Inception (2010)

 

Inception (2010)

 

The unstated question in “Inception” seems to be: When we Dream, do we tell the truth?

 

A lot of Psychology seems to assume we do, but we confuse those truths because they are expressed in a symbolic language rooted in our pre-verbal experience. In this film, high-level Corporate Espionage is conducted through Dream-Hacking (entering another’s dreams), and explicitly states that we tell the truth in Dreams, because the Spies in the film trick their Marks into revealing cherished Secrets by inventing complex scenarios that demand some confession. Implicitly though, the film’s plot hinges on the fact though while we tell the truth to others in Dreams, we continue to lie to ourselves.

 

Writer/Director Chris Nolan described the thinking behind the story, “At the heart of the movie is the notion that an idea is indeed the most resilient and powerful parasite. A trace of it will always be there in your mind…somewhere. The thought that someone could master the ability to invade your dream space, in a very physical sense, and steal an idea—no matter how private—is compelling.

 

“It’s all based on the persistence of an idea, the notion that any concept will stay fixed in the subconscious. It’s impossible to unlearn something, and that forms the basis for what an extractor is able to do in terms of retrieving information.”

 

Nolan admits he actively avoided researching Real-World Dream Psychology or Neurology while creating the story, but those with some expertise in those fields didn’t seem to object too much to his inventions; some even suggested he may have gotten a surprisingly large amount of it right. In interviews, Professor Deirdre Leigh Barrett described the plot as an exaggerated form of “Lucid Dreaming” which is a well-established Therapeutic technique. Some Parapsychological-leaning Psychologists influenced by Carl Jung suspect, as Jung did, that there might some Reality behind the Religious practice of “Dream Sharing” (like Dream Hacking, only nicer).

Nolan admits he actively avoided researching Real-World Dream Psychology or Neurology while creating the story, but those with some expertise in those fields didn’t seem to object too much to his inventions; some even suggested he may have gotten a surprisingly large amount of it right. In interviews, Professor Deirdre Leigh Barrett described the plot as an exaggerated form of “Lucid Dreaming” which is a well-established Therapeutic technique. Some Parapsychological-leaning Psychologists influenced by Carl Jung suspect, as Jung did, that there might some Reality behind the Religious practice of “Dream Sharing” (like Dream Hacking, only nicer).

 

 

It's hard to call the Hero, Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), a Good Guy, he’s a Thief with monetary motivations. But circumstances have evolved that he has to stop a Corporate Big-Wig, Robert Michael Fischer (Cillian Murphy), from completing his next merger, because if successful, it will make Robert all-powerful. Robert doesn’t seem a Villain, in fact, he’s probably more ethical than Dom, but no one should ever be all-powerful; this is a World where everyone is self-interested, and honest about that if nothing else, so the Moral balance of the Universe is maintained through Amoral competition. Nice-enough Robert is about to throw off that balance and that will create tyranny, or chaos, or worse, so Dom is tasked with creating an idea inside Robert’s Dreams to stop him, perhaps saving Civilization as we know it, but for corrupt motives and by inventing a form of Mind-Control that has never existed before. That Mind Control is the Inception of the title.

 

This film is cynical enough to not explicitly consider the Moral consequentialism of the above, but smart enough to allow room for a host of other Moral consequences, smaller and more personal, and they become more profound as the film progresses. Their ripple effect shapes our view of all we see, because what is below, eventually becomes what is above, and vis-versa.

 

Key to following this weird and complicated plot is understanding that our experience of Time moves at a different pace in Dreams vs the Real-World. We can Dream hours or weeks of experience during a short nap. In this film, the Dream-Hackers exploit this, once they’ve penetrated your subconscious, they can travel into deeper and deeper levels of Dream, with Time moving faster and faster for them, so while you nap for five minutes, they get to play inside your head for a subjective five days. The main action unfolds during an air plane trip, but during the trip, our Dream Hackers penetrate four-levels-deep into Richard’s Subconscious, and at the lowest level, decades are being experienced by the Characters while only minutes unfold above. This proves a trap, and to rescue a lost comrade, Dom displays his only selfless act of heroism. 

