perspectives-Inception

Inception

Inception is a film that was directed and written by Christopher Nolan and released in 2010.

Don Cobbs “Leonardo DiCaprio” is a professional thieve who goes into the dreams/minds of people and steals secrets from their subconscious. He uses a technique called extraction. Towards the beginning of the film Cobbs is approached by a man known as Saito (Ken Watanabe) who offers him a job, not to extract information but to implant information into the subconscious of someone. This would be Cobbs final job and would allow him to return home to America to re-join his family. Also, Saito would arrange for all criminal charges against Cobbs to be dropped with the American authorities.

(Leonardo DiCaprio)

Cobb puts together a “dream infiltrator team” for the final job:

Arthur (joseph Gordon Levitt), Ariadne (Ellen Page), Emes (Tom Hardy) and Yusuf (Dileep Rao).

       (joseph Gordon Levitt)                (Ellen Page)             
    

(Tom Hardy)               (Dileep Rao)

      

Throughout this film we see clear signs of both postmodernism and modernism.

One of the postmodern aspects point is the film itself opening with the ending; this brings in a disjointed narrative. It opens with Cobbs being washes up on a beach and then taken to meet a very old man. Who we will be introduced to later as Saito.

What is reality and what are dreams become blurrier the further down the levels of the dream state they travel. Time and space are also blurred and warped in the film, both post-modernist trait. When sedated and under this process takes 5 minutes, but in the dream, you feel as if you been dreaming for over an hour. This is seen first time when Ariadne is initially sedated with Don and Arthur there.

Another large time warp is when the bus is falling off the bridge, taking only seconds to plunge into the river. But in the deep dream state they have enough time to try and complete the task.

The team all have their own individual totems that help them judge if they are in a reality or dream state. Cobbs’ is a little spinner and if it stops spinning and falls over then he is not in a dream but, if it doesn’t fall over and continues spinning then he is in a dream.

An example of modernism in Inception is “psychological reality”. Most of the film takes place in the dreams of other people, where this is not the real world but a psychological reality. In the fight scene in the hall with Arthur and no gravity he goes against the laws of physics in the dreamworld, something that wouldn’t happen in reality.

At the end of the movie there is Cobbs totem, spinning, is it starting to wobble?  This leaving an open-ended question as to whether Cobbs is in the dream or has, he returned to as reality. This open-ended ending causes a fair amount of debate.