In reality, it would not be possible to be immersed in the dream of another individual because it is unlikely that we are able to perceive thoughts in the same manner that others can. However, we are free to imagine what their dreams would be like and can gain an understanding of others from our own interpretation of these thoughts.
This understanding of dreams and perception is relevant to the ending of the film. Towards the end, Cobb encounters his wife in a dream, which is an important moment for the viewers because we are able to gain an understanding of how her loss truly impacts him. Even though Cobb is aware that he is in a dream, he continues to engage in the same emotions he would with his life if she were alive.
This demonstrates that he is unable to get over her death, as he continues to dream of her with such vivacity. Later, when we see that Cobb is trapped deeply within his dream, he ignores it in favor of living his former life with her. This is an important concept because it demonstrates that while Cobb appears to be mentally stable in reality, he is unable to cope with the latest changes in his life.
As a consequence, he is unwilling to wake up to experience reality. In the clinical setting, Cobb is an individual that would benefit by being providing with psychotherapy because it will allow him to recognize the damage that some of his innermost thoughts cause him and will help him get past his grieving stage. A major theme of the film is the ability of the characters to distinguish reality and dreams. We soon find that as the characters get deeper into the dreams of others, it becomes more difficult for them to understand where they are.
As a consequence, Cobb uses a totem in the form of a spinning top to determine if he has returned to reality. If the top continues to spin, he is in a dream, while if it stops according to the normal laws of gravity and physics, he is in reality. Despite the existence of this tool, we notice that Cobb goes from concerned over the ability to distinguish between dreams and reality to a complete lack of caring as he is flooding with memories of his former life with his wife.
This demonstrates that the boundaries between reality and dreams are less clear than we would like. In many situations, our dreams appear lifelike and we are unable to determine fact from fiction until we fully awaken. In this same manner, Cobb and his comrades were foolish to have tried to use indicators of whether or not he existed in a dream, because it is impossible to be certain. A top could obey or disobey physics in a dream, just as any other rule can; dreams are what our minds make them to be, so anything can happen.
Cobb and Nolan are right on the money, I think, when they explain how filmic inceptions work. Personally, when I think of the movies that have changed my behavior, I think of movies like Ikiru, Mr.
No one ever cries while playing with a Rubix cube. In fact, Rubix cubs are kind of funny. Heh, Rubix cubes. Critics seem to agree with my reaction. The positive reviews for Inception focused mostly on its ingenious plot and mind-bending visuals. The few negative reviews focused on the very same elements, saying that the film was too logical and that the visuals were not mind-bending enough.
Thesis 3: Nolan was not trying to perform an inception on the audience. He was trying to perform an inception on himself. In my mind, the only possible answer is Chris Nolan. Nolan made a movie that is more for himself than for audiences. Like Cobb, he is both the Architect and ultimate target of his own inception. Cobb shows her an image that looks something like this:.
I don't have Photoshop on my computer any more. Anyway, the image is of an autocatalytic cycle. Cobb tells Ariadne that this is how dreaming works.
The dreamer creates the world and simultaneously lives in it. As the dreamer moves forward in the world, he or she continues creating the world using his or her imagination. First, you try to build a fictional universe in a methodical fashion. You write outlines. Because once you start writing—once you enter the dream—all bets are off. Your subconscious starts fucking with you. Out of nowhere, a random train of thought infects and then wrecks your carefully-plotted first act.
Your characters start acting like they want to act, not the way you want them to act. Effective February , you must be a logged-in APS member to post comments. By posting a comment, you agree to our Community Guidelines and the display of your profile information, including your name and affiliation.
For more information, please see our Community Guidelines. A study published in Psychological Science shows that the unconscious mind. Theories vary, but most neurologists and cognitive psychologists agree that we need awareness for integration. That is, unconscious processing can take in one object or word at a time.
Abbas Syed January 27, The Prestige sits somewhat outside of this theme but also shares similarities with Inception in its playing with the dichotomy between perception and reality. Christopher Nolan does a few things very well in terms of his deployment of certain aspects of film grammar and technique, particularly cross cutting.
With Inception Nolan spends the first hour setting up the premise of having the characters simultaneously occupy multiple levels of dream space which then allows him to play out all of these together using this technique. His confidence and competence in this regard is crucial to ensuring that the audience is free to follow what might be a very complicated concept and concentrate instead on the ever more complex plot machinations.
This kind of imaginative seeing is an amalgam of active and passive, construction and reception. The camera draws attention to itself in this scene by its very absence where it should have appeared in the reflection removed via camera trickery or CGI. A lot of what has been written by critics about Inception has focused on its originality. I too think the film is original in some ways but not in the same ways that most critics have proposed. Inception is an amalgamation of various genres and heavily references and pays homage to other films throughout.
Tangiers actually stood in for Mombasa as a filming location in Inception. These examples are just a few of the many similar references throughout the film. In thinking of how the film is original, critics have tended to focus on how Inception problematizes our knowledge of what is real and what is a dream. Whilst this intellectual investigation may in itself be philosophically worthy, Inception does not seem at first sight to add a lot more to this notion that has not already been done before in numerous other big budget films such as Total Recall , Vanilla Sky , The Matrix , et al.
What I think is original about Inception is rather its integration of the psychoanalytic process into the very fabric of the narrative. There have been a number of films in which psychoanalysis is used as central to character development, Ordinary People or Good Will Hunting for example, and many more that explore psychoanalytic themes or which lend themselves highly to psychoanalytic interpretation Vertigo , Psycho , Eyes Wide Shut , to name just a few.
Inception does something different , however, which I will address by invoking some of the fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis. At its core psychoanalysis posits the notion that all of us have a part of our mind which is unconscious whose contents are unknown in any explicit sense to us. The unconscious is made up of feelings and desires, some of which we may never have been aware of and others which we have repressed as either a defence mechanism or for purposes of social compliance.
The unconscious mind of the individual is a mass of contradictions and by definition remains uncontrolled and unordered. Inception takes as a given the existence of the uncontrolled unconscious world of the subject which is best exemplified by the scene in which Ariadne and Cobb navigate through his dream world and he cannot prevent aspects of his own mind from attacking her culminating in Mal stabbing her despite his conscious desire to prevent this.
Psychoanalytic theory argues that during sleep the barrier weakens and the unconscious bubbles out, albeit often in disguised form.
0コメント