Critics and bloggers have looked at Inception in many different ways. Comparisons are made to the moviemaking process, video games, psychology and the nature of consciousness. We’ll survey a few highlights and offer our take on it as well.

Moviemaking

“The idea of a team of people having to construct a narrative, much the way filmmakers get together and construct a story — maybe just because it’s been a process that I’ve engaged in myself, I can relate to it more.”
— Christopher Nolan

Many great filmmakers — the Coen Brothers, for instance — reference classic films in their work. Some are self-referential to their own films. One way to view Inception is as a metaphor for the creative process itself — directors creating new worlds.

Sam Adams from Salon acutely observes:

“If you read Inception as an analogue for filmmaking, then Fischer’s journey represents the artist breaking free from the influence of his artistic forbears, taking them apart and building something new from their component parts, and Cobb’s represents the creator freeing himself from the shackles of his own experience, gaining the ability to incorporate pieces of his personal history without being defined by it.”

Nolan explains to Robert Capps at Wired:

“I didn’t intend to make a film about filmmaking, but it’s clear that I gravitated toward the creative process that I know. The way Cobb’s team works is very analogous to the way a film itself is made. I can’t say that was intentional, but it’s very clearly there. I think that’s just the result of me trying to be very tactile and sincere in my portrayal of that creative process.”

Video Games
Action films these days are often compared to video games. Some rightfully so, as they are often used primarily as promotional vehicles to sell video games. Usually the bases for such comparisons are the action sequences such films contain. Inception is different in the sense that it is the concept of the film which reminds some viewers of video game dynamics rather than its action — give or take a snowmobile or two.

Nolan himself in his November 2010 interview for Wired Magazine with Robert Capps states:

“I think it’s very analogous to the way people play video games. When you play a video game, you could be a completely different person than you are in the real world. Certain aspects of the way your brain works can be leveraged for something you could never do in the real world.”

Yet Kirk Hamilton from Kotaku criticizes the film on this very basis. He comments on how most of the film is actually like a video game tutorial rather than the game itself:

“Any game designer (or teacher) will tell you that an effective tutorial must strike a balance between imparting new information and allowing players to practice what they’ve already learned. What’s more, there is a reason that every game’s tutorial section must end in order for the proper game to begin – at some point we need to stop learning and start experiencing.”

Oddly enough, this “tutorial” balance that Hamilton laments is one of the unique features within Inception’s narrative. Kristen Thompson comments on Nolan’s use of “continuous exposition” as a new approach to narrative, particularly in the context of the heist genre. The process and the explanation of that process take precedence over character development or even the plot within the film.

Perhaps of greater concern is the nature in which suicide and murder correlate with the structure of dream levels. Don’t like your dream world? Shoot yourself or be shot! You magically wake up to the next higher dream state. Nolan all too conveniently skirts around this issue by adding a further complication to the story. This job is different. Due to the effects of the dream drug they use, this time if you are shot during inside the dream you go to limbo — the netherworld of dreaming from which it is nearly impossible to realize that you are not in “reality” any more. It is a version of hell that keeps the danger real and mortality all too important.

Do You Remember How You Got Here?

I tried to highlight certain aspects of dreaming that I find to be true, such as not remembering the beginning of a dream. And that is very much like the way films tell their stories.
— Christopher Nolan

This is not just an aspect of filmmaking but also a critical device used in all film narratives; the decision of where to start and stop each scene. In essence, it is the chronological “frame” of a scene. David Mamet in his book On Directing Film, speaks at length about this concept. The importance of beginning scenes “late” and ending them “early.” To tell the rest in the “cut” — the unseen time between the shots.

Many viewers have criticized the film for its use of literalism in the portrayal of dreams.
For instance, Tim Ware from Thoughtsicle says:

“It just doesn’t feel like dreaming. Of course, if the dreams really did have the foggy, indistinct quality of actual dreams, then Nolan’s project to keep the viewer guessing about what was dream and what was not would be compromised.”