 

Perception of Time is not the only trap in the Dream Scape, so is Guilt. Dom is a wanted man for a Murder he didn’t commit, which was part of the reason he took this extra-difficult job, his Client, Mr. Saito (Ken Watanabe), is powerful enough to pull strings and clear Dom’s Criminal Record. But, though Dom innocent of Murder, he’s responsible for the death, the Suicide of his wife Mal (Marion Cotillard). Her ghost, really his own Subconscious, haunts him, under-cutting all his machinations. His guilt is always standing in the way of his freedom. 

 

It's common enough in a Caper film to give the Criminal Hero a strong sympathetic motive, something nobler than money, because it makes it easier for the audience to root for someone doing fun, but profoundly corrupt, things. Don wants to be cleared of his wife’s Murder so he can return to the USA and reunite with his children; this isn’t exactly a unique variation on a well-worn plot devise. Still, “Inception” deserves credit for giving that motive credibility by tying it closely the film’s core-themes and using it to define his relationships with others. 

 

Without additional exposition, Dom’s motives clarify what holds his team of Dream Hackers together. As the film opens, he wants out of the biz, but once-upon-a-time, he was enthusiastic like his comrades. All do the same unethical things for money, but it becomes obvious that’s not their primary motive; they were drawn to it because the work fascinates, because it makes them feel powerful, because it’s the ultimate game. They are tight-knit, surviving as a unit even after being betrayed by Nash (Lucas Haas), a minor character who disappears early in the film. 

In “Catch Me if You Can” (2002), DiCaprio played Frank Abagnale, a young Thief in it more for the excitement and an invented self-image than monetary gain; in “Inception” he’s sort of Abagnale older, more hurt, and realizing now how his impulses have trapped him. Dom’s loyal team, Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Eames (Tom Hardy), and Yusph (Dileep Rao), haven’t endured the same hurt, so they are still kids playing games like the other film’s Abagnale, and this becomes a chasm between their perceptions and Dom’s.

 

Dom seems more comfortable with Saito, even though the rest of the team give him the mocking nick-name “Tourist.” Saito, a powerful Captain of Industry, projects the same kind of hurt as Dom, but it’s is conveyed subtly, akin to how the rest of the team projects how they’ve been intellectually and emotionally seduced.

 

And then there’s Ariadene (Ellen (now Elliot) Page), a Graduate Student in Architecture that Dom needs to replace Nash. She’s seduced into the game the same way everyone else was, the intellectual challenge, the feeling of power, the excitement. As she’s the newbie, watching her learn Dream Hacking helps the audience understand what-the-heck is going on. She serves another purpose as well, as Dom draws her into the game, he feels he must unburden himself to her; perhaps he is fearful that she’ll get hurt, so he wants his life to be a warning to her, or perhaps he’s just reached the point in his life that he needs to confess to someone.

 

Of some significance is that there no implied romance between Dom and Ariadene, the only girl in this boy’s club. Dom is still in love with his dead wife, and that’s why her Shade is so dangerous.

 

This is an in-your-face mind-bender, densely plotted, relying on stories within stories, surreal imagery, all buttressed by a byzantine narrative structure that was first-of-its kind. A long time ago, after 1968 and the release of “2001: A Space Odyssey,” SF cinema made a concerted effort to emulate Writer Arthur C. Clarke’s and Director Stanley Kubrick’s unashamed display of formidable intelligence. This was largely abandoned with the success of Writer/Director George Lucas’ “Star Wars” in 1976, after that even smart SF generally tried downplay its own intelligence. There was a slow revival of explicit intellectual ambition that probably began in 1997, with Writer/Director Andrew Niccol’s “Gattaca,” though that film was a financial disappointment, it developed a strong following not long later. This revived trend accelerated after the Millennium and “Inception” is one of the more triumphant realizations of that ambition. It would not be wrong to call it the “2001 …” of Inner Space.

