I haven’t kept up with my idea of more frequent blog posts but better late than never. This is a blog entry which is part film review and part an exploration of a concept within that film. The film, which I have seen twice in order to try and absorb it, is Inception by Christopher Nolan.
The first thing to state is that the film is excellent; it’s an entertaining, engaging and thought-provoking film which is brilliantly shot and contains solid acting. I expect that most people will have heard of the film by now and it is receiving rave reviews. However, one word of caution – if you have been looking at the ratings on imdb.com (the internet movie database) you will note that it is currently ranked the 4th best film of all time by the users of the site. It was ranked 3rd best for a long time but I note it has dropped down to 4th. Over time I expect it will fall more than this but I have to say that I think it’s a slightly inflated rating. This puts it up there with The Shawshank Redemption and Godfather Part 1 and 2 as well as making it a better rated film that Schindler’s List and many other notably great films. At this stage it’s hard for me to say whether it’s a classic and I haven’t rated it yet on imdb.com. It would at least go into a shortlist of my top 50 favourite films but where it would end up I can’t say yet. In short though, if you haven’t seen it – go and see it at the cinema, it’s a brilliant cinematic experience.
Returning to the content of the film itself it’s a highly complex plotline which takes a difficult but fascinating concept and manages to make the complex ever more complicated; the story plumbs deeper into the subconscious distorting the concept of what is reality and what is not. This is a high budget film and it makes a wonderful change to see a summer blockbuster that challenges the viewer to think deeply and doesn’t dumb down to appeal to the perceived tastes of the mass market. I believe that one explanation of its high rating on review sites is down to its broad appeal; this is a psychologically puzzling film but it is also a special effects laden action film. Christopher Nolan has managed to keep the high quality of his screen-writing whilst also producing a highly exciting and action-packed film.
The idea of exploring the subconscious, and also of playing with the human perception of reality, is not new at all and can be seen in different forms in Nolan’s Memento and The Prestige. These ideas are also explored in other films like The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (and most films written by Charlie Kaufman, but I pick this as having the strongest parallels), Mulholland Drive and The Matrix, and that’s to name only a few that come straight to mind. Inception does provide a nice twist on this idea and it takes it into a very fascinating direction. The storyline is so complicated and I am unsure if it all makes sense when examined carefully; but I trust Nolan enough to believe that he thought deeply about the screenplay. I won’t write too much in case somebody reads this who hasn’t seen it yet, but for those who have I would ask you to consider carefully some aspects of the totems and the concept of limbo in particular (which seems to have been a plot device which was necessary to add more drama to the idea of death in a complexly layered dream, but of all the ideas explored in the film this seems the most vaguely conceptualized).
Manipulating our concept of reality and also exploring the genesis of our beliefs are subjects I have spent much time considering and this for me is the best part of Inception (which derives its name from the inception of an idea in the mind). In the film Leonardo DiCaprio’s character (Cobb) compares an idea to a resilient parasite and that once it has taken hold in the mind it can be extremely powerful and have massive consequences (I am paraphrasing and not quoting the script). This notion is one that interests me and one that I think is very true. In the film Cobb’s team are tasked with planting an idea so deeply in somebody’s subconscious that they believe it to be their own and they therefore shape their future choices around it; this is described in the film as very hard to achieve because we can identify the root cause of the idea in our mind and recognise it was planted there by someone else. I am not sure this is entirely true.
Many writers have explored in detail the possibility that some major ideas we embrace in our lives, in many cases in the form of strong beliefs that even shape a person’s character, are adopted when we are young due to the influence of our elders (primarily but by no means exclusively our parents and close family). Richard Dawkins has written on this matter with specific reference to people embracing their parent's religion, which likely has some implausible facets to its teaching, without questioning it when they are young. Even as a person grows older such an idea can become so deeply imbedded it cannot easily be changed. Furthermore I think that when challenged people would claim that their choice of religion, for example, was entirely their own idea and a free choice. Could it be possible in cases like these than an 'idea' has been implanted so deeply in somebody's mind that they now recognise it entirely as their own? Practically I am sure that people can recognise the impact of their early upbringing and what they were taught, but I think we often don't recognise how much we are absorbing from others rather than deciding for ourselves. I do not suggest that we cannot overcome this or change our beliefs as we grow older; this undoubtedly happens but in many cases it does not.
It should not be assumed that I place religious beliefs in this category alone. All kinds of ideas could fit into this category, for example political persuasion, attitudes to different social groups, or even a favourite sports team. I may be stretching what should be considered as a person’s idea rather than as a cultural identity of some sort but hopefully this stimulates you to consider this matter to some degree. How many of our ideas, deeply held beliefs or other aspects of our identity can be considered as something that we alone crafted and adopted? There are massive grey areas in this line of thinking and my intention is not to provide answers but to stimulate thought and conversation on the matter.
As I have written this I realise how massive this subject is and how much more I could write about. I have no clear conclusions to draw and there are many authors who have expressed this sentiment with more clarity and eloquence than I have managed. Nonetheless I think it is a fascinating area which I will certainly give more thought.
Many thanks for reading,
Dominic
