October 2010

Inception

Christopher Nolan

ghosts exist. In the beautiful "Inception" by Christopher Nolan (which incorporates themes throughout the work of the director, and is ten times superior to his "Batman" revisionists), the protagonist Sun Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is endangering himself and his mates when it enters them in dreams, because it has a secret: Mal's wife (Marion Cotillard), who committed suicide, and her children (who can not review because it can not go back to the USA, where he accused his wife's death) is wander like ghosts in dreams of his unconscious. But while the children are ghosts elusive, shadowy, that we never see his face, Mal is a vengeful ghost, a vampire who wants to attract Cobb deeper in the dream world - the limbo - forever.

In "Inception" the group of suave criminals who prefers to infiltrate the dreams of others usually do it to steal a secret, rightly expressed on the floor with dreamlike images of hiding places and safe (for this way the film meets Orson Welles in "Citizen Kane": the turning of the victim found in the safe, regret of lost childhood, is another Rosebud). It goes without saying that the break in the dream is defined in terms of intrusion and violation, "Inception" is the reflection of an era obsessed with social control and loss of intimacy. But even more sinister is the new Cobb project: engage an idea through dreams in order to influence the future behavior of the subject. This system of ideas ( inception) is characterized as strongly hubris - and finds its apparent reversal of punitive damages when the real story del suicidio di Mal; la sceneggiatura di Nolan articola un concetto morboso dell'idea come parassita o virus. Naturalmente alla base di tutto, come di tanta parte della nostra cultura, sta l'opera seminale di Philip K. Dick.
Alla ricerca di una metafora del sogno, “Inception” la trova nell'architettura (per cui viene naturale il concetto di sfaldamento in connessione al risveglio). Sul piano diegetico, è nell'ambiente degli architetti che Cobb pesca i suoi aiutanti; così la giovane Ariadne (Ellen Page) diventa l'Architetto che ha il compito di costruire i sogni. Viene attirata in questa losca impresa appunto dalla possibilità creativa assoluta: un architetto che non deve fare i conti con le leggi fisiche e la resistenza materials.
In this way the film meets Escher "Inception" is the film more Escherian the history of cinema because they do not use it simply as a background (this was already the old "Labyrinth" by Jim Henson), but assume the same logic illogical spaces that develop from other places but apparently not so natural: Escher's work is an extension of the monstrous paradox graph blivet . Well it shows the most famous scene from the film Paris that folds in on itself like a box.

There are three levels of dream in the plot of "Inception" (great use of sound as a marker Edith Piaf: The Power of not, je ne regrette rien assumes a special drama). The film takes on a tinge of elegy on time, as time passes more slowly as they descend to the level - inevitably recall the folklore of fairy tales and legends about the size fairy. There is a Faustian element ("old souls catapulted back into the youth") in offering young again, erasing an entire life an illusion, made by Cobb to Saito (Ken Watanabe) at the end: not an easy choice, because the dream is pervasive. The film shows a group of dreamers in Mombasa described as opium addicts.
In "Inception" is the theme of the maze is crucial. No coincidence that the female co-star is called Ariadne: Ariadne, the woman who represents the salvation of the maze. Not only in the generic sense and collective Ariadne is the rational element in the film that allows the release of Cobb from his private labyrinth dream concerning Mal. As Cobb has sought to keep alive the dreams his dead wife ("a prison of memories," says the film), and like Dr. Frankenstein when he tried to recreate life has created a monster. This attempt to bring back the beloved dead of course refers to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, and when Cobb metaphorically turns around and sees - "Look at you. You're just a shadow "- that the loss, or agrees to let her go. The hypothesis of particular interest to Nolan for "Metropolis" (there are those who in the old house of Mal in the dream world has seen a replica of the shack Rotwang Lang's masterpiece) encourages us to observe that "Metropolis" is also a story frankensteiniana. E 'lawful indicate the similarity between the English and Mal Hel?