 

Said Nolan, “I wanted to do this for a very long time, it’s something I’ve thought about off and on since I was about 16.” Perhaps it’s significant that he would’ve been 16-years-old in 1984, when the first films concerning Dream Hacking of any special noteworthiness were near-simultaneously released, the SF “Dreamscape” and the Supernatural Horror “A Nightmare on Elm Street.”

 

Nolan began to conceive this film as a Caper movie about ten years prior to going into production. “It took me a while to figure out how to make an emotional connection with the material, as heist movies tend to be almost deliberately superficial in terms of emotion, and all about procedure.” His inspiration for getting more serious about the script was the popularity of a certain kind of film that was popular in the late 1990s, “They were based in the principles that the world around you might not be real" He cited “Dark City” (1998), “The Matrix” and “The Thirteenth Floor” (both 1999), and, “to a certain extent, you had ‘Memento’ [2000], too.” That last one was his own film, his second feature, which made his reputation.

 

Nolan shares with Kubrick many of the same praises and complaints from Critics, the main complaint being that his films are “frosty … with no detectable human heartbeat, just the clicks and whirls of his intricate story gears” (I’m quoting Geoff Boucher, who, in context, was actually defending Nolan). This is unfair in both cases, but more so with Nolan than Kubrick. Said Nolan, “One of the things I learned from ‘Batman’ [a film trilogy, the first one released in 2005] is that it’s the emotionalism that best connects the audience with the material. The character issues, those are the things that pull the audience through it and amplify the experience no matter how strange things get.”

 

In service of that goal, Nolan assembled a hell of a good cast. Said Actor Murphy, “Chris casts so brilliantly. Everyone in the movie, you can’t imagine anyone else playing their role. He really has a great eye for it.”

 

DiCaprio has played Criminal leads repeatedly before, and finds a distinctive individual in each and every one. Over the years Critics, Directors, and fellow Cast members have all commented on his intensity of focus on the layers beneath the surface of every Character he plays. Said Nolan, “I’ve incorporated a huge number of his [DiCaprio’s] ideas. Leo’s very analytical, particularly from character point of view but also how the entire story is going to function and relate to his character . . . It’s actually been an interesting set of conversations, and I think it’s improved the project enormously. I think the emotional life of the character now drives the story more than it did before.”

 

Murphy worked with Nolan before on “Batman Begins” (2005) and its sequel. Here, his Character Robert is the only one with as fully developed a back-story as Dom. “I tried to play him as a petulant child who’s in need of a lot of attention from his father. He has everything he could ever want materially, but he’s deeply lacking emotionally.” That needed to be explored in some depth because that’s what the Dream Hackers exploit it when they attempt to re-write his goals. By the end of the film, said Producer (also Nolan’s wife) Emma Thomas, “Robert becomes a very large part of the story’s emotional heart.”

 

Gordon-Levitt is best known for his Comedic roles, but here gives proves a first-rate Action-Hero. He projects the same cool and compelling attitude as a Professional Criminal as Charles Bronson in his heyday. Nolan describes him as, “very charismatic, extremely dedicated, and also physically adept. He is a performer who doesn’t just find the internal life of the character but also projects the physical expression of that through his movements and expressions. And that’s good because there was definitely a very physical component to playing Arthur.” Gordon-Levitt was the only cast member who did his own stunts, taking center stage in the film’s most eye-popping set-piece (detailed below), which would’ve been Impossible without someone so athletic.

 

Watanabe is apparently not fully fluent in English, but is such magnetic a performer that he's become a favorite among USA and UK Directors anyway. Nolan also worked with Watanabe on “Batman Begins,” but it was only a small part. Nolan hugely admired Watanabe’s work and wrote this larger role with him in mind.

 

Cotillard essentially plays two Characters; in flash-backs the Love Story between Dom and Mal is both Romantic and Tragedy, but as Mal’s Shade she’s a Demonic Feme Fatal. She accomplishes both beautifully, her large, expressive eyes being equally loving and monstrous.

