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Inception - Understanding The Plot

Inception: Intertextuality & Hyperreality

"You gotta draw from stuff you know, right?"

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Penrose stairs are incorporated into the film as an example of the impossible objects that can be created in lucid dream worlds.

The mirror scene references Citizen Kane as he sees himself indefinitely reflected. This reinforces the "dream within a dream" concept.

There is also a slight reference to the photographer Ori Gersht whose artwork is similar to this scene in Inception:

"In Inception, Nolan wanted to explore "the idea of people sharing a dream space...That gives you the ability to access somebody's unconscious mind. What would that be used and abused for?" The majority of the film's plot takes place in these interconnected dream worlds. This structure creates a framework where actions in the real or dream worlds ripple across others. The dream is always in a state of production, and shifts across the levels as the characters navigate it. By contrast, the world of The Matrix (1999) is an authoritarian, computer-controlled one, alluding to theories of social control developed by Michel Foucault and Jean Baudrillard. Nolan's world has more in common with the works of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.

Nolan combined elements from several different film genres into the film, notably science fiction, heist film, and film noir. Marion Cotillard plays "Mal" Cobb, Dom Cobb's projection of his guilt over his deceased wife's suicide. As the film's main antagonist, she is a frequent, malevolent presence in his dreams. Dom is unable to control these projections of her, challenging his abilities as an extractor. Nolan described Mal as "the essence of the femme fatale", the key noir reference in the film. As a "classic femme fatale" her relationship with Cobb is in his mind, a manifestation of Cobb's own neurosis and fear of how little he knows about the woman he loves. DiCaprio praised Cotillard's performance saying that "she can be strong and vulnerable and hopeful and heartbreaking all in the same moment, which was perfect for all the contradictions of her character".

Nolan began with the structure of a heist movie, since exposition is an essential element of that genre, though adapted it to have a greater emotional narrative suited to the world of dreams and subconscious. Or, as Denby surmised, "the outer shell of the story is an elaborate caper". Kirstin Thompson argued that exposition was a major formal device in the film. While a traditional heist movie has a heavy dose of exposition at the beginning as the team assembles and the leader explains the plan, in Inception this becomes nearly continuous as the group progresses through the various levels of dreaming. Three-quarters of the film, until the van begins to fall from the bridge, are devoted to explaining its plot. In this way, exposition takes precedence over characterisation. Their relationships are created by their respective skills and roles. Ariadne, like her ancient namesake, creates the maze and guides the others through it, but also helps Cobb navigate his own subconscious, and as the sole student of dream sharing, helps the audience understand the concept of the plot.

Nolan drew inspiration from the works of Jorge Luis Borges, the anime film Paprika (2006) by the late Satoshi Kon as an influence on the character "Ariadne", and Blade Runner (1982) by Ridley Scott."

Inception: A Postmodern Text

"The term “post-modern” refers to a paradigm shift in philosophy. It is the logical succession of Existentialism. While in the past, philosophical views believed in objective reality and that people must operate on the basis of what that reality is, Existentialism created a world where people cared more about experience than truth and what is real. Postmodernism, like Existentialism, is an atheistic and relativistic system of beliefs, but it differs in that it is basically the view that there is no such thing as objective reality. To the postmodern, life has no meaning, and we cannot be sure what we perceive as truth or reality is actually real. You cannot judge whether something is real or not, so absolutes and morality are dispelled with. Brian Godawa, author of the book Hollywood Worldviews explains the difference between Existentialism and Postmodernism: “The two worldviews agree that… there is no underlying objective reality… no absolute reference point to judge true and false, right and wrong, real and unreal… But whereas the existentialist idolized the individual as supreme, the postmodern posits the loss of identity for the individual in favor of collective groups of people (cultures) constructing reality through their own interpretations and imposing them on others.” 

