Inception: My Movie Analysis
A partial fulfillment in Psychology 101
By: Joey D. Bidan Jr.
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nception is a science fiction film also categorized as a
psychological thriller. For me, this film is very intellectual and for those
who has not encountered psychological topics yet like, Lucid Dreaming, Shared
Dreaming, Dream within a dream or Dream Layers, the subconscious mind and Dream
Limbo will not be able to fully comprehend the movie's theme much.
First of all, Inception means the implantation of another person's
idea into a target's subconscious. I've heard and watched about these kinds of
scenarios in movies were patients are hypnotized so that they will succumb to
the hypnotist's idea. For example, you hate drinking coffee and I, the
hypnotist will manipulate your subconscious (through hypnotic relaxing
instructions)give you false memories so that after you wake up from hypnosis
you will believe in yourself that you really love to have coffee all the time.
The coffee is the idea and I just implanted it in your subconscious to make it
as your own. In this movie, there was no hypnosis done. Instead, the "corporate
espionage" team of Dominick Cobb (Leonardo DICaprio) will infiltrate or
invade the dream of Robert Fischer, (the heir of a giant company) where he is
at his most vulnerable self. In psychology, our subconscious is not within our
control and this part of our mind hides our dark secrets, forgotten experiences
and kept memories.
In order for the Inception mission of Dom Cobb to be successful,
it requires the participants to be asleep and sedated and; all or at least one
dreamer must be lucid dreaming. This allows the participants' dreams to be
successfully shared through an unnamed military experimental technology. Now
for those who don’t know it yet, lucid dreaming means a dreamer is aware that
he is already asleep and dreaming. I've already experienced these lots of times
by training myself in the real world with signs that will eventually appear in
the dream world when I sleep. For example, before I sleep I will stare at the
face of my clock for a few minutes. In my sleep, if I see a clock with distorted
hands or weird numbers I will become aware that I am just dreaming shattering
the dream world's illusion thus, elevating me to a state of lucid dreaming
giving me unlimited control of my dream like flying on top of Santo Nino Church
or kicking cars passing by Magsaysay Street and a lot more impossible things.
This is true and you could try this for yourself too.
Anyway, back to the movie somewhere in the beginning was a scene
of Dom Cobb's team already inside of Saito's dream to steal his company secrets
from his subconscious mind. But it was a failure since Mal, Cobb's dead wife
appears out of nowhere (from Cobb's guilty subconscious) and sabotages the
mission. When the team woke up, Saito tells them that he just auditioned them
so he will know if they deserved to be in a more difficult mission. He wants to
hire them to perform a seemingly impossible mission of...inception. Saito
wishes to break up the energy conglomerate of his ailing competitor Maurice
Fischer by planting the idea in his son and heir Robert Fischer to disintegrate
his father's company. In return, Saito will clear a murder charge against Cobb
to return to the United States and his children. At first, the team was
hesitant since Inception is theoretically impossible but Cobb says otherwise
since he was able to unintentionally do it before which is - on his wife. Now I
know that a lot of the audience does not understand the role of Mal, Cobb's
dead wife in the movie. For me, her character is the first proof of inception.
The idea is a little bit complex and for me to explain it, it has to be step by
step and concept by concept.
First, there was the concept of "Dream within a Dream",
layers of dream levels which is possible only if you are asleep with a powerful
sedative. The movie shows the characters falling asleep even though they are
already inside a dream. They have to do this so that the team could implant the
idea deeper to Fischer's subconscious. Second, there was the concept of Dream
Limbo a consequence of dying if you are already dreaming within a dream.
Basically, if you are on the first level of dreaming you will just wake up but
if you are dreaming within a dream in a deeper level you will be trapped in a
Dream Limbo which would make 3 hours in the real world feel like you are there
for hundreds of years already. Third, there’s the concept of "kicks"
or Hypnic Jerk in psychology. This is what you experience when you fell like
falling in your dream and wake up kicking on your bed. Cobb's team uses kicks
like making the van roll to the cold sea; blasting the elevators upward;
blasting the Snow Mountains and pushing Fischer from a balcony within Dream
Limbo to wake the characters up from one dream level upward then back to
reality. Finally, the weird concept of a "totem" which is a small
object whose behavior only its owner can predict used to determine whether a
dreamer is in someone else's dream. The spinning top is Cobb's totem. If it
falls, he will be convinced that he is back to reality.
The film shows us the complexity of the human mind and how we
could harness its potentials to do almost impossible things. For me, the
concepts it presented are areas of psychology that needs to be researched and
rediscovered. But thinking about them would make me consider if in the future
inception may not only be used but also abused. Imagine people viewing the
darkest, private secrets of your mind. Scary isn’t it?
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