 

Not mentioned above is Michael Caine, he plays Stephen Miles, Mal’s father and sort of Dom’s surrogate-father. The small part helps create a strong parallel between Dom’s and Robert’s Characters, both burdened from isolation from immediate family; in Robert’s case, the surrogate-father is played by Tom Berringer. This was Caine’s fourth collaboration with Nolan (Thomas calls him their “Good luck charm”). Caine’s also a double Oscar winner, and here cast with a remarkable collection of Oscar winners and nominees: DiCaprio, Cotillard, Watanabe, Page, Berringer, and, also not mentioned above, Pete Postlethwaite as Robert’s biological father.

 

As demonstrated by the cast list, Nolan prefers to work with those he familiar with, and this is true behind the camera as well, with each new film adding a new name or two to his quasi-troupe. Producer Thomas has been with him since his first film, “Following” (1998). Cinematographer Wally Pfister joined Nolan with “Memento.” Helicopter pilot Craig Hoskins and Aerial Director of Photography Hans Bjerno have been collaborating with Nolan since “Insomnia” (2002). Editor Lee Smith, Composer Hans Zimmer, FX Supervisors Chris Corbould and Paul Franklin, and Stunt Coordinator Tom Struther, can all be traced back to “Batman Begins.” Stunt Driver Jim Wilkey joined the troupe with “Dark Knight.” Though missing from this one project, another core-collaborator is his brother Johnathan, a Screenwriter.

 

Dream Hacking is a perfect piece of Imaginary Science because you know Psychologists would love to have that capacity. Also, we know so little about the nature of how the Real-World Mind works that we can’t make a strong statement what is truly Impossible or not, this gives the Writer both motivation and freedom, and as long as the mechanics of the SF seem internally consistent, he can do pretty much whatever he wants.

 

 

Nolan’s first film, “Following,” was much-hailed even though it was a no-budget outing. His follow-up was the even more hailed, and still low-budget (not as low), “Memento.” Both displayed his love of slick, analytical, Crime Thrillers, and in “Memento” specifically, he presented us with a film about the lead Character’s distorted perception that was told chronologically in reverse, earning him a reputation for uniquely tricky plots.

 

After that, he moved on to bigger budgets; all his subsequent films were at least in-part Crime Thrillers, and though not all the plots were as complicated as “Memento,” they were all more complicated than expected. His most phenomenally successful film, “The Dark Knight” (2008, the second of his three Batman films) had a more sophisticated story than any other Superhero movie before it, and surprisingly proved to be a meditation on how value-systems shape societies and a warning about the seductions of Fredrich Nietzsche’s Ecstatic Nihilism (note: it was a meditation with a lot of gun-play, car chases, fights, and explosions, Nolan has a knack for making Action Movies that are Philosophically absorbing). Pulling in approximately a billion dollars (I just can’t get over that number) it justified this hugely risky investment – a staggering (perhaps historically) large and complicated production that demanded unusual integration of the labor of the top-talents involved and a humongous $160 million budget. Further risk was added when it was released it during the summer block buster season, traditionally when the dumbest and/or most populist films come out.

 

The FX work is extraordinary, the CGI specifically was cutting edge, but Nolan is committed to the kind of textured Realities that can only be achieved through practical effects and location-shooting. It was filmed in the USA, Canada, UK, France, Morocco, and Japan. One particular location was University College in London, where he met his future wife, Thomas, while a student there. This is probably a holdover from “Following,” being a no-budget film shot entirely on-location, guerrilla film techniques were a necessity, and Nolan’s skill at that earned him almost unheard-of World-wide acclaim and distribution for a film so small. In this film, he not only showed you the Impossible, he made a lot of those Impossibles happen during principal photography. “It’s always very important to me to do as much as possible in-camera, and then, if necessary, computer graphics are very useful to build on or enhance what you have achieved physically. Regardless of the fact that the story deals with different dream states, it is crucial that, at every level, the world feels concrete because when we are in a dream, we accept it as reality.”

