More than 10 years after its release, Christopher Nolan's Inception is back in the air, and there's still something confusing about it.
This is a movie that will make you discover something new every time you watch it. Or, more likely, it reinterprets what you think you already know.
Stills from Inception
Nolan's work constructs complex paradoxes of time, space, and dimension. Fragments of Memory (2000) and Insomnia (2002) deal with chronological order; Deadly Magic (2006) deals with spatial illusions; Interstellar (2014) travels through multidimensional space.
Nolan Film Collection
Inception goes a step further and explores the manipulation and distortion of all three states. It is a narrative in the subconscious.
Nolan's other films are set within the framework of the real world. The unique Inception enters an unreal dream dimension. Like Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and David Lynch's Eraserhead (1977) and Mulholland Drive (2001), Nolan explores not a single subconscious world but billions of interconnected worlds.
Throughout the film, it takes a savvy audience to be aware of the world you're in (are you real or unreal, are you this or that character?). ）。
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Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a professional thief who steals information directly from the subconscious of his target. In return for implanting ideas into the subconscious of others, he can erase his own criminal history.
At the beginning of the film, Cobb says:
I know how to search your mind and find your secrets. I know these techniques, and I can teach them to your subconscious so that even if you fall asleep, your vigilance will never let up.
This is likely nolan's film secret.
Everything you see is a scam. Inception spaces are constantly integrated with reality and dream states. Nolan provides visual cues throughout the film, forcing the audience to become participants to interpret his message.
It seems that even Nolan realizes how difficult it is to understand the universe and narrative of the film. He constantly uses large paragraphs to explain what we are seeing, or what is happening, or what is about to happen.
You'd think it would be perverse compared to other films, but in Inception, this kind of elaboration is a necessary way to unravel its increasingly complex subconscious world.
As he told Wired magazine, even Nolan himself could get lost in drawing this roadmap:
One of the things you have to do as a writer and filmmaker is to master the symbols and images that resonate without having to fully understand them yourself.
Every time you watch Inception, you have a different understanding of the story Nolan tells
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Perhaps the biggest trick of the film is that, in the end, you'll question whether you've ever been in any real reality (at least in terms of the cinematic world it depicts) — or are we just jumping from one subconscious to another?
This is still a point of discussion among fans. New theories about different realities are constantly being proposed.
But don't be fooled by Nolan's complex storytelling or technical magic. In all his films, family is the main motivator of each central character. Families move the story forward.
Both Fragments of Memory and Deadly Magic have obsessive-compulsive protagonists who are forced to avenge the death of their wives. In Interstellar, Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) is brought back from the edge by his daughter. In Inception, Cobb is separated from his children for committing a crime, and it is his love for them that inspires the whole story.
At the center of all Nolan's films is a love story
Without these family foundations, Nolan's films would have lost their soul. Each protagonist is well aware of what inspired their actions of redemption. They can use all means for "love"—murder, chaos, suffering
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Inception is Nolan's most complex film to date, arguably his most intelligent film, and the question is where does the real world end and where does the subconscious mind begin?
The visuals are also stunning, with entire streets exploding, or corridors spinning 360 degrees, making the characters look defiant of gravity. These are not computer graphics, but effects created on the spot. As we all know, Nolan is a veritable real-life madman.
Explosion scenes from Inception
While all of Nolan's film endings are very definitive and satisfying, Inception is very ambiguous. The gyroscope at the beginning of the film represents the dream world, and the end is still spinning. Does this mean that the whole movie takes place subconsciously and that everything we see is real?
Reality or dream