I’ve been thinking about Christopher Nolan’s movie „Inception” for some time now. My