Dreams vs. Reality
Imagine living in a fantasy world; a world that you have actually created for yourself to live in. You have the life that you have always dreamed of having. You are happily married with kids and a place to live. You have your dream job and have all the money you need. You know that you are dreaming and can control aspects of the dream yourself. Then, the alarm clock goes off. You wake up to the reality of a boring life that isn’t going your way. Do our dreams affect the way we live in reality? Do they change our perception of reality? Does Inception demonstrate this connection between subconscious and conscious action? These are the questions that I found myself asking after leaving the movie theater. Defining a dream from reality can become almost difficult at times and the movie Inception takes dreaming to a whole new level by using the factors of lucidity, dream time, and dreaming vs. reality. It shows us how important it is to keep our reality separate from our dreams and imagination. When mixing the two, things can become dangerous and complicated.
Inception was released during the summer of 2010 and became an instant phenomenon. This psychological sci-fi action thriller was written and directed by the well-known Christopher Nolan. The opening weekend of Inception brought in around $60 million to the box office, making it the biggest release to date for lead actor Leonardo DiCaprio. Within thirty-two days of the movie’s theater release, Inception became one of only fifty-six movies in the recorded history to reach over $250 million dollars in box office sales. Inception’s suspenseful plot, along with the amazing special effects and well-known cast, makes this movie memorable for years and years to come. The Los Angeles Times posted, “A tremendously exciting science-fiction thriller that's as disturbing as it sounds. This is a popular entertainment with a knockout punch so intense and unnerving it'll have you worrying if it's safe to close your eyes at night” (Turan, par. 9). The storyline was originally intended to be a horror film because of its inspired concepts of lucid dreaming and dream incubation. The movie also taps into psychological phenomena such as false memories and the introspection illusion.
The movie begins with Dominic Cobb, a thief who extracts information from the unconscious mind of his victims while they dream, along with point man, Arthur, taking on an extraction mission within the mind of a powerful Japanese businessman, Saito. They are using a form of corporate espionage through dreams. Pain can be felt in the dreams, but death results in awakening. Dom Cobb carries a totem, in his case a spinning top that belonged to his deceased wife, Mal, to determine whether he is dreaming or awake. If he is in a dream state when the top is spun, it will spin continuously at a fast speed. In reality, the top will eventually lose its momentum and topple over.
The extraction procedure fails because of the intrusion of Mal who continues to haunt Cobb’s mind and sabotage his missions. Saito then reveals that he is actually auditioning the team to perform the act of inception. Inception involves using dreams to implant an idea. In exchange for completing this nearly impossible mission, Saito promises to have murder charges against Cobb cleared so that he may return to the United States and visit his children. The target in the inception mission is Robert Fischer. Fischer is the son of Saito’s terminally ill corporate rival. The objective of the mission is to convince Fischer to break up his father’s empire.
Cobb realizes that he will need to recruit some others to join his team in order to make inception possible. First, Cobb recruits Eames, the forger, who is a master of imitating people’s handwriting, mannerisms, and, in the dream world, even their appearance. His job is to fool Fischer into using his own subconscious projections against himself. Another member added to the team is Yusuf, a sedative chemist. The last member added to the team is Ariadne, a student whom Cobb and Arthur train as an architect to design dream worlds. The architect is the designer of the dream. They construct the dream into a sort of maze so that the mark does not reach the end of the maze, realizing that they are in an imaginary place, and also to lead the extractor toward the mental secrets the mark is protecting.
When the elder Fischer passes away in Sydney, Saito and the team share a flight with Robert Fischer and drug him. They enter Yusuf’s dream, set in a rainy downtown area, and kidnap Fischer. However, they become attacked by Fischer’s trained subconscious projections, and Saito is critically injured. Due to the strength of the drugs and the multiple dream layers, death will result in the person going into limbo, a world of unconstructed dream space. Cobb reveals to Ariadne that he spent fifty years with Mal in limbo. After waking, Mal had remained convinced that she was still dreaming and committed suicide, then tried to persuade Cobb to do so by incriminating him in her death. He instead had fled the United States and the murder charges.
Eames, the forger, impersonates Peter Browning, Fischer’s godfather, and suggests to Robert the false idea that Robert’s father had created a second will locked in a vault. The intent is to get Robert to start thinking about his relationship with his father. The team then enters a van and is sedated into Arthur’s dream in a hotel. The team then convinces Fischer that the kidnapping on the first level was arranged by Browning and that he must enter his godfather’s mind to determine his motives. The team enters into a third level of dreams dreamt by Eames where Fischer must break into a snowy mountain fortress to reveal the planted idea.
To wake and protect the team, the member dreaming at each level stays behind at that level. They are assigned the triggering of synchronized kicks: Yusuf driving a van off of a bridge, Arthur crashing an elevator carrying the sleeping team members, and Eames igniting explosives in the mountain’s foundation. Music is played into the dreamer’s ears to help synchronize the kicks by signaling to the dreamer on each level when a kick on the previous level is about to take place.
Fischer is killed by Mal and goes into limbo. Ariadne and Cobb follow him into limbo and confront Mal. Mal attempts to convince Cobb to stay in limbo by making him question reality, referring to events that occurred while he was awake. Cobb reveals that he had originally planted the idea in Mal’s head to wake, making him indirectly responsible for her suicide. Mal begins to turn abusive and Ariadne shoots her. Cobb locates Saito in limbo while Fischer and Ariadne return to the mountains where Fischer comes to the conclusion that his father wanted him to be his own man. Cobb locates Saito and tells him that it’s time to wake up. Cobb then suddenly awakes on the plane to find everyone up and well. Saito honors their arrangement and Cobb enters the United States to finally return home to his children. He spins his totem top to test reality. The top continues to spin, wobbles a bit but continues to spin, and the movie cuts to the credits.
The ending of the movie has been very controversial and can make or break a viewer’s opinion of the movie. The movie shifts back and forth between reality and dreaming and the person watching must stay focused to keep the two separated. Toward the end of the movie, Cobb goes back into what we think is reality, but then the totem doesn’t stop spinning. It makes the viewer question the whole movie in terms of what has been reality and what has been a dream. People began searching for answers all over the internet after watching this movie. Many articles were written with peoples’ perceptions of how the movie ended. Some also wonder whether or not there will be a sequel to this film.
The movie Inception uses the concepts of dreaming in the plot of the movie. It makes us question our dreams vs. our reality. The factors of dreaming explained in the movie actually compare to real life in some ways. Movies, of course, take simple concepts to the extreme and have the director’s own personal opinion as a part of them. Dreams cannot be fully explained by anyone as they are a part of our subconscious mind. Everyone will have his or her own opinion. Inception is one of the biggest movies to question this concept of dreaming and will possibly lead people to become more in control of their dream state. The movie also reminds us of how important it is to keep our dreams separate from reality.