Ironically, I think Tim Ware is the one who takes the film too literally. Nolan is not just using literalism to keep the viewer guessing but to question why viewers in their ordinary life do not regularly question their own reality. How do they know they are awake? Do they remember themselves as they live their life? In essence, Nolan treats dreaming as a metaphor for different levels of consciousness.

Structure and Meaning
Much has been written about the nested structure of the film. For example, Matt Sinopli and Josh Tyler of Cinemablend provide a fantastic visual guide to each dream level. Sam Adams of Salon Magazine also gives a wonderfully concise breakdown of both the locations and hosts of each dream. As we have previously mentioned in our Genre Bending and Iconography essays, the film can be viewed as a process of heist procedure and may also be viewed through the iconography of each characters’ respective totems.

Additional meaning can also be attributed to each level based on who is “hosting” the dream:

Chemistry & Emotion
To begin, we have Yusuf the chemist — drawing our attention to the chemical nature of consciousness. Whether it is a funky piece of cheese we eat before experiencing a night full of dreaming or Yusuf’s own rainy day dreamworld induced by a glass of wine on the plane, consciousness begins on this chemical level. At the beginning of the the dream emotions run high as Cobb’s subconscious train tears through the city, tempers flare and Eames begins to work the emotional angle on Fischer to obtain the secret code to his subconscious. We see what the effects of chemistry and emotion have on consciousness, even to the point where a dream death will send any one of them straight to limbo due to the strength of Yusuf’s drug.

Identity & Personality
The next dream level builds on this chemistry by questioning identity. If our personality is the lens with which we perceive the world, then it is imperative that these identities shift. This is done by framing Fischer’s family guardian, Peter Browning as a traitorous spy. By trusting Cobb and his men, Fischer’s ego defense mechanisms now appear to have turned against him.

Subconscious Thought
We then arrive at the snow fortress of subconscious, buried in ice. This is where the inception actually takes place, deep inside Ariadne’s own design.

Id & the Super-Ego
In limbo, we find Mal — a personification of Cobb’s anima. All the primitive desires and natures exist here in the world of the id. Only a super-ego intervention allows Cobb (& Saito) to escape. Curiously, Freud had described the super-ego as being a symbolic internalization of the father figure. It is Cobb’s memory of his responsibility as a father that allows him to break free from his existential bondage.

In Totem
At the end of the film when Cobb returns to his children, we see the spinning top and wonder whether we will at last know if he has returned to reality. Nolan denies us proof by cutting to black and then credits.

In Nolan’s own words:

“Sometimes I think people lose the importance of the way the thing is staged with the spinning top at the end. Because the most important emotional thing is that Cobb’s not looking at it. He doesn’t care.”

Nolan tells us this “in the cut.” Whatever our belief system, our totem, do we continue to question it? How often do we remember ourselves and consciously live our lives? What do we believe?

As Sarah E. Mayhew of Skeptic North observed:

“If we choose to let the spinning top make us believe the ending is a dream, don’t we start to sound like incepted Mal?” Mal herself challenges Cobb: “You keep telling yourself what you know. But what do you believe? What do you feel?”

Whether it is real or not, Cobb chooses to believe and feel that he has returned to his children. And as an audience we are left to decide whether he really does or not.

SOURCES:

The Architect of Dreams
Jeff Goldsmith
Creative Screenwriting
July/August 2010, Vol. 17, No. 4

Everything You Wanted to Know About Inception
Sam Adams
Salon Magazine

Q&A: Christopher Nolan on Dreams, Architecture, and Ambiguity
Robert Capps, Wired Magazine

Inception’s Usability Problem
Kirk Hamilton
Kotaku

Inception, or Dream a Little Dream within a Dream with Me
Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell
Observations On Film Art

Cinematic Depictions of Dreams
Inception — Dreams Aren’t Made of This!
Tim Ware
Thoughtsicle

An Illustrated Guide to the 5 Levels of Inception
Matt Sinopli and Josh Tyler
Cinemablend

Study: Eating Cheese Can Alter Your Dreams
Melissa Block
National Public Radio

Inception – What you Know vs. What you Believe
Sara E. Mayhew
Skeptic North