Tower and Town, November 2021 (view the full edition)The Narrative of Inception (2010):The film Inception operates squarely within the Hollywood narrative model, delivering a protagonist (Dom Cobb) with a goal-oriented storyline (one last job), a romantic storyline (reconciliation with his wife Mal), and a happy (if ambiguous) ending, as well as deploying the familiar patterns and elements of the heist movie subgenre. It uses a conventional framing device (the flashback), ratchets up the tension with complications and obstacles, and speeds up the logical resolution with various deadlines. The film Inception makes viewers think, because so many questions appear to be unanswered, or answered unsatisfactorily, at the end of the narrative. The narrative of Inception focuses on plot and audience awareness rather than the development of individual character goals, although they are not entirely lacking. For example, Ariadne is a novice character whose main purpose is as a plot device that will help explain the rules of dreaming to the audience. Inception has more than one line of narrative flowing throughout the film. In fact, it has four timelines that crosscut each other throughout the film. The evidence in the movie points to the conclusion that the entire narrative is Cobb's multi-layered (or not) dream, perhaps engineered and orchestrated by himself, or by the characters who play his colleagues. This conclusion makes explicit the notion of all films as a shared dream, which is a sophomoric move at best. At worst, it nullifies all the stakes in the story, effectively eliminating whatever sympathy and involvement the audience might have invested in the characters and their predicaments. It also neatly takes care of all questions about the internal logic of the film's story world, for better or for worse. Finally, because Cobb represents the emotional heart of the story and the audience's eyes into the problems at hand, it only follows that his blissful blindness at the end becomes a shared experience with those sitting in the theatre. We become oblivious to the truth as Cobb himself has willingly become. Toby, Year 12 |