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Inception
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inception
Inception is a 2010 science fiction action film[4][5][6] written and directed by Christopher Nolan, who also produced the film with Emma Thomas, his wife. The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a professional thief who steals information by infiltrating the subconscious of his targets. He is offered a chance to have his criminal history erased as payment for the implantation of another person's idea into a target's subconscious.[7] The ensemble cast includes Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Elliot Page,a Tom Hardy, Dileep Rao, Cillian Murphy, Tom Berenger, and Michael Caine.
After the 2002 completion of Insomnia, Nolan presented to Warner Bros. a written 80-page treatment for a horror film envisioning "dream stealers," based on lucid dreaming.[8] Deciding he needed more experience before tackling a production of this magnitude and complexity, Nolan shelved the project and instead worked on 2005's Batman Begins, 2006's The Prestige, and The Dark Knight in 2008.[9] The treatment was revised over 6 months and was purchased by Warner in February 2009.[10] Inception was filmed in six countries, beginning in Tokyo on June 19 and ending in Canada on November 22.[11] Its official budget was $160 million, split between Warner Bros. and Legendary.[12] Nolan's reputation and success with The Dark Knight helped secure the film's US$100 million in advertising expenditure.
Inception's premiere was held in London on July 8, 2010; it was released in both conventional and IMAX theaters beginning on July 16, 2010.[13][14] Inception grossed over $828 million worldwide, becoming the fourth-highest-grossing film of 2010. Considered one of the best films of the 2010s,[15] Inception won four Academy Awards (Best Cinematography, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Visual Effects) and was nominated for four more: Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Art Direction, and Best Original Score.
Themes
Reality and dreams
In Inception, Nolan wanted to explore "the idea of people sharing a dream space... That gives you the ability to access somebody's unconscious mind. What would that be used and abused for?"[16] The majority of the film's plot takes place in these interconnected dream worlds. This structure creates a framework where actions in the real or dream worlds ripple across others. The dream is always in a state of production, and shifts across the levels as the characters navigate it.[51] By contrast, the world of The Matrix (1999) is an authoritarian, computer-controlled one, alluding to theories of social control developed by thinkers Michel Foucault and Jean Baudrillard. However, according to one interpretation Nolan's world has more in common with the works of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.[51]
David Denby in The New Yorker compared Nolan's cinematic treatment of dreams to Luis Buñuel's in Belle de Jour (1967) and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972).[52] He criticized Nolan's "literal-minded" action level sequencing compared to Buñuel, who "silently pushed us into reveries and left us alone to enjoy our wonderment, but Nolan is working on so many levels of representation at once that he has to lay in pages of dialogue just to explain what's going on." The latter captures "the peculiar malign intensity of actual dreams."[52]
Deirdre Barrett, a dream researcher at Harvard University, said that Nolan did not get every detail accurate regarding dreams, but their illogical, rambling, disjointed plots would not make for a great thriller anyway. However, "he did get many aspects right," she said, citing the scene in which a sleeping Cobb is shoved into a full bath, and in the dream world water gushes into the windows of the building, waking him up. "That's very much how real stimuli get incorporated, and you very often wake up right after that intrusion."[53]
Nolan himself said, "I tried to work that idea of manipulation and management of a conscious dream being a skill that these people have. Really the script is based on those common, very basic experiences and concepts, and where can those take you? And the only outlandish idea that the film presents, really, is the existence of a technology that allows you to enter and share the same dream as someone else."[31]
Dreams and cinema
Others have argued that the film is itself a metaphor for filmmaking, and that the filmgoing experience itself, images flashing before one's eyes in a darkened room, is akin to a dream. Writing in Wired, Jonah Lehrer supported this interpretation and presented neurological evidence that brain activity is strikingly similar during film-watching and sleeping. In both, the visual cortex is highly active and the prefrontal cortex, which deals with logic, deliberate analysis, and self-awareness, is quiet.[54] Paul argued that the experience of going to a picturehouse is itself an exercise in shared dreaming, particularly when viewing Inception: the film's sharp cutting between scenes forces the viewer to create larger narrative arcs to stitch the pieces together. This demand of production parallel to consumption of the images, on the part of the audience is analogous to dreaming itself. As in the film's story, in a cinema one enters into the space of another's dream, in this case Nolan's, as with any work of art, one's reading of it is ultimately influenced by one's own subjective desires and subconscious.[51] At Bir-Hakeim bridge in Paris, Ariadne creates an illusion of infinity by adding facing mirrors underneath its struts, Stephanie Dreyfus in la Croix asked "Is this not a strong, beautiful metaphor for the cinema and its power of illusion?"[55]