"Inception" explicitly invites us to reflect on the relationship between dream and cinema. Easy to see that the group builds a dream character as real mise en scène . And it is the cinema components such as the unfailing weapon (or the stock of magazines on hand) or the victory over a ridiculous number of enemies - the elements here the dream. But the transition from one level to another dream, with these "jumping" impossible, it can be seen as an allegory of the creative power of film editing (as long ago as 1924 Buster Keaton in "Sherlock Junior" was played on the value of the surprising jump environment in assembly). If the theorists of the movies have largely looked at the semi-dream element in the enjoyment of a film, "Inception" tit for tat makes building a cinema-going in the dream.
Now we must remember that both the dream as the film possess in an eminent degree the size of the ellipse - the dream of the characters of "Inception" no. What's more, the dream follows a logical released by the principle of non-contradiction - as these characters move in a perfect dream Aristotle (in the sense that responds to the Aristotelian rules of probability). We will see in this a fundamental flaw of the film? No, if we consider that the purpose of "Inception" is not to explain the dream mechanisms for students of psychology but to engage on a given condition an adventure narrative, which it feeds, but there is exhausted. That said, we must recognize that this fascinating film failed in his attempt to give us a convincing imitation of a dream film. A task succeeded better in Martin Scorsese's "Shutter Island" in the dream scenes of the protagonist with his dead wife (but Scorsese did not have to build a dream on the whole plot).

The relationship between "Inception" and "Shutter Island" go beyond the obvious suggestion of the presence of Leonardo DiCaprio in both films. Both pose the biggest problem: the objective existence or otherwise of the perceived reality. You should go back to the speech of the different levels of dream, and on this road we encounter a film that is a fundamental and perhaps an earlier model of "Inception" "eXistenZ by David Cronenberg - based on a fundamental ontological question: if the world perceived is disrupted in varying degrees, the "reality" basis - that the analysis the full story would call the "story first" - may also be illusory, and create a level of "true reality" and not more known. Here
enter into a cutting element of "Inception," which is not to hypothesize the reading of the film but that certainly will introduce a touch of drama and dramatic: if Mal was right when Cobb tried to convince him that real life is a dream? One of the best ideas of the script is that it Mal focuses on an element of "real" Cobb explains how that dream and fantasy, if it is true (but is it?) In the diegesis: the anxiety of being persecuted by a very powerful organization. Indeed, simili deliri di persecuzione sono elementi realistici nel mondo dei film – perché sono espedienti narrativi; ecco quindi che per vie traverse sogno e cinema vengono di nuovo a coincidere.

L'ambiguità fra lo stato di sonno e quella di veglia diventa inquietante in due passaggi del film che gettano un'ombra di dubbio su quello che è il racconto “oggettivo”. Il primo c'è – come molti hanno osservato – quando vediamo in flashback il suicidio di Mal, raccontato da Cobb ad Ariadne. Questo flashback appartiene al livello oggettivo della storia; però viene visualizzato con un'inquadratura impossibile, frontale rispetto a Cobb che guarda (parente quindi della Parigi “rovesciata”). E 'because the environment influences the view of dreams? Or is there more?
The second is in the final. Cobb returned to America and sees his father (Michael Caine) who takes him home where the children are waiting. But how strange, sudden, sharp step in the assembly, so immediate, from inside the house! It 'a song that sounds mounting dream. In fact, Cobb pulled out his "totem," the top that indicates if you are dreaming or awake - but the film ends before the verdict, with tragic ambiguity. The
doubt on the consistency of objective reality has never been unknown to Western culture, but is particularly strong in the east, and I think it should influence the amplification of that feeling in contemporary Western culture, and thus the proliferation of works that develop this ontological question (next to the texts mentioned you can attach many others, " Matrix "to" Lost "). If this is true, then it is suggestive, and not just "touristy" The beginning of "Inception" is so rooted in the Japanese world.