2010

Director & Writer – Christopher Nolan

Production Companies – Warner Bros. Pictures, Legendary Pictures, Syncopy

Cast – Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy

Budget - $160,000,000 Gross revenue - $825,956,569

Background Information

Christopher Nolan: “I wanted to show the potential for the real world to have analogies to the dream world.”

“The concept that dreams feel real while we’re in them underlies the whole film.”

Leonardo DiCaprio: “It’s this whole different set of rules and laws that applied within the insane world that Chris Nolan created.”

Quotes

8.9/10 – IMDB

86% - Rotten Tomatoes: “smart, innovative and thrilling.”

Amongst its awards are 4 Oscars, 3 Baftas and 5 Saturn Awards

Critical Reception

Confusion over time and space: -alternates between dreams and reality -fragmented narrative as it alternates between settings (e.g. hotel to snow scene)

- Do we really know where we are, who’s dreams, who’s reality?

Decline of meta-narrative: -presents the idea that there is no single truth or idea to explain the world. It is

suggested in the film that it is personal and defined differently from person to person (micro narratives)

Strinati

Style over substances – the dreams have to ‘look’ correct and they often do but on close inspection the flaws are there eg the carpet in Saito’s ‘love nest’

Not everyone needs to know the details of the dream (only the ‘dreamer’) it just needs to be convincing

BUT the brain can tell the different – What happens when people start to realise that some is wrong in the dream? What comment is being made here about the post modern society (Think back to The Matrix)

Strinati

Ideology: -question whether Cobb and his team are good or bad (they

are criminals, but have good motives) - The ‘Drug Den’ – people seem to prefer the hyper reality to the real world ‘the dream has become their reality, who are you to say otherwise’ - Redistribution of wealth and attack on the film industry…

Narrative: - fragmented (alternates between scenes, e.g. on plane and

then suddenly in dream) - not chronological (e.g. see him washed up on the beach at

the beginning and then near the end) - Multiple narratives – stories within stories.

Media Concepts

-the cafe scene

-the hotel scene (oblique angles)

-the road scene

Media Language: - its constructed nature is obvious at points, for example...

Also, slow motion and flashbacks are used.

Audience 1: What do you think happens at the end?

Audience 1: The Marketing Campaign

Audience 2: demands a lot from the audience in terms of active engagement. They need to engage intellectually to understand the text.

Audience 2: How ‘comfortable’ and reassuring was the ending? ‘ It’s one of those rare films that, just for a second, makes you question your own reality’

What evidence is there to support that this film is

Action Adventure

Thriller

Science fiction

Experimental

Genre - Hybrid text

Intertextuality (Strinati – Breakdown between High Art and popular culture)

The Penrose staircase is referenced during the film ‘Inception’. This expands on the idea that anything in a dream can be possible with the architects creativity.

Intertextuality. (Strinati – Breakdown between High Art and popular culture)

During the film ‘Inception’ I think there is a reference to the photographer Ori Gersht who also blows up things as they have done in the film ‘Inception.’

Intertextuality. (Strinati – Breakdown between High Art and popular culture)

The scene with the mirrors references Citizen Kane when he sees himself indefinitely reflected. In the film ‘Inception’ it shows the idea that there are many worlds than reflect off this one world. This reinforces the dream within a dream concept. This could also link with Hyper reality….

Questioning reality and ‘truth’ - what is reality? - film suggests that the reality of each person is

different based on their own perceptions - where does the dream begin and end? - according to the film, there is no definite truth to

explain the world (rejects ‘truth’ which is a key part of the post modern worldview)

“you don’t believe in one reality anymore.”- Mal to Cobb

Baudrillard

“is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real”.

At the start we are presented with a dream (where Cobb is trying to steal from Saito) we learn quickly that this is a dream so we think it is real when everyone wakes up in the apartment during a riot, yet this too is a dream

In the ‘Inception’ they tell Fisher that it is a dream so he will believe that they are there to help

By the end can we tell real from dream?

Baudrillard - Disney Land

“their dream has become their reality” Cobb’s wife commits suicide because she doesn’t know

what is real and what is a dream anymore For Cobb, the dreams he has of his wife are his reality. The ambiguity at the end when the audience doesn’t see

whether the totem keeps spinning or not- fails to conclude whether Cobb is in a dream or not.

You need a totem to tell you if you are in the real world or not – Hyper reality of all around us like a trap or prison (Baudrillard was big on this!)

Does Cobb care any more about reality (the ending)? Do we?

Baudrillard -Blurring of reality

The first stage is a faithful image/copy The second stage is perversion of

reality, Here, signs and images do not faithfully reveal reality to us. Reality has been slightly heighten or exaggerated.

The third stage masks the absence of a profound reality, where the simulacrum pretends to be a faithful copy, but it is a copy with no original.

The fourth stage is pure simulation, in which the simulacrum has no relationship to any reality whatsoever.

Baudrillard –Steps to Hyper Reality

1. The first level of the dream takes place on busy city streets. As the analog of the first stage of the sign, “it is a representation of reality.” It’s a copy but a faithful one.

2. The next level takes place in a hotel. Cobb admits to Fischer that it is all a dream, but hides the fact that he is a fellow dreamer, pretending to be “Mr. Charles,” a subconscious projection of Fischer’s. In this way, Cobb “masks and perverts a basic reality” the way a second order sign does.

Baudrillard –Steps to Hyper Reality

3. This level takes place in a snowbound mountain fortress)the kind usually occupied by the main villain in a James Bond movie. Movie-like, the third level “masks the absence of a basic reality because it is based on fiction.” There is no real place like this

4. Dying under the kind of sedation necessary to reach three dream-levels will send dreamers into Limbo. Limbo is not a level, but as an “unconstructed dream space.” Anything can happen there; it is a “pure simulacrum”, pure simulation/ hyperreality

Baudrillard –Steps to Hyper Reality

“Baudrillard saw our Post Modern world as lacking in meaning/substance because we have lost contact with the ‘real’

Jameson (yet another theorist) talked about the post modern world being ‘depthless’

Yet this film is full of meaning and tackles some very big philosophical ideas, the plot is complex as are the characters and notions of good and evil

Baudrillard –But…….

Overall, Inception is very postmodern because it complies with the theories of both Strinati and Baudrillard. Also, it has postmodern media concepts and presents a distortion of reality.

How postmodern is the text?