on inception

Inception a la noir

Nolan has managed to architect by far the most though provoking, and ambitious films in recent years, not just this year, but recent years: and that is a statement. let’s not get lost by flowering a film that is already being recognized and adored by many as a truly cinematic experience. factors like story, narrative, characters, plot, and artistry elevate inception to levels higher than those of traditional cinema; audiences no longer are witnesses, or participants of the experience, but all together they become submerged into the drama, into the realm of its universe that awaken questions of what’s presented onscreen: this is where Nolan pays homage by invoking an old style from the past, a style defined as film noir. and just like Noir itself, the film becomes a plunge, a literal “leap of faith” into a calm lake in the middle of the night where a moonless sky reflects nothing but darkness on the water’s surface, dark waters of unknown depths.  

Inception pays tribute to the noir style by using mechanics such as the hard boiled protagonist, a mysterious femme fatale, a colorful ensemble of supporting characters, a final mark that promises a new life, and the importance of perception in its universe. among all the presented elements of film noir, it is perception the one that stays and edits the film into a whirlpool that sucks in its characters and audience alike. 

films like “double indemnity,” and “sunset boulevard” successfully used and redefined the gangster genre. they did so richly that a new genre was born from the desire to connect the audience with its anti-hero characters: empathy became the objective. the thrill of the old fashioned gangster’s storytelling was needed to evolve and break new boundaries, not only of morality, but of a psychological nature too: one that would directly deceive the spectator into liking, feeling for the anti-hero on screen, instead of condemning him. inception presents us with characters that regardless how much we root for their success, they are not up to something good; in fact, they are a special group of thieves that operate outside any type of law: moral, judicial, metaphysical, and religious. 

Nolan incorporates a psychological background that enable us to connect and like the characters to a point where we do not appeal to the what type of consequences their actions will bring to the innocent victim. just like in film noir, we have been deceived and linked to the protagonists. we are part of their journey. we are participate in their “leap of faith” to dark water’s depths.   Along the way, we lose the sense of the initial perception that becomes even blurrier after we traverse among lairs and lairs of new formed planes.  The deeper they go, the more that we depend on them to show us the way back to a reality, we begin to question. 

As in film noir, the narrative is a window into the story of the protagonist. it is by all means not an objective point of view, but a subjective interpretation of a collective reality. what makes us think that what seems to be the film’s reality is not another lair of the protagonist’s interpretation? inception begins with the beginning of the end, only to have the protagonist drag us back to what he claims to have been the starting point of the series of events that led us to that beginning.  all is an interpretation: a formed conception of what is claimed to be real. it’s a piece painted by a desired fantasy and not by what’s truly presented. oppose to the noir style, nolan uses the notion of memories as the ultimate antagonist of the films’s universe. memories are banned to be used as resource, in order to create a panorama inside the film’s world. where in “sunset boulevard” the audience takes a tour among the protagonist’s memory to recreate his world, inception identifies memories as the forbidden fruit: the urgency to draw the distinct difference between the dream world and “reality” is constantly stressed by its protagonist. like a ying and yang that needed to be together but clearly apart: the existence of this harmony can only be broken by making such difference blurry. no longer clear which one is which. a clear case of this is the film’s last concluding moments, they will be in fact the reason of many debatable arguments among theorists in cinema/psychology classrooms worldwide :)