One of the more interesting aspects of the way Christopher Nolan structures Inception is how he plays with the concept of time. Nowhere is this more telling than in that final act of four-deep nested dreams. With a combination of Nolan’s story-layering and Lee Smith’s fantastic editing, Inception manages to expand and compress time simultaneously over the 40-minute long sequence that begins in the first dream.
That first dream — level one — where the crew first kidnap Fischer and begin the process, is told more or less in real time. Though they are all on the plane dreaming, the real action kicks in with that first dream. There, Cobb, Arthur, Yusuf, Ariadne and Saito had already begun to feel their timeline expand, as five minutes of waking time is equivalent to an hour of dream time according to the film’s construct. However, as there is no cross-cutting between the dream world and the airplane, the audience has not experienced any alteration of its own time experience. That changes, however, when the crew descend to the next level of the dream state. Once there, things start to speed up even as the dreamers’ timeframes expand.
Level One “Real Time”
The first level is virtually all action, the experience of which is a time compression for the audience. Exposition is laid out on the run, setting the foundation for the rules of the dream, which in this case is Yusuf’s dream. The sensation of speed and activity makes time seem to pass more quickly. This first level sequence sets the pace for the rest of the film through to the climax. There is no end to this sequence, per sé, as the remaining sequences merely get nested into it, each one expanding upon the previous one. It is also here that characters begin to break off from the rest of the team in layers, as one person has to stay behind to wake the others.
Level Two “Expanded Time”
When this sequence begins in a hotel bar, all is again calm. Very little action takes place in this sequence until Arthur puts the remaining characters to sleep once more and stays behind to wake them up when the “kick” arrives. Here we see the effects of the first level dream show through the cracks. Elevators rumble as Yusuf careens through the streets in the level above. At one point as the van rounds a corner, we see Nolan’s first real use of slow-motion in the nested dream sequence. Where other directors may use slow motion as a random aesthetic, it serves a very real purpose here. The slowing van in “real time” counterbalances the expanded dream level two, and the effects can be seen as the hotel bar experiences gravity shifts. The remainder of this sequence, with the exception of a brief fight scene in the bathroom, is free of action and merely sets up the characters for the third level. By this time, there hasn’t been a lot of cross-cutting between level two and level one, so the audience experiences a time expansion along with the characters for most of this sequence.
Level Three “Expanded Action Sequence”
This is where things really get interesting. The characters and the audience are dropped right in the middle of a snow-blanketed mountainside preparing to lay siege to a fortress, which is Eames’ dream. Here, Nolan spends an extended period of time in the previous levels before moving forward with the purpose of this one, the intended final dream. Cobb and Ariadne converse briefly about the next stage of the plan before we’re immediately thrust back up one level to Arthur’s dream. Time has expanded for the characters in level three but in level two things are moving slightly faster. We now have three different experiences of time: The rapid action of the van; brewing suspense in the hotel; and the calm of the snow fortress. Suddenly things are expanding and contracting simultaneously, until we reach the point when Cobb and Ariadne decide to go one level deeper, into Cobb’s subconscious.
By then, all three dreams are in full action mode, and time accelerates on all three fronts. We again have Nolan’s ingenious use of slow motion as the rolling van rolls upsets the natural gravity of Arthur’s dream, leading to that brilliantly executed gravity-shifting hallway fight scene. By the time the van crashes through the bridge railing and begins falling in the water, barely any progress is made in the level three snow sequence. By the time the van hits the water, all of the dreams coalescence and contract in a domino effect into one simultaneous “kick” that leads them all out of the nested dreams into level one again.
The falling van is the lynchpin to the time expansion/compression experience. From the time it breaks through the bridge railing through the rest of the dream, it does nothing but fall… and really not every far. The single action of that falling van, intercut with the four dream states, is in itself a simultaneous contraction and expansion of time. The slow motion of the van (frequently revealed in near silence) now becomes the real time of everyone in the three levels of the dream state.
There is a secondary function to the falling van. It is a unique representation of the classic and cliched countdown timer. Every time Nolan cuts back to the van, it may as well be a ticking time bomb. This fresh take on an old idea is almost imperceptible, so elegantly is it woven into the narrative.
This fluidity of time works mainly because of the excellent editing on the part of Smith, who also did exceptional work on Nolan’s Batman Begins. By accelerating the intercutting of the four dream sequences, Nolan and Smith are able to speed up the action for the audience even as time expands for the characters within each dream. Time becomes virtually meaningless yet still manages to hold its urgency.
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