Inception – The Dream Within a Dream

How many reviews of the same movie can you read?  Not too many I think.  So, instead of simply writing yet another review of another movie - that you will end up seeing and forming your own opinion about anyway – I thought I might make an attempt to make an interesting observation about one.  In case you haven’t seen Inception yet, there may be some spoilers below, by the way.

The basic idea behind Christopher Nolan’s Inception, is people entering the dreams of others to obtain and otherwise deal with their memories and secrets.  In a dream, this becomes much easier because people accept the unusual more easily and have their guards down.

In watching Inception, it suddenly occurred to me that this was not only what was going on in the film, it was in fact, the way film itself works – every film.  Not only that, it is the very way that Nolan did some subtle and smart things to make Inception work and keep its pace and excitement.  Going to a movie is like being in a dream.  In the phenomenon known as suspension of disbelief, when we are in a movie, just like a dream, we feel as if everything happening is real, almost as if we were there.  Just like a dream, we forgive small or even large imperfections or unrealistic aspects of the story and go along for the ride with the story of the film.

In Inception, Christopher Nolan very craftily left out certain basic aspects of his story. For example, we are never told how this technology of entering dreams actually works.  At the same time, this is not explained away, by, say setting the film in the future.  Everything seems to be happening in a very current or near-current reality.   The entire issue of how this technology works is simply put away.  For me, this completely worked.  Just like a dream, when I watched the movie, I went along with the idea and totally enjoyed it!  Suspension of disbelief worked. 

In fact, it might have worked even better than if Nolan had tried to explain himself.  If he explained the technology, he might have been open to holes – and you know he is dealing with BOTH sci-fi AND comic book fans – oh and don’t you just know any little holes would be found out as fast as you can say Starship Enterprise Commemorative Blueprints!  By not explaining it at all, in the pristine world of movie magic, it kept its perfection in the plot. 

Not only keeping himself free of such critiques, this gave Nolan space in the movie to concentrate on the plot and the characters and to keep the action going strong – we didn’t need any annoying sidetracks of explanation.

Why did all of this work?  Because in a movie, just like in a dream, we accept the world that the filmmaker creates for us.  Not automatically though – the fact that it worked in Inception is a real testament to Nolan’s skill.  But just like the characters in Inception, when we watch the movie we ourselves enter a dream world where everything is real as it is presented to us - its what makes the wild trip of a movie work and what helped make Inception exciting, moving fast, clear and cool. Frankly, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Lorne Gross

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