 

In one of the Dream-sequences, a freight train barrels down the center of a crowed street in Los Angeles. Nolan rigged a full-sized dummy train on flatbeds and had it do just that, barrel down the center of a crowed street in Los Angeles, then relied on CGI only during post-production, not to create the image, but clean it up.

 

Another Dream-sequence was an impressively complex scene done mostly in-camera was a James-Bond-inspired ski-chase/commando operation. It was filmed at Fortress Mountain, in Kananaskis Country, Alberta, Canada, which is probably the world’s most famous abandoned ski-resort, and while there waited for a snow storm to hit. Being beyond even Struther’s impressive skills, he recruited Ian McIntosh, who makes his living skiing avalanches and doing hundred-foot jumps off of glaciers, for the main stunts. As was Nolan’s habit, the scene was mostly shot with handheld cameras, requiring bringing in another specialist, Chris Patterson, an experienced ski photographer for movies and commercials. 

 

The wildest sequence unfolded simultaneously on multiple levels of Dream, with time running at different speeds in each. There’s one level with a car-chase, during which the cast fall asleep inside the Dream to travel the next-level down, and they are in a hotel. Then go asleep again, going down yet another level, but on the hotel-level Arthur is left behind to protect his comrades. On the car-chase level, the van goes off a bridge. In the few seconds it takes the van to hit the river below, a seeming hour-or-more unfolds in the Hotel, longer still even farther down, and suddenly everyone in the hotel is in free-fall because of what is happening one the next level up. Arthur is the only team member who’s defenseless, but he finds himself fighting assassins and then moving his limp comrades to safety, in a an environment where gravity is either off-kilter or in free-fall.

 

Production Designer, FX, and Cinematography always need to be closely integrated, but more so in this sequence than any other production I can think of, and that says nothing of how important the Stunt Coordinator was with Cast members literally bouncing off the walls. Production Designer Guy Hendrix Dyas was new to the troupe, but what he pulled off with Corbould, Pfister, and Struthers was something that had never been done before.

 

The massive set was built in a converted airship hangar in Cardif, England. It was of a 100-foot-long corridor that was able to rotate a full 360 degrees at a speed of eight revolutions per-minute.  Some Real-World hotels use leather and fabric to dress the walls, so those soft finishes were used to disguise padding underneath. Cameras had to be mounted, there was no way to get a cameraman in the middle of this, but on motors and remote-controlled, to mimic the hand-held camera work the dominated the rest of the film. Actor Gordon-Levitt spent weeks in training and rehearsing, “I definitely got in better physical shape than I’ve ever been in my life. I had to be fit enough to pull it off, and I also had to learn to keep my balance and carry out a fight scene while jumping from surface to surface. In order to get it done, I couldn’t think of the floor being the floor and the ceiling being the ceiling. I had to think of it like, ‘This is the ground. Okay, now this is the ground. And now, this is the ground.’ It was just that the ‘ground’ was always moving under me. That was the mind game I had to play to make it work. That was also the most fun because no one else was controlling me; it was up to me to keep my balance.” He was referring to the parts of the sequence that were like an exaggerated version of Fred Astaire’s famous dance in “Royal Wedding” (1951).

 

Other parts of the sequence required wire-work, those parts were shot on an identical set, but it didn’t rotate, it was built vertically, inside an elevator shaft. “Gravity and I went head-to-head a lot in this movie, but I loved it. I got to fly, which—I don’t think I’m alone in saying—has always been a dream of mine.”

 

Nolan’s films are diverse, but also have shared story and style elements. This likely encourages him use the same professionals in film-after-film, for example, as he has a preference for hand-held camera work, when he found someone really good at it, he kept using him. One thing more variable in his films is costuming: “Memento” had everyone dressed appropriately for losers at the bottom rungs of the economic ladder (the Costume Designer was Cindy Evans), “The Prestige” (2006) had gorgeous and lavish period costuming (Joan Bergin), his three “Batman” films, being comic book movies, were more fanciful (Lindy Hemming), and for this film he turned to Costume Designer Jeffrey Kurland. Mostly the look of the costumes can be compared to “Ocean’s Eleven” (2001), deceptively casual, affluent, and very cool, very masculine. There were three elements of Kurland’s work are especially striking here:

 

Mal’s gorgeous attire reflects her two identities in different parts of the film, the loving wife in the flashbacks, the femme fatal in the Dreamscape.

