Inception: Literally

Julie
Mar 30, 2021
4 min read

Updated: Jul 25, 2021

“The ending is nearer than you think, and it is already written. All that we have left to choose is the correct moment to begin.”

― Alan Moore, V for Vendetta

Oh, please watch the movie before proceeding. Mangoes will wait for you.

Inception is simpler than you think, it has three faces:

Cillian Murphy: Film begins, you get your indispensable movie snack, bury yourself on the couch, and yet you have the discomfort of knowing that you are about to watch Christopher Nolan.

Leonardo DiCaprio: The confusing and charismatic part of the movie. Cinematography, 10/10. Storyline, mind -turning yet genius. Audience-link break in the blink of an eye, yet it is such bewildering hypnosis. You push yourself to understand the film while trying to keep that face properly aligned (not squinting the eyes and bending over the screen like a chicken, maybe a little)

Tom Hardy: OK, what did we just watch? I was just reaching for my bowl of chips to extend my legs, and what? Did it end, where was I when it ended? Was that spinning top in the beginning or the end? Yes, Tom Hardy, we feel you big man.

Well, mango, since you are so genius for finding this "three face method" then why are there almost a zillion of (ALMOST) reviews and second, third, fourth dimension interpretations about this movie? Thank you for asking the right questions at the right time:

Be careful readers, we are entering Chris Nolan Zone where everything is nothing, beginnings are endings and life is death.

Summary of the movie: In Christopher Nolan’s “Inception” a specialist in corporate mental espionage and his co-workers penetrate the minds of their slumbering targets.- The N.Y. Times

My summary: A man with the sorrow of his mentally ill wife's death and extreme longing for his children, uses the least likely way of hustling with his team of dreamers to get lost and found throughout the film along with the viewer.

When I and my mango brother first watched Inception with our father (he slept through it, but still) it mesmerized us, literally. We were under a spell for a week. Can a movie really affect you that much? Apparently, it could. That is why the first thing I want to suggest about the movie is its sustainability in the viewer's mind, even after the first watch. What makes Nolan's storytelling so relatable despite of its surreal nature? Because the event is not given with the characters in it, but the characters are given with their actions in the event. The dream layers are of course genius, but keeping the audience focused on Leonardo DiCaprio's character's (Cobb) constant emotional tension all along the movie is even more genius. As we are introduced to or pushed into deep and mind-bending concepts of lucid dreaming, dimensional dreaming, and living on the thin line between reality and dream, we always have a flotation ring at hand: emotions of characters.

As you might have noticed during the movie, you are always on the line separating "understanding the movie" and "falling asleep" (father, you disappointed your mangoes). After the movie was over and my head was throbbing with pain but I still asked myself, "Why does this movie require so much focus?"

I, personally, enjoy giving all my attention to the movies but being constantly on that line trying to shift to the understanding region exhausts you physically (terrible postures) and mentally (no need to specify, you know how). Do we really have to be exhausted during movies, don't they also function as relaxing time-outs? In Inception, putting the audience to that state of mind is the best thing to do for one to relate to the characters. Aridane (Elliot Page) is trying to understand what is happening from the moment she meets Cobb to the time mission reaches its climax. She pushes herself to balance her reality and dream world like an acrobat on a thin string. We as the audience are not experiencing the same conflict, but we are experiencing the dilemma in the same format. The outer and inner format similarity is one of the key elements making this movie not only worth giving a watch(at least trying) but also a milestone in modern cinema.

Lastly, the movie highly focuses on the paradox of beginnings and endings. Nolan said that M. C. Escher's works, especially "Relativity", were one of the main inspiration sources for the movie's setting. If you look at the painting "Relativity", you see chaos. If you look closer, you see bigger chaos. If you rub your nose on it, you see nothing but just a blur (anatomically our eyes do not function like that, sorry) The best way to look at it is by taking a step back, one more, yes okay stand there. What do you see? Complexity, paradox, peaceful grey in a bunch of integrated mess. I ask, where do all these events begin? Where do the stairs begin? Wherever you want them to?!

In natural sciences and especially in maths, the first thing to do is determining your starting point. You don't try to solve every mystery. Nolan's approach to movie making is rational because of his understanding of the scientific method and finding it applicable to cinema as well. It is genuine and original. This why Inception is often referred to as one of the best movies made: it is systemically corrupted.

Inception ended as a film, but we are just beginning with this blog. Like the dialectics say, every young carries the old within. We carry our rotten parts with us; we carry our endings as mangoes. Yet we defined this blog writing and my mango brother Alphonso's Incredibles write-up as our starting points. I chose Inception as my first review because it has an important moral: the spinning top will fall motionless as long as you want it to.

It is a world of "surreal", be a dreamer, and keep reading our blog! (self-promotion)