Christopher Nolan's movie "Inception" is really a wonderful dream dream. I never thought that dreams could be designed so complex, interlocking, and layered. In fact, the concept of getting information into other people's dreams is not new. The 2000 "Invasion of Brain Cells" (Cell) is a brilliant attempt. Dreaming in a dream is not the first thing. David Lynch turns the audience around in "Muholland Drive" (Muholland Drive). As for the interweaving and separation of reality and dreams, Coppola's "Youth without Youth" (Youth without Youth) and Japanese director Jin Min's animated film "Red Pepper" are both involved. But the combination of all these three elements has not only the freshness of the concept, but also the smoothness of the narrative and the visual impact. So far, only Inception is the most clear, intuitive and full of aftertaste. .
At the beginning of the story, Leonardo DiCaprio, a dream expert, Damn Cobb, was washed up on the beach by the tide, and was dragged into a Japanese-style pub built on the cliff by the guards in confusion. In a flash of time, he tried to steal the confidential information hidden in the safe of Japanese energy tycoon Saito in the same izakaya dream. The failure of the mission caused him to accept Saito's advice in the real world, and take extreme measures to plant hints in the deep subconscious of Robert Fisher, the heir of Saito's rival, to make him decide to split the company and establish himself. For this reason, Cobb and his colleagues must find a way to get Fisher into their dreams, layer by layer, until the unprecedented third layer of dreams in dreams; but to go deep into dreams, they must use super calmness to ensure deep sleep. This will cause great potential danger: once you die in a dream, your consciousness will slide into desolation, trapped in the illusion of life and death. In addition, the shadow of Cobb's deceased wife always jumps out in his dreams to make trouble, making the already difficult task even more precarious.
Aside from the details of the big scenes full of Hollywood characteristics, the dream dream theory of "Inception" is very complicated and very fascinating. I think this theory mainly relies on four major elements:
1. The dream environment can be designed. The designer teaches the blueprint to the dreamer. Through the instrument, it can be ensured that all people who enter the same dream state feel the same environment. .
2. Dreams extend time. 5 minutes in the real world is equivalent to 1 hour in the dream. Every time you go deep into the dream, the time will be extended at a speed of 12 times. When you reach the third dream, the real 5 minutes is equal to 6 days. In the "limbo" (limbo), time is superimposed infinitely, and a moment is eternal.
3. What happened in the dream of the upper layer will be transferred to the environment of the dream of the next layer. For example, if you listen to music to a dreamer, he will suddenly think of the same music in his dream; when the dreamer’s environment is physically impacted, his dream will tremble, such as an earthquake; The dream will rain or even flood.
4. Getting out of the dream requires traction. In a state of light sleep, a nightmare, such as dying in a dream, can wake people up and return to the previous dream or reality. When the dreamer is pushed down during sleep and loses the balance of the body's center of gravity, he will immediately return from the next level of dream to the previous level. But in Fisher's three-tier dream, because of the use of super tranquilizers, death in the dream will only push people's consciousness into the wild. Under this circumstance, the only way to escape from the lower level of dreams is to double traction: on the one hand, the body’s center of gravity balance is actively disrupted in the dream in order to return to the upper level of dreams; Lower dreams. Therefore, Cobb and the team arranged powerful free fall motions, or heavy fire explosions, or falling from high altitudes on each layer of the three-layer dream, just to ensure that the consciousness of the upper layer can be removed from the dream of the lower layer. wake up. But the effectiveness of double traction also has a necessary prerequisite-the person who actively engages in free fall must be awake in the dream of the current level, and cannot still be in the dream of the next level. Therefore, the several vertical falling motions in the three-layer dream must be closely aligned in time. The first layer wakes up and enters the upper layer, staggering each other until it returns to reality.
After understanding these four elements, it is not difficult to analyze the ins and outs of the plot development of the story. The only point that needs to be emphasized is that to escape from dreams, one's consciousness and subconscious must be separated. If this is not the case, people will not realize that they are dreaming, and will not take the initiative to take death or loss of body balance to get themselves out of dreams. Especially for dreamers who have entered the Great Wilderness illusion, because in the layers of recognizable dreams, people are always asleep, no matter how strong impacts and falls are, they can’t pull back an already existing thing and my lost soul. upper layer. Only if he or she actively chooses to die in the wilderness can he return to reality-but how difficult it is for an eternal consciousness who is at a loss and knows where he or she is, and what is this eve and eve!
Because of this, the story also arranges a "totem" for each professional dreamer to help them distinguish between dreams and reality. "Totem" is a special gadget that only the person knows its characteristics, such as a top, a dice with a lead added, or a chess piece that falls in a certain direction. The protagonist Cooper’s "totem" is the spinning top left by his wife. In reality, the spinning top will eventually stop and lie down; but in a dream, the spinning top will never fall down.
Like all stories related to dreams, the final ending of Inception must return to the ancient topic of dreams and reality. If dreams are as vivid as reality, and even more magnificent and magical, then why do people choose to return to reality and face those trivial firewood and ugly parents? Even if a father who loves his children like Cobb, if love and affection can be realized in a dream, why must he return to reality to face the pain and loss that cannot be relieved? To this question, the film seems to give completely opposite answers from two angles. On the one hand, it is the loss of people’s natural dreams in reality, just like taking drugs. The more beautiful the illusion, the more cruel the ugly truth from human selfishness. On the other hand, it is the wedge that ends with a pun, whether it is real or dream. It is the result of a person's inner struggle, and if the consciousness can finally be united with the subconscious spirit, even if you are in a great famine, why not?
But the focus of "Inception" is not the philosophical significance of the theory of dreams in dreams. The most successful film is the technical execution that perfectly combines dream and reality visually. The weird and magical dreams are deeply rooted in tangible life. For example, the Escher circular staircase that cannot exist in reality logic appears in a completely real building, and the novice dream architect Ariadne makes the ground become the sky. It mirrors the original ground up and down, and two huge mirrors are installed out of thin air under the long and narrow bridge, so that the mirror images of the characters increase to infinity. Through these simple and intuitive pictures, Nolan perfectly realizes the separation of dream and reality. While strengthening the concept of dream level, it also emphasizes the foundation of dream originating from reality, which is fully in line with our own experience of dreams.
I think one of the most exciting scenes of the movie is the second-level dream hotel where the assistant Arthur stayed behind after Cobb and others hijacked Fisher's consciousness into the third-level dream. Because in the dream of the first floor at this time, the pharmacist Joseph was driving a group of people down the river from the bridge, reflecting that the hotel on the second floor is that everyone is floating in a small space without gravity. The shooting of this section refers to the special effects of the capsule scrolling of the classic science fiction film "2001 Space Journey", and fighting up and down between the walls and the ceiling is a tribute to the American song and dance king Fred Astaire (Fred Astaire) . At the same time, the dense editing of repeated interspersed three layers of dreams not only emphasizes the progressiveness and parallelism of time, but also increases the urgency of rhythm and the fluency of multi-line narration. The depiction of the Great Wilderness illusion has a surrealist picture style. The peeling ice castles and the old houses standing in the water can all find their prototypes in the 19th to 20th century impressionist and surrealist paintings.
Such a sci-fi movie that is at the forefront of perception in terms of internal structure and audio-visual effects is hard not to compare with the 1999 "Matrix." In terms of special effects alone, there is no doubt that the technological advantages of Inception is obvious. But when it comes to conceptual innovation, I think "The Matrix" is more subversive. After all, the latter is a fairly complete theoretical system. As a platform, two action science fiction films and a collection of animated short films have been derived, covering the formation, development and ultimate direction of the entire world we live in! And "Inception" is to split people’s dreams into infinite levels, creating an incomparable spiritual world on the edge of reality and illusion, allowing the audience to enter Nolan’s paradoxical dream in the darkness of the theater, and also do A dream in a lucid dream. How far this system can go, and whether it can also build a platform to derive infinite possibilities, still needs the test of time.
The best theory about the complete plot analysis of the entire movie: http://chud.com/articles/articles/24477/1/NEVER-WAKE-UP-THE-MEANING-AND-SECRET-OF-INCEPTION/Page1.html
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