 

Kurland seemed especially inspired by Saito’s character, he’s the best-dressed of the very fashionable men in the film, projecting is wealth, power, and identity, in the costumes, like a business suit cut much like a kimono.

 

Invisible to the casual viewer is the achievement during the fight scenes in the Dream hotel; there’s both the illusion of wrong-gravity and no gravity, and the way the fabrics fall have to be consistent with the illusion, not the reality on-set. This required Kurland to wire shoelaces, lapels, suit-jacket front panels, etc, and working with rare closeness with Dyas, Corbould, Pfister, and Struthers, to create the kind of textured imagine of a Reality that simply wasn’t Real.

 

The FX work in this film can be roughly divided between Corbould, the expert on practical effects, and Franklin, and the on CGI. Nolan’s preference for practical kept putting Corbould in the fore-front, Franklin often being used in post-production to clean-up things already filmed, but he was not only the Bridesmaid, there were sequences that were his, and his alone. Easily equal in its audacity to the Dream hotel sequence was a Dream-sequence where the buildings Paris, France, collectively rebel against familiar Reality. Visually, these reference scenes from “Dark City,” but this goes far beyond the earlier film, especially because it was a daylit scene utilizing the Pont du Bir-Hakeim bridge and river Seine, places already known to the audiences all over the world because they’ve already been in hundreds, if not thousands, of films. It was far beyond what could ever be realized with models, conventional animation, or photographic tricks.

 

Let’s say Nolan’s fertile imagination kept pushing him to make the Impossible a few degrees more Real, but that Impossible also kept running ahead of that because he often envisioned things that were even (forgive the tortured fake-word) “Impossiblier.” The Dream hotel sequence was something that hadn’t ever been done before, but Paris, and other scenes of Dreams eroding, were even more envelope-pushing because they were things that couldn’t ever be done before.

 

In an interview, Nolan said, laughing, “I love watching my team react with a little bit of panic when I first present them with what I’m thinking. But it’s astounding to watch the various departments break it down and then come up with inventive approaches to get it done. And at every stage of ‘Inception,’ everyone delivered in extraordinary ways.”

 

Boucher again, “Nolan’s dreams have the sharp edges of Escher, not the syrup drips of Dalí.” And Actress Page, who was central to the Paris scenes (and who, of course couldn’t see what was happening to her Character during primary shooting, so now she speaks as an audience member) said, “There’s a tangible realism even when it gets crazy, and somehow that makes the jeopardy feel more real.”

 

This was an extraordinary production in service of a one-of-a-kind script. All the financial, professional, and creative risks taken were abundantly rewarded by audiences, the creative community, and critics. It earned back five-times its huge budget, was nominated for eight Oscars, and took home an impressive four of them, and the praise was near overwhelming:

 

Kris Tapley, “A film like nothing you have ever seen before.... This could be the film to solidify the director’s place among the modern masters.”

 

Anne Thompson, “Kubrickian masterpiece with heart.”

 

Ok, some people didn’t appreciate it. John Anderson called it, “The emperor’s new bed-clothes.”

 

But Anderson works for the Wall Street Journal, therefore New York based. The New York critics hated “2001…” back in the day. Kubrick’s masterpiece wasn’t getting positive press until it was released in Chicago, among them Roger Ebert. Of this film, Ebert wrote, “Here is a movie immune to spoilers: If you knew how it ended, that would tell you nothing unless you knew how it got there. And telling you how it got there would produce bafflement. The movie is all about process, about fighting our way through enveloping sheets of reality and dream, reality within dreams, dreams without reality. It's a breathtaking juggling act …”

 

Trailer: