Inception: Dreams and absorption

Inception is a heist movie that rests on a intriguing premise. The premise is not exactly original in its essence, but sort of is in its execution which is about entering and sharing each others dreams. The idea of not knowing if one is dreaming or not is a philosophical dilemma posed by many great minds, most notably perhaps by René Descartes who concluded that he could doubt everything he knows and senses except the fact that he is.

Inception bases its plot on this philosophical idea and many others but never really engages it. It simply states them. The main character says in one scene of the movie that we can never really remember how we ended up in certain places or situations in dreams, we just accept what is around us for what it is. It is almost strange how easily he says this, everyone can relate to this feeling of being somewhere lost in the moment and suddenly becoming aware that they are dreaming. The dreamers in Inception are completely absorbed in the moment, in the situation they find themselves in. They do not question it as long as no one brings their attention to it.

Inception also has this affect on its viewers. In the very first scene of the movie we find ourselves inside a dream, inside a situation. Action, deception, theft and betrayal is what we get in the films opening scene and the audience doesn’t really get any breathing room to think about the situations and concepts the movie throws at them – they simply accept them and become absorbed in the narrative.

As I said before, the film poses many intriguing philosophical dilemmas but doesn’t elaborate on them, itsimply gives us the premise and moves on. It shows us a box with tubes and say it’s a machine that lets us share our dreams with others and moves on, it tells us that we cannot truly know if we are dreaming or not and moves on, it tells us that we can fall asleep and dream within a dream and it moves on. This is part of its charm, the characters state these facts so intensely and so sincerely that we don’t question it’s logic – we just accept the premise and the situation.

This all would however not be possible if the film wasn’t so perfectly made. Everything in it’s production, from the cinematography to the wardrobe design is near perfect. The film is in many way a exercise in filmmaking. It plays with the concept of time in the narrative by letting the action unfold simultaneously in different stages of dreams which, in turn, have different stages of time. Everything completely believed by the audience that has does not question it’s logic or realism, but simply accepts everything and gets lost in the dream.