir heist film that involves assembling a team of proficient workers from the criminal underworld. Couldn’t this character have been from there, someone who has come face-to-face with the absurd, and through their past experiences they form a bond that feels a little more natural? I’m just not convinced of their relationship dynamic.

Ariadne has another purpose in this film, and I’m not exactly a fan of it either. Cobb visits Stephen Miles (Michael Caine), the father of Mal Cobb (Marion Cotillard), to see if he has any students who are as proficient in dream manipulation as he is, to which he states he has someone better: Ariadne. Despite being told of Ariadne’s prowess, they constantly inquire from Cobb, Arthur, and the gang about specific portions of exposition spat out into the film’s ether. They’re a tool of inquisition put in place so that the audience can understand what is occurring on screen.

As a student of proclaimed prowess, one that supposedly exceeds Cobb’s, Nolan’s assigned task for Ariadne contradicts whatever characterisation was established of them. If they are more adept than Cobb, then why all the questions? They would already know a majority of things that are occurring on screen, so there’s no need for inquiries. I grew tired of Ariadne constantly making inquiries about X or Y, especially beyond the halfway mark. Yep, you read that correctly; the exposition and inquiries go beyond the halfway mark. Thankfully they slow down at some point after that, but it’s enough that its reliance felt as though my face was being forced against asphalt while in a moving vehicle.

The defence to this is, “What about the audience!? How would they figure it out without inquiries amidst waves of exposition?” One can also be told informative bits of writing through the use of visuals and other cinematic elements. That’s how. Take a look at Paprika; the film makes great use of the limitlessness of animation to showcase the paradoxical nature of dreams and how characters function within them.

Some of it can’t be explained, as its visuals, much like a dream, can appear incomprehensible. On the other hand, moments that occur that can be understood are, and if they’re not fully understandable, as there’s some additional information needed to grasp X occurrence fully, they are explained via conversational exposition, but unlike Inception, it’s done in a much more natural way, such as through conversations over a meal some time shortly after X occurrence happens.

Inception relies too heavily on exposition to explain the intricacies of its advancements in oneirology, as there are plenty of moments where cinematic elements can be used to explain something to the audience, much like in Paprika. For example, there’s a method used to pull a person out of a dream known as the “kick.” This action interferes with the connection of the dreamer with the dream, or dream layer in some instances, waking them up or bringing them up a layer if the dream they’re in is a layered one.

Nolan shows the kick occurring in the introductory sequence of the film, but when Ariadne shows up in the hideout, she inquires what a kick is when one makes mention of it. Why ask if we just saw it? Does it really need to be spelled out to us, spoon-fed to us? One can gather that the kick used in Saito’s dream woke Cobb up from that layer; he can be seen talking to him shortly after. If the idea of limbo being a shared dream layer amongst anyone capable of dreaming can be explained through the use of cinematic elements, then how come the kick can’t? It’s a simple action.

Another criticism I have with Inception is that some incidents that occur within the film aren’t explained, whether via exposition or via the cinematic elements, when they very much should be; they’re just stated as fact because X person said so, leaving one with questions when everything else involving surrealist mystique was given an an explanation, again, whether expository or visual. 

Why do wounds obtained within a dream heal slower the further down in layers one goes? How does Eames (Tom Hardy) get an audience in Maurice Fischer’s company in the room directly next to what has become a hospice for him to be able to observe Peter Browning (Tom Berenger)? How does taking a sedative that puts you into a deeper sleep cause dying in a dream to now send you to limbo instead of waking up? Why does time operate differently in dreams, and the deeper one goes, the slower time feels? Nothing, zilch, nada. You get an unnecessary explanation of the kick, but asking for any one of these is too much to ask for. I find this to be lazy, as these are interesting concepts that would allow this custom idea of dream-sharing and elements that branch from it to be explored further.

Then there are these moments of extreme contrivance that happen to exist within Inception’s narrative. One example that comes to mind is the shootout in the first layer of the dream. Arthur gathers intel on Robert Fischer, which he passes off to Cobb and everyone else in the gang. Ariadne designs accordingly, and they all execute their plan. Somehow Arthur couldn’t find information regarding Robert’s level of subconscious security, despite Robert being the son of an immensely powerful company, one that threatens the stability of Saito’s company, who is himself immensely powerful.

One would expect that someone with the status and power of Saito would have access to the best subconscious security available, wouldn’t they? Well, one would think, but Arthur-a professional cerebral thief, one of meticulous nature-lacks common sense, especially since I’m sure he and Cobb have dealt with security like Robert’s in the past; how could they not, given their proficiency in this fictional practice and the script alluding to Cobb being at this for a while?

It should be assumed, given the nature of their work, that all windows in the vehicles-particularly those they’d utilise in the dream-should be equipped with bulletproof glass, right? One would think that with their expertise. However, the writing falters once again due to Arthur’s oversight during reconnaissance, resulting in Saito being seriously injured by a stray bullet. Arthur’s “mistake” is nothing more than a contrived way of introducing tension to the film.

It adds pressure to an already stressful situation, seeing as the process of Inception is, according to Eames, “bloody difficult to do.” Why couldn’t Saito have been injured in a manner that makes sense, such as being hit during the vehicle transfer in the first layer? It could have been written that Arthur found information regarding Robert’s subconscious security, and the team prepares for it but becomes overwhelmed by its ferocity anyway because of human error that occurs when one is caught within the fray.

No matter how many times I see this film, this moment of contrivance is bludgeoning, like being hit with an aluminium bat straight in the face, and yet despite how much it hurts it doesn’t compare to the pain I feel for this next moment of contrivance. Eames’s skills in dream manipulation are rooted in mimicry; he can imitate the physicality, mannerisms, cadence, and personality of others as long as he knows enough about that individual. There’s a scene where Eames is with Saito, following someone and Eames states that he needs to gather more information on this person to make the transfer into the next dream layer work.

From there, a scene occurs where the conditions needed for this transfer are set. Based on what one just witnessed, Eames did a great job at assisting with prepping these conditions, always coming in clutch. No. Eames walks in right afterwards, which means the team interacts with a subconscious projection. These projections are stated by Cobb to be the “white blood cells fighting an infection,” as the target’s subconscious becomes aware that the dreamer and/or the environment is being manipulated by another.

It’s never directly said, but rather implied, that these projections shouldn’t be interacted with conversationally either, as it can cause the whole situation to spoil in the same manner as over-manipulation once in the dream, and yet how Nolan portrays the crew getting into another dream layer completely contradicts this. This moment is where the entirety of the film falls apart for me. According to Inception’s screenplay, the transfer into a third layer of the dream is difficult to do. Time isn’t the only thing that changes the deeper one goes into dreams; the subconscious security becomes persistent, and the dream itself is less stable, which means the target needs to be in a deep enough sleep, which is possible thanks to the prowess of Yusuf (Dileep Rao) — the chemist.

This makes the transfer into a third layer a pivotal moment in the script, and yet we have a whoopsie as big as this? Seriously? This moment of contrivance always saps the very essence from my body; I’m usually checked out at this point. My immersion is always completely ripped out, my body beaten severely, then left out to marinate in my own anguish. For a while, I always assumed that this moment panned out the way it did to advance the plot, but as I’m writing this, I wonder if this is even a contrivance at all. It’s a simple fix, really; just have Saito walk into the room after the preparation is done, not both Saito and Eames. It would imply that the projection is Eames without having to tell the viewer through expository dialogue, and goodness do we need more moments like this. I digress.

While Inception is visually impressive and has a tragic protagonist, the script is just a mess. It’s evocative of a rushed job, beating down the viewer with a constant deluge of expository dialogue all the way up until the end of the second act while the momentum of the narrative is handled haphazardly. I never understood why so many people fawn over this film, specifically those with an affinity towards the medium. How I see it, Inception is a film for those who prefer cool concepts and how they appear on screen rather than having consistency in its script. That’s fine and all; however, as someone who prefers consistency in their writing and has an affinity towards film noir and psychology, Inception just isn’t to my liking.

USA • UK | 2010 | 148 MINUTES | 2.39:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH • JAPANESE • FRENCH

Cast & Crew

writer & director: Christopher Nolan.
starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Elliot Page (credited as Ellen Page), Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Tom Berenger & Michael Caine.