Levels of dreaming, levels of reality

Rating: 9/10 (29 March 2011)

This is an extraordinary film based upon little-known information about consciousness and the afterlife. The film was written and directed by the remarkable British director Christopher Nolan, whose previous films have included such inspired, original, and challenging ones as FOLLOWING (1998, see my review), which was a work of pure genius, MEMENTO (2000), and THE PRESTIGE (2006). Nothing seems to be known about where Nolan obtained his information, but INCEPTION could not have been written without some pretty unusual sources, and one wonders whether he regularly consults psychics, or just how he went about his research. No other writing credit is listed for the film, so Nolan seems to have done all this on his own. The film features many fine performances, but there was one false note: I did think that the late Pete Postlethwaite was absolutely wrong for the role of the dying man, but then he really was dying at the time, and one hesitates to speak ill of the dead, especially of a man who bravely went on acting until the last moment of his life and who in that sense achieved a personal heroic stature in his profession, and is respected by all. Marion Cotillard was an inspired choice for the role of the dead wife, and her performance is suitably spooky, moody, and disturbingly atmospheric. She has us on edge all the time, which is appropriate to the story. Michael Caine has a cameo role, for which he was highly suitable. The Japanese actor Ken Watanabe has a prominent role in the film, and he does very well except for one thing, namely his mangled English. He really does need more speech lessons. It was not always possible to understand what he was saying. The film ultimately succeeds because of a very strong and commanding performance by Leonardo Dicaprio, who has matured into a very solid and believable leading man and is no longer the boy of yesteryear. He has obviously kept himself from going over the edge with youthful 'star vanity', and has concentrated on remaining a good actor for the rest of his career. That must have taken a very great deal of self-control. Ellen Page, best known for her title role in JUNO (2007), was a rather unobvious choice for the girl, as she offers no glamour and is very much a working actress who is far from being seductive and just gets on with her job. No director would choose her as the love interest in a movie, as she makes no hearts throb. But it works out well, as Dicaprio has to remain obsessively in love with the weirdly wonderful Marion Cotillard, and cannot be distracted by something cute in a skirt, or it would have ruined the story. Anyway, Page wears trousers all the time, just to be on the safe side and keep the temperature down. This film makes effective use of spectacular special effects, which must have required an immense amount of planning, and they are fantastically effective. So this film is a real phenomenon; score one more for Nolan. Some of the inspiration for the story comes from obvious sources, such as the highly-publicised work of American 'spooks' in remote viewing and attempts at directed dreaming. The extraction of information from dreaming people is a kind of natural consequence of such activities. But Nolan has gone far deeper, and this is very far from being a superficial exploitation picture based on familiar, if imperfectly understood, information from popular books. After all, what has been publicly revealed is misleading in two senses: first, we are encouraged to believe that all that 'stuff' ended long ago in the 1980s and was abandoned because it could not be controlled properly and was too frivolous, and secondly that it had no deeper relevance to the true issues of consciousness, the 'afterlife', and other levels or dimensionalities of existence which may intersect with or impinge upon what we naively imagine to be the sole 'reality'. It is wrong to assume that 'other levels of existence' would be wholly immaterial, as there is a great deal of evidence to make it clear that 'the spiritual' is not 'immaterial', and that there is no pure Cartesian dichotomy between what we falsely call 'matter' and 'spirit'. The Chinese had a better understanding of the issue, as they never adopted such a false dichotomy, and traditionally spoke of 'etherialised matter'. Nolan seems to be on the right track. Where will he go next? If he would only stop making Batman films and get serious again, it would be interesting to see his next major work and track his progress further along the lines it seems to be taking. In this film we have 'three levels of dreaming' and we have 'the bottom of dreaming' which turns out to be another 'level of reality' which he calls Limbo, and describes as a 'confused mass' where some of the dead are stuck in a state of bewilderment. The density of the strange information presented in this film is too much for most viewers to grasp in a single viewing, nor is Nolan sufficiently explicit, but stops short in most cases with being merely suggestive, in order to keep his thriller moving right along. But what is really interesting about this film is not the story, but the background, assumptions, and context of the story. Nolan has thrown a huge indigestible 'confused mass' of Limbo at his viewers, and he needs to continue to untangle it and expound it in further works. This film therefore sweeps along and works in that sense, but it is far from being a perfect film, as it was too much to squeeze into a single story, despite all the best efforts of everyone concerned. We need to revisit these issues, as one film alone on this subject is not enough. After all, Batman has sequels, so why can't this one as well?