Christopher Nolan’s Inception is not on that spectrum. This assessment is not to belittle Nolan in order to elevate the masters, and the dream world Nolan presents in this film is so different from those films that there is almost no comparison between them. In the view of Fellini, Bergman and others, dreams are the language of surrealism, and the reason why "dream is the only reality" is that surrealism is more real than reality. In "Inception", dream is reality, it is even more logical than reality, and it obeys the principles of the real world. It may be infinitely complicated by the way of "dream in dream...", but this This kind of complexity is not dissimilar to what one encounters when playing a puzzle game or navigating a maze, and what one pursues in a dream is no different from what one is busy chasing while awake. So the dream becomes boring here, although the movie itself is not boring.
Nolan's "dream" is completely unromantic, it is an extension of the real utilitarian place, which is prominently reflected in the English title of the film Inception (which can be translated as concept implantation): a dream is to plant ideas for commercial purposes. tools into the other's brain. Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a "dream detective" who steals trade secrets by infiltrating people's dreams. After an operation failed, Cobb threw himself into his rival, the business magnate Saito. He wanted to help Saito implant a concept into his competitor's subconscious in a dream, so that the other party could dissolve his company. The main plot of the film revolves around the careful planning and deployment of Cobb and his team to carry out this action.
Educated modern audiences will somewhat have heard of Freud's theory of dream interpretation, the theory of consciousness and subconsciousness, and it is the audience that Nolan's "piracy", "ideological implantation" and the arrangement of dream components rely on That understanding of Freud is the same as his predecessor Hitchcock's use of the pervasive pseudo-Freudianism in the audience in "Dr. Edward". The principle of "Pirate Dream" is actually very simple: first, you need an architect, whose task is to build various scenes in the dream that Pirate Dream unfolds, and the function is somewhat similar to the set designer when making a movie; The target object and the pirate are connected by drugs, so that they enter the scene built by the architect together; the target's subconscious will launch a defense mechanism to create various dangers for the pirate, and the pirate obtains it by tricking or resorting to force. Once the target's information is obtained, the mission is completed, which is exactly the same as commercial espionage in the real world. In this "Inception", there will be images and characters left in the subconscious of various people, but their regularity is more logical than that explained by Freud in "Interpretation of Dreams"; on the other hand , Freud's famous saying "dream is a kind of realization of human's unfulfilled wishes" is rewritten here: human beings can really achieve their wishes in reality through dreams. The process of "ideological implantation" is a little more complicated, and the confusion between the conscious and the subconscious is more obvious. The specific way in the film is to make the target Fisher realize that the conflict between himself and his father is some kind of misunderstanding. His father loves him deeply, and his uncle and godfather, Browning, is a very ambitious person. The film assumes that this apparent conscious content can be transformed into an emotional element that enters the subconscious, allowing Fisher to change his decision upon awakening. As for exactly how conscious content enters the subconscious, the film doesn't really explain. The movie expresses the depth of human subconsciousness in the form of dreams within a dream, which is quite creative. However, if we go deeper, no matter how many layers the dream enters, consciousness is still consciousness and will not become subconscious. This may also touch a certain boundary of the film's expressive ability: as long as the content of the screen is to be understood by the audience, it must be consciousness. Yes, it is impossible for a movie to show the real subconscious.
Nolan's "Inception" also has elements of many genre films. In creating a novel space that operates according to unique principles, the film is very similar to The Matrix, but it seems to fall short of the latter in terms of creative novelty and uniqueness; it is closer to the theft film in the specific plot mode (English Heist film): that is, a film that shows a group of thieves stealing operations through careful deployment and close cooperation, such as "Eleven Arhats"; the film has elements of popular action movies: such as Bond-style snow mountain chases, gun battles; The content of family ethics drama: such as the emotional sideline between Cobb and his wife. These elements may be necessary for a commercial film, but they are not exceptional. The most unique aspect of Inception, and one of Nolan's forte, is its large-scale and complex narrative.
