Inception overview

2.  2010
 Director & Writer – Christopher Nolan
 Production Companies – Warner Bros. Pictures,
Legendary Pictures, Syncopy
 Cast – Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt,
Ellen Page, Tom Hardy
 Budget - $160,000,000
 Gross revenue - $825,956,569

3.  Christopher Nolan: “I wanted to show the potential for the real world
to have analogies to the dream world.”
 “The concept that dreams feel real while we’re in them underlies the
whole film.”
 Leonardo DiCaprio: “It’s this whole different set of rules and laws
that applied within the insane world that Chris Nolan created.”

4.  8.9/10 – IMDB
 86% - Rotten Tomatoes:
“smart, innovative and thrilling.”
 Amongst its awards are 4 Oscars, 3 Baftas
and 5 Saturn Awards

5.  Confusion over time and space:
-alternates between dreams and reality
-fragmented narrative as it alternates between settings (e.g.
hotel to snow scene)
- Do we really know where we are, who’s dreams, who’s
reality?
 Decline of meta-narrative:
-presents the idea that there is no single truth or idea to
explain the world. It is suggested in the film that it is
personal and defined differently from person to person (micro
narratives)

6.  Style over substances – the dreams have to
‘look’ correct and they often do but on close
inspection the flaws are there eg the carpet in
Saito’s ‘love nest’
 Not everyone needs to know the details of the
dream (only the ‘dreamer’) it just needs to be
convincing
 BUT the brain can tell the different – What
happens when people start to realise that
some is wrong in the dream? What comment
is being made here about the post modern
society (Think back to The Matrix)

7.  Ideology:
-question whether Cobb and his team are good or bad (they
are criminals, but have good motives)
- The ‘Drug Den’ – people seem to prefer the hyper reality to
the real world ‘the dream has become their reality, who are
you to say otherwise’
- Redistribution of wealth and attack on the film industry…
 Narrative:
- fragmented (alternates between scenes, e.g. on plane and
then suddenly in dream)
- not chronological (e.g. see him washed up on the beach at
the beginning and then near the end)
- Multiple narratives – stories
within stories.

8. -the cafe scene
-the hotel scene (oblique angles)
-the road scene
Media Language:
- its constructed nature is obvious at points, for example...
Also, slow motion and flashbacks
are used.

9.  Audience 1: What do you think happens at
the end?
 Audience 1: The Marketing Campaign

10.  Audience 2: demands a lot from the
audience in terms of active engagement.
They need to engage intellectually to
understand the text.
 Audience 2: How ‘comfortable’ and
reassuring was the ending? ‘ It’s one of
those rare films that, just for a second,
makes you question your own reality’

11.  What evidence is there to support that this
film is
 Action Adventure
 Thriller
 Science fiction
 Experimental

12. The Penrose staircase is referenced during the film
‘Inception’. This expands on the idea that anything in a
dream can be possible with the architects creativity.

13. During the film ‘Inception’ I think there is a reference
to the photographer Ori Gersht who also blows up
things as they have done in the film ‘Inception.’

14. The scene with the mirrors references Citizen Kane
when he sees himself indefinitely reflected. In the film
‘Inception’ it shows the idea that there are many
worlds than reflect off this one world. This reinforces
the dream within a dream concept. This could also link
with Hyper reality….

15.  Questioning reality and ‘truth’
- what is reality?
- film suggests that the reality of each person is
different based on their own perceptions
- where does the dream begin and end?
- according to the film, there is no definite truth to
explain the world (rejects ‘truth’ which is a key part
of the post modern worldview)
“you don’t believe in one reality anymore.”- Mal to
Cobb

16. “is presented as imaginary in order to make
us believe that the rest is real”.
At the start we are presented with a dream (where Cobb is
trying to steal from Saito) we learn quickly that this is a
dream so we think it is real when everyone wakes up in
the apartment during a riot, yet this too is a dream
In the ‘Inception’ they tell Fisher that it is a dream so he
will believe that they are there to help
By the end can we tell real from dream?

17.  “their dream has become their reality”
 Cobb’s wife commits suicide because she doesn’t know
what is real and what is a dream anymore
 For Cobb, the dreams he has of his wife are his reality.
 The ambiguity at the end when the audience doesn’t
see whether the totem keeps spinning or not- fails to
conclude whether Cobb is in a dream or not.
 You need a totem to tell you if you are in the real world
or not – Hyper reality of all around us like a trap or
prison (Baudrillard was big on this!)
 Does Cobb care any more about reality (the ending)? Do
we?

18.  The first stage is a faithful image/copy
 The second stage is perversion of
reality, Here, signs and images do not
faithfully reveal reality to us. Reality has
been slightly heighten or exaggerated.
 The third stage masks the absence of a
profound reality, where the simulacrum
pretends to be a faithful copy, but it is
a copy with no original.
 The fourth stage is pure simulation, in
which the simulacrum has no
relationship to any reality whatsoever.

19.  1. The first level of the dream takes place on
busy city streets. As the analog of the first stage
of the sign, “it is a representation of reality.” It’s
a copy but a faithful one.
 2. The next level takes place in a hotel. Cobb
admits to Fischer that it is all a dream, but hides
the fact that he is a fellow dreamer, pretending to
be “Mr. Charles,” a subconscious projection of
Fischer’s. In this way, Cobb “masks and perverts
a basic reality” the way a second order sign does.

20.  3. This level takes place in a snowbound
mountain fortress)the kind usually occupied
by the main villain in a James Bond movie.
Movie-like, the third level “masks the absence
of a basic reality because it is based on
fiction.” There is no real place like this
 4. Dying under the kind of sedation necessary
to reach three dream-levels will send
dreamers into Limbo. Limbo is not a level, but
as an “unconstructed dream space.” Anything
can happen there; it is a “pure simulacrum”,
pure simulation/ hyperreality

21.  “Baudrillard saw our Post Modern world as lacking
in meaning/substance because we have lost
contact with the ‘real’
 Jameson (yet another theorist) talked about the post
modern world being ‘depthless’
 Yet this film is full of meaning and tackles some
very big philosophical ideas, the plot is complex as
are the characters and notions of good and evil

22.  Overall, Inception is very postmodern
because it complies with the theories of both
Strinati and Baudrillard. Also, it has
postmodern media concepts and presents a
distortion of reality.