Inexposeption
I was watching Inception on cable. The film was a worldwide blockbuster. Pretty amazing considering how complex the story is. What I'd forgotten was the ridiculous amount of exposition required to bring you into its world. (Exposition: The Movie.)
Here's what we're asked to accept, with no excuses:
People can invade other people's dreams.
Those who invade the dream can extract useful, specific information from the dreamer.
There are techniques you can learn to avoid having people invade your dreams, or steal information.
An "architect" can design the world of the dream while it's still the other person's subconscious that peoples it.
Your brain is more fully engaged while you're dreaming than while you're awake.
You can have dreams within dreams, and others can invade the dreams within dreams.
The same physical apparatus used to invade and control dreams works within the dream to create another dream.
If the architect designs something too strange, the subconscious of the person he's working on will attack the architect within the dream.
You need to carry around a totem--in and outside the dream--which can physically tell you if you're in a dream or not.
Anyone in the dream can bring in their own subconscious characters (I think).
There are two ways to get you out of a dream earlier than planned--if you're killed in the dream, or if you as a dreamer feel like you're falling.
If the top dreamer hears music, everyone can hear it (I think).
Your brain works about 12 times faster while you're dreaming, and 12 times faster again in the dream within the dream, and so on.
If you're dopped into dream "limbo" you can get stuck in raw unconscious space, which is comprised of numerous people's subconscious detritus, for a very long time.
In addition, all this is grafted onto an international thriller plot. Of course, the whole thing may be a dream, so who needs rules that make sense?
posted by LAGuy @ 12:03 AM
5 Comments:
I would think that if it were about real dreams, there would be more naked people.
If I stop and think about it (and I try not to because I love this film), the only premise that I can't accept is that time flows faster in the dream within a dream than in the original dream. But I force myself to accept it because the whole tension of the plot turns on having more time to fix things in deeper dreams than more shallow dreams.
Interesting -- when watching the film, my reaction was exactly the same as Denver Guy's. The 12:1 ratio could make sense on the grounds that the part of the brain that processes a dream goes really fast. But a dream-within-a-dream is not actually being processed by the brain of the person-in-the-dream (since he doesn't really exist), but by the brain of the actual person. So the ratio should continue to be 12:1, not 144:1.
The other thing that I kept thinking from the first moment of the movie was, "Please don't let them end this by having the heroes come out of all the dream layers, and then in the last ten seconds of the movie have the director visually suggest that maybe they are still dreaming!" Far from being a "shock" ending, that's the way just about every virtual reality movie ends. Despite all the movie's other virtues I felt that an ending of that type would ruin the movie. [To avoid spoilers I will say no more....]
I guess I knew it was coming too, but I like puzzle movies - trying to pick up on clues left by the Director. Thus, Inception is one of my favorite movies, along with Mulholland Drive, Vanilla Sky, Brazil, and certainly The Wizard of Oz.
Hmm, inception, Mulholland Drive, Vanilla Sky, Brazil, and certainly The Wizard of Oz. I guess they're all "puzzle movies," but each of a very different sort. And I'm surprised you didn't mention The Matrix.
I'm guessing you've seen Christopher Nolan's earlier puzzle films, such as Memento and Prestige. (You probably haven't seen his earlier Following, though.)
Have you checked out eXistenZ and The Thirteenth floor, to name a couple others?
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