The script of "Inception" was brewed 10 years ago, when Nolan had just finished his debut "Trailing" and was shooting the "Memento" with a hugely subversive and experimental narrative style. Undoubtedly, "Inception" is far less complex than "Memento" in terms of narrative complexity, but as a commercial film, this film does quite challenge the audience's brainpower. The actions of the characters in the movie unfold on different dream levels, and events at each dream level will react on other levels. When the dream world enters the third and fourth layers, the director must make the audience understand those things through rapid parallel switching. The specific minor changes allow the audience to sketch in their minds the overall appearance of this large dream-in-dream-in-dream…. It is believed that many viewers spent a lot of brainpower in identifying which layers of dreams are in front of them, and speculate that it will react to the other layers of dreams. The special feature of this movie is that the time flow rate of each layer of dreams is different, and the time of each next layer of dreams is 20 times slower than the time of the previous layer of dreams, which adds difficulty to the narrative. The narrative time of the dream is very accurate. The five layers of dreams in the movie (and the sixth layer if you count the open ending of the movie) are only the vertical layers of the narrative. The movie has two horizontal and parallel narrative threads: the “idea implantation” narrative thread, and the Ke The emotional sideline between Boo and his wife. After multiplying horizontally and vertically, the film has become so confusing that a mediocre director could not handle it if it weren't for a narrative genius like Nolan. After spending a lot of brainpower, the audience of "Inception" believes that they basically understand the specific plot of the movie.
Like "Memento", "Inception" is not without loopholes in its narrative: the movie begins to be a little vague when entering the fourth and fifth layers of dreams. For example, after Saito dies in the third layer of dreams, according to the previous plot Logic should enter the "edge of the subconscious mind", the fourth level of dream that Cobb entered (that is, the dream that he and his wife constructed together) is also called the edge of the subconscious mind, but why did Cobb enter the fifth level instead of the fourth level? The layer (that is, the layer of dream where Cobb saw the old Saito in the film's prelude - if you don't admit that this is the fifth layer, you can't explain Saito's aging) to find Saito back, the movie does not give explain. Another obvious mistake is that Saito died after Cobb entered the fourth dream, and it was impossible for Cobb to know that Saito was dead and go to him. Another flaw is that there is no logical connection between the various layers of dream scenes built by the architect, especially the snow mountain castle, which can almost be regarded as the director's forcible insertion of action movie elements. These flawed loopholes did not greatly affect the audience's viewing quality, because this novel, large-scale and complex narrative method mixed with the film's genre elements is enough to make "Inception" a high-quality commercial Movie. Especially for Chinese audiences, "Inception" can still be regarded as a "magical work" that domestic commercial films can only look up to. However, I must say that "Inception" is not a perfect commercial movie, which is based on two points: first, the movie always lacks a hero and a protagonist with sufficient thickness; second, "Inception" has High intellectual challenge, but only low emotional penetration.
I've always been a fan of Nolan, and I like almost all of his movies. Among his seven feature films, I especially like "Trailer" and "The Dark Knight." "Trailing" also contains complex narrative techniques, but what strikes me more is the theme of "loneliness" it contains, in which Nolan portrays a Dostoevsky-esque protagonist. "The Dark Knight" is the perfect commercial film. Nolan has created a new hero after the classic gothic, comic-bombed Batman, but he is no longer a simple superhero, he has become a The tragic hero, divided between good and evil, becomes a moral metaphor for history. For a commercial film to firmly grasp the heart of the audience, it is not enough to rely solely on entertainment or even intellectual factors, it must become an ideology that gives the audience a glimpse of the reality in which they live. "Inception" has not reached this level. Leonardo's Cobb is a man who suffers from a change in family ethics, but the director may have been so focused on his narrative that there is no real emotional depth between Cobb and his wife, and Cobb has never been like that. Batman becomes personified like that; in terms of secondary characters, Ellen Page's architect is always outside the emotions of Cobb and his wife, who sometimes intrudes into theirs but doesn't really Participating in their lives emotionally, it also doesn't seem as convincing that she ends up taking Cobb out of the cage of memory. One of the reasons the film lacks emotional penetration, I think, is that Nolan puts so much focus on narrative time and neglects the emotional time necessary to represent the characters. For example, Cobb spent 50 years on the fringes of consciousness with his wife, 50 years is enough to make any superficial emotion serious, but to the audience, 50 years feels only a moment they see on the screen ——In the next instant, they are already busy receiving new information, busy scrutinizing the connection between this information and other levels of dreams.
A dream, no matter how beautiful, loses its charm when you realize it is a dream. If the movie is just a dream, which lacks a real connection with reality, then when the dream wakes up, the charm of the movie is also lost, and the audience will soon forget it after walking out of the cinema. Dreams should never be the only reality in a movie.
View more about Inception reviews
