Nine out of ten bloggers agree – the dreams in Christopher Nolan’s INCEPTION are not particularly dream-like, at least, not much more so than the action sequences in your average James Bond film. Whether that makes INCEPTION a bad movie is another issue. Nolan essentially uses the dream invasion scenario as a MacGuffin – an excuse to intercut several different sequences featuring the same characters in which what happens to the characters in one sequence is paralleled by, or directly affects, what is going on in the other sequences. The effect is not unlike what D.W. Griffith accomplished in INTOLERANCE (1919) when he intercut four parallel stories occuring in four different time periods (Babylon – 539 B.C., the crucifixion of Christ – 27 A.D., the St. Bartholowmew’s Day Massacre – 1572 A.D., and Modern America circa 1914) so as to have each story reach its crescendo “simultaneously.” And like the intercut stories in INTOLERANCE, some of the parallel sequences in INCEPTION, e.g., the ski troop attack, are notably weaker than the others.
Bottom Line: As a big budget Christopher Nolan puzzle-film, an exercise in visual and narrative architecture, INCEPTION mostly works. As a dream film, not so much. Any cinephile reading this can probably name a dozen movies that are more authentically dream-like than INCEPTION, starting with this year’s SHUTTER ISLAND and going all the way back to Robert Weine’s THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI (1919).
Or the dream sequence from G.W. Pabst’s SECRETS OF A SOUL (1926, above). Pabst’s feature is reportedly the first to treat Freudian psychoanalysis seriously. He even employed someone from Freud’s inner circle as a consultant. However, what makes Pabst’s dream sequence feel more authentic than Nolan’s is not so much a reliance on Freudian theory as the fact that Pabst based his sequence on one or more dreams from an actual patient case history. Not surprisingly, the entire sequence is drenched in sexual anxiety.
And unlike Nolan, Pabst puts far more into his dream sequence than his movie attempts to explain, e.g., the rampant phallic symbolism which is never even referred to in the film’s title cards. Note the first shot of the dreamer’s romantic rival sitting in a tree, a symbol of virility, with a penis-shaped pith helmet on his head. When the dreamer, wearing pajamas, attempts to fly, he is shot down by his rival’s pop-gun. (Compare to the opening of Fellini’s 8 1/2.) In the next section of the dream, the dreamer passes through a vagina-shaped portal to approach the statue of a goddess. His progress is interrupted by the sudden appearance of a freight train. (Shades of INCEPTION!) The goddess statute has an actual woman’s face, superimposed through special effects. In fact, the goddess statute has more in common with one of Carl Jung’s animas than with anything in Freud – although it also stands for the dreamer’s wife. (Compare to 
Nolan’s use of Marion Cotillard as an anima figure in INCEPTION.) The next part of Pabst’s dream sequence, the un-collapsing buildings, seems to have directly inspired similar imagery in INCEPTION. Or maybe it’s just a remarkable coincidence. The image of the tolling bells with smiling women’s heads instead of clappers very likely inspired a similar image in Luis Buñuel’s TRISTANA.
SECRETS OF A SOUL is a tour-de-force of German Expressionism that influenced Buñuel, Hitchcock (SPELLBOUND, MARNIE), and numerous others. If Nolan stole from it – and I tend to doubt that he did – he is following, however awkwardly, in the footsteps of the masters.
You have an interesting take on Inception’s use of dreams (i,e., as a MacGuffin), and this excuses Nolan’s non-dreamlike visual style. But the film plays too much like virtual reality, in which characters are physically and psychology rooted in the reality and not their setting. Bringing action into the surreal may seem an easy choice, since rules of logic can be bent or broken, but at the same time a system must be established. Dropping real-world characters into a fantasy setting just isn’t enough.
I do appreciate your interesting comparisons to Pabst’s work — if only Nolan had to work in the silent era: we could have been spared all that pesky exposition. (By the way, what are your thoughts on this, the other major claim against the film?)
Yes, Matthew, I agree that there is too much expositional dialogue – too much explaining – and that the latter half of the film “plays too much like virtual reality, in which characters are physically and psychologically rooted in the reality.” Indeed, I think the two problems are related. If Nolan hadn’t laid down so many “rules,” there wouldn’t be so much to explain, and the dream sequences wouldn’t be so rigid and earthbound. The most pernicious of Nolan’s rules is that the dream realities couldn’t be *too* dream-like or else the tycoon’s son, the mark, would realize he was dreaming! Nolan really painted himself into a corner with that one.
However, I have to admit that the film did engage me on a formal level, as an INTOLERANCE- like exercise in narrative juggling. And here we are, still thinking about it and talking about it.
That footage of Secrets of a Soul is unbelievable, thanks so much for posting! I’m runing out to rent it this weekend!
I’m glad I clicked on this article because generally I think the Nolan film sounds like a flop. The computer gimcrackery is so so boring, and it seems like Nolan is just looking for more ways to show he’s the puzzlemaster who did Memento. Which is fine…. but why the computers? Maybe there are some exceptions, but it appears that every filmmaker uses the same blob of tools. Would the Dutch Masters go in on a single pallette of paint? I don’t think so.
Glad to hear you were inspired to rent SECRETS OF A SOUL, Erik. When you watch the whole film, you’ll see that the main character played by Werner Krauss suffers from a razor phobia that inspired similar razor imagery in Buñuel’s UN CHIEN ANDALOU and Hitchcock’s SPELLBOUND, which in their turn were the source of Polanski’s razor imagery in REPULSION.
There’s a lot more to Pabst than Louise Brooks.
I enjoyed the film to a large degree – though the psychoanalytic element I thought was repetitive and simply too dated. All the visual elements were very well done, though (I remember seeing the tower now in the Lotte Eisner book) and it was great to see what Pabst can do beyond Pandora. I’ll definitely have to dig further into his catalog, if it’s there.
regards
Erik
it was great to see what Pabst can do beyond Pandora. I’ll definitely have to dig further into his catalog, if it’s there.
It’s there all right. For folks who’ve already looked into Pandora’s Box, a great place to see more of Pabst at his best is The Threepenny Opera (1931) available in a beautifully transferred DVD edition from our friends at Criterion.
One of the things that disappointed me was Nolan’s use of the Penrose stairs. In Inception, you can clearly see that it suggests the possibility of Penrose stairs as simply a construct of perspective (in this case, camera perspective, revealed when the camera swings down to reveal the illusion). If dreams are capable of impossible, infinite creation, then why shouldn’t these shapes be absolutely possible? Not a lot of people are aware of Penrose stairs (sadly?), so I guess Nolan wanted to explain how the illusion works. As M Sorrento mentioned: too much explaining.
[...] Excellent review from C. Jerry Kutner of http://www.brightlightcinema.com [...]
You need to check your facts. You are not correct in the meaning of his dreams in “secrets of a soul.” The man in the tree is not a romantic rival; it is his wifes cousin, also his best friend, whom when they were little his wife gave a doll to instead of him. The “goddess” is an indian fertility doll which his cousin gave to him and his wife because they have not been able to conceive a child. The real issue in his dreams is that he feels inept because they have not been able to conceive.
Thank you for your comments, Megan. Did you watch the same film I did? It’s pretty clear to me that the dreamer, given his own sexual insecurities, views this other man (friend, wife’s cousin, whatever he is) as a more potent sexual rival. However, he may not do so consciously. Which is why his subconscious feelings about this man are expressed through a dream.
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