The intricate web of plot that is woven so masterfully by Nolan is so easy to caught up in, especially because the ideas are so perplexing and philosophical. In the film we are introduced to Dom Cobb (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) who is a rogue specialist in a field known as “dream sharing”. This technology, apparently created by the government to train soldiers, allows people to go into other people’s dream and do whatever. They can simply walk around inside this world created by this person’s subconscious or they do something else, something illegal – they can steal information from that person’s mind! Dom is running from the law, and so he gets work in high-tech corporate espionage, but we have “sympathy” for him because he’s really just trying to get back to his family. A rich businessman offers Dom a guarantee that he can return home, if he will perform an impossible task: inception! This involves going deep into a man’s subconscious, down many levels of dreams, and actually planting an idea in his mind so carefully that he won’t know that it was planted! (Sound like a imposing your views on others via a “prison house of language” to you?) The businessman says he wants Dom to perform inception on an industry rival and make him give up his dying father’s business. To do this, the band of rogues that Dom assembles to help him, have to manipulate the man’s emotions, knowledge and relationships to finally plant the idea “your father would want you to be your own man”.

The process of dream sharing is so real seeming, that you need to carry an object with you that tells you whether you’re in the real world or not. (Dom carries a top that will only stop spinning in the real world.) At one point in the film, Dom ends up in a room where people come to sleep and go into the dream world, because “the dream has become their reality, who are you to say otherwise?” Is there objective reality or isn’t there? That is a thesis that the film battles out between Dom and his dead wife. You see, in the dream world, Dom’s guilty subconscious haunts him in the ghost of his dead wife, Mal. What?! To answer that, I need to explain another facet of the plot; I told you this was complex. When you are dream sharing, you are put to sleep and the effects only last awhile. However, in the dream world, five minutes can feel like a week (or more), and it gets longer the deeper down you go. So, unless you want to be stuck in the dream world for years (though only minutes in reality) you need to get out sooner. This requires a “kick”, a dropping sensation that jolts you awake. Getting killed in a dream will also do the trick, except when you’re too deep in the subconscious; if you get killed then, you end up in “limbo” where you wait for years and years until the time runs out and you wake up, or you kill yourself. This ending up in “limbo” thing happened to Dom and Mal. They happily built their own world, down in limbo (sounding very postmodern), for decades (in “dream years”) until finally Dom can’t take it – he needs to get back to reality. But Mal has convinced herself that the dream is reality. Dom then performs inception on her to make her realize that “her world was not real, and to get home we needed to kill ourselves.” This they do and they wake up in the real world, happily home. But, the idea that Dom planted was still there. Dom refers to ideas as “parasites”, this is because in Postmodernism, as Dom says, “a single idea can grow and grow inside someone” shaping who they are. Mal believes that she is in a false reality and so she commits suicide again, only this time for real! Dom, torn by guilt because of the idea he planted, and being blamed for her death by the authorities, runs away.

Now, to get safely through this last mission, and thus home to his now parent-less kids, he must confront his guilt about Mal. They have a final confrontation inside the dream. Mal (or Dom’s subconscious projection of Mal) wants him to stay in the dream with her. He insists he must get back to the real world for their kid’s sake. To this she responds, “you keep telling yourself what you know, but what do you believe, what do you feel?” This is explicit postmodern belief: knowledge is impossible, what do you want reality to be? What Dom told Mal as they committed suicide was, “you’re waiting for a train; a train that will take you far from here. You hope you know where this train will take you, but you can’t know for sure – but it doesn’t matter!” If there is no reality or truth, then suicide is a valid and logical choice: maybe you’ll end up in a better non-reality. However, Dom seems to stand up against Mal’s enticement to forget what he knows for want he wants. He leaves Mal, they finish the mission, and he makes it home to the kids that he loves and missed! Maybe there is objective reality? A happy ending disguises Nolan’s final statement, right before the credits roll: Dom is so overjoyed to see his children that he spins his top on the dining room table, to make sure he’s not still dreaming. But he doesn’t care anymore. He walks off happily with his family, and the camera pans down to the top, still spinning. The audience all lean forward in their seats, a hush falls over the room, people hold their breathe – is he in the real world? Will the top fall? It looks like it just might be wobbling when – black. The credits roll and the audience lets out a groan.

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