Cinematic technique
See also: Cinematic style of Christopher Nolan
Genre
Nolan combined elements from several different film genres into the film, notably science fiction, heist film, and film noir. Marion Cotillard plays "Mal" Cobb, Dom Cobb's projection of his guilt over his deceased wife's suicide. As the film's main antagonist, she is a frequent, malevolent presence in his dreams. Dom is unable to control these projections of her, challenging his abilities as an extractor.[27] Nolan described Mal as "the essence of the femme fatale",[19]: 9 the key noir reference in the film. As a "classic femme fatale" her relationship with Cobb is in his mind, a manifestation of Cobb's own neurosis and fear of how little he knows about the woman he loves.[56] DiCaprio praised Cotillard's performance saying that "she can be strong and vulnerable and hopeful and heartbreaking all in the same moment, which was perfect for all the contradictions of her character".[19]: 10
Nolan began with the structure of a heist movie, since exposition is an essential element of that genre, though adapted it to have a greater emotional narrative suited to the world of dreams and subconscious.[56] As Denby described this device: "the outer shell of the story is an elaborate caper".[52] Kristin Thompson argued that exposition was a major formal device in the film. While a traditional heist movie has a heavy dose of exposition at the beginning as the team assembles and the leader explains the plan, in Inception this becomes nearly continuous as the group progresses through the various levels of dreaming.[57] Three quarters of the film, until the van begins to fall from the bridge, are devoted to explaining its plot. In this way, exposition takes precedence over characterization. The characters' relationships are created by their respective skills and roles. Ariadne, like her ancient namesake, creates the maze and guides the others through it, but also helps Cobb navigate his own subconscious, and as the sole student of dream sharing, helps the audience understand the concept of the plot.[58]
Nolan drew inspiration from the works of Jorge Luis Borges,[8][59] including "The Secret Miracle" and "The Circular Ruins",[60] and from the films Blade Runner (1982) and The Matrix (1999).[60][61] While Nolan has not confirmed this, it has also been suggested by many observers that the movie draws heavy inspiration from the 2006 animated film Paprika.[62][63][64]
Ending
The film cuts to the closing credits from a shot of the top apparently starting to show an ever so faint wobble, inviting speculation about whether the final sequence was reality or another dream. Nolan confirmed that the ambiguity was deliberate,[56] saying, "I've been asked the question more times than I've ever been asked any other question about any other film I've made... What's funny to me is that people really do expect me to answer it."[65] The film's script concludes with "Behind him, on the table, the spinning top is STILL SPINNING. And we—FADE OUT".[66] Nolan said, "I put that cut there at the end, imposing an ambiguity from outside the film. That always felt the right ending to me—it always felt like the appropriate 'kick' to me... The real point of the scene—and this is what I tell people—is that Cobb isn't looking at the top. He's looking at his kids. He's left it behind. That's the emotional significance of the thing."[65] Also, Michael Caine explained his interpretation of the ending, saying, "If I'm there it's real, because I'm never in the dream. I'm the guy who invented the dream."[67]
Mark Fisher argued that "a century of cultural theory" cautions against accepting the author's interpretation as anything more than a supplementary text, and this all the more so given the theme of the instability of any one master position in Nolan's films. Therein the manipulator is often the one who ends up manipulated, and Cobb's "not caring" about whether or not his world is real may be the price of his happiness and release.[68]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inception
Inception is a 2010 science fiction action film[4][5][6] written and directed by Christopher Nolan, who also produced the film with Emma Thomas, his wife. The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a professional thief who steals information by infiltrating the subconscious of his targets. He is offered a chance to have his criminal history erased as payment for the implantation of another person's idea into a target's subconscious.[7] The ensemble cast includes Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Elliot Page,a Tom Hardy, Dileep Rao, Cillian Murphy, Tom Berenger, and Michael Caine.
After the 2002 completion of Insomnia, Nolan presented to Warner Bros. a written 80-page treatment for a horror film envisioning "dream stealers," based on lucid dreaming.[8] Deciding he needed more experience before tackling a production of this magnitude and complexity, Nolan shelved the project and instead worked on 2005's Batman Begins, 2006's The Prestige, and The Dark Knight in 2008.[9] The treatment was revised over 6 months and was purchased by Warner in February 2009.[10] Inception was filmed in six countries, beginning in Tokyo on June 19 and ending in Canada on November 22.[11] Its official budget was $160 million, split between Warner Bros. and Legendary.[12] Nolan's reputation and success with The Dark Knight helped secure the film's US$100 million in advertising expenditure.
Inception's premiere was held in London on July 8, 2010; it was released in both conventional and IMAX theaters beginning on July 16, 2010.[13][14] Inception grossed over $828 million worldwide, becoming the fourth-highest-grossing film of 2010. Considered one of the best films of the 2010s,[15] Inception won four Academy Awards (Best Cinematography, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Visual Effects) and was nominated for four more: Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Art Direction, and Best Original Score.
Themes
Reality and dreams
In Inception, Nolan wanted to explore "the idea of people sharing a dream space... That gives you the ability to access somebody's unconscious mind. What would that be used and abused for?"[16] The majority of the film's plot takes place in these interconnected dream worlds. This structure creates a framework where actions in the real or dream worlds ripple across others. The dream is always in a state of production, and shifts across the levels as the characters navigate it.[51] By contrast, the world of The Matrix (1999) is an authoritarian, computer-controlled one, alluding to theories of social control developed by thinkers Michel Foucault and Jean Baudrillard. However, according to one interpretation Nolan's world has more in common with the works of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.[51]
David Denby in The New Yorker compared Nolan's cinematic treatment of dreams to Luis Buñuel's in Belle de Jour (1967) and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972).[52] He criticized Nolan's "literal-minded" action level sequencing compared to Buñuel, who "silently pushed us into reveries and left us alone to enjoy our wonderment, but Nolan is working on so many levels of representation at once that he has to lay in pages of dialogue just to explain what's going on." The latter captures "the peculiar malign intensity of actual dreams."[52]
Deirdre Barrett, a dream researcher at Harvard University, said that Nolan did not get every detail accurate regarding dreams, but their illogical, rambling, disjointed plots would not make for a great thriller anyway. However, "he did get many aspects right," she said, citing the scene in which a sleeping Cobb is shoved into a full bath, and in the dream world water gushes into the windows of the building, waking him up. "That's very much how real stimuli get incorporated, and you very often wake up right after that intrusion."[53]
Nolan himself said, "I tried to work that idea of manipulation and management of a conscious dream being a skill that these people have. Really the script is based on those common, very basic experiences and concepts, and where can those take you? And the only outlandish idea that the film presents, really, is the existence of a technology that allows you to enter and share the same dream as someone else."[31]
Dreams and cinema
Others have argued that the film is itself a metaphor for filmmaking, and that the filmgoing experience itself, images flashing before one's eyes in a darkened room, is akin to a dream. Writing in Wired, Jonah Lehrer supported this interpretation and presented neurological evidence that brain activity is strikingly similar during film-watching and sleeping. In both, the visual cortex is highly active and the prefrontal cortex, which deals with logic, deliberate analysis, and self-awareness, is quiet.[54] Paul argued that the experience of going to a picturehouse is itself an exercise in shared dreaming, particularly when viewing Inception: the film's sharp cutting between scenes forces the viewer to create larger narrative arcs to stitch the pieces together. This demand of production parallel to consumption of the images, on the part of the audience is analogous to dreaming itself. As in the film's story, in a cinema one enters into the space of another's dream, in this case Nolan's, as with any work of art, one's reading of it is ultimately influenced by one's own subjective desires and subconscious.[51] At Bir-Hakeim bridge in Paris, Ariadne creates an illusion of infinity by adding facing mirrors underneath its struts, Stephanie Dreyfus in la Croix asked "Is this not a strong, beautiful metaphor for the cinema and its power of illusion?"[55]
Cinematic technique
See also: Cinematic style of Christopher Nolan
Genre
Nolan combined elements from several different film genres into the film, notably science fiction, heist film, and film noir. Marion Cotillard plays "Mal" Cobb, Dom Cobb's projection of his guilt over his deceased wife's suicide. As the film's main antagonist, she is a frequent, malevolent presence in his dreams. Dom is unable to control these projections of her, challenging his abilities as an extractor.[27] Nolan described Mal as "the essence of the femme fatale",[19]: 9 the key noir reference in the film. As a "classic femme fatale" her relationship with Cobb is in his mind, a manifestation of Cobb's own neurosis and fear of how little he knows about the woman he loves.[56] DiCaprio praised Cotillard's performance saying that "she can be strong and vulnerable and hopeful and heartbreaking all in the same moment, which was perfect for all the contradictions of her character".[19]: 10
Nolan began with the structure of a heist movie, since exposition is an essential element of that genre, though adapted it to have a greater emotional narrative suited to the world of dreams and subconscious.[56] As Denby described this device: "the outer shell of the story is an elaborate caper".[52] Kristin Thompson argued that exposition was a major formal device in the film. While a traditional heist movie has a heavy dose of exposition at the beginning as the team assembles and the leader explains the plan, in Inception this becomes nearly continuous as the group progresses through the various levels of dreaming.[57] Three quarters of the film, until the van begins to fall from the bridge, are devoted to explaining its plot. In this way, exposition takes precedence over characterization. The characters' relationships are created by their respective skills and roles. Ariadne, like her ancient namesake, creates the maze and guides the others through it, but also helps Cobb navigate his own subconscious, and as the sole student of dream sharing, helps the audience understand the concept of the plot.[58]
Nolan drew inspiration from the works of Jorge Luis Borges,[8][59] including "The Secret Miracle" and "The Circular Ruins",[60] and from the films Blade Runner (1982) and The Matrix (1999).[60][61] While Nolan has not confirmed this, it has also been suggested by many observers that the movie draws heavy inspiration from the 2006 animated film Paprika.[62][63][64]
Ending
The film cuts to the closing credits from a shot of the top apparently starting to show an ever so faint wobble, inviting speculation about whether the final sequence was reality or another dream. Nolan confirmed that the ambiguity was deliberate,[56] saying, "I've been asked the question more times than I've ever been asked any other question about any other film I've made... What's funny to me is that people really do expect me to answer it."[65] The film's script concludes with "Behind him, on the table, the spinning top is STILL SPINNING. And we—FADE OUT".[66] Nolan said, "I put that cut there at the end, imposing an ambiguity from outside the film. That always felt the right ending to me—it always felt like the appropriate 'kick' to me... The real point of the scene—and this is what I tell people—is that Cobb isn't looking at the top. He's looking at his kids. He's left it behind. That's the emotional significance of the thing."[65] Also, Michael Caine explained his interpretation of the ending, saying, "If I'm there it's real, because I'm never in the dream. I'm the guy who invented the dream."[67]
Mark Fisher argued that "a century of cultural theory" cautions against accepting the author's interpretation as anything more than a supplementary text, and this all the more so given the theme of the instability of any one master position in Nolan's films. Therein the manipulator is often the one who ends up manipulated, and Cobb's "not caring" about whether or not his world is real may be the price of his happiness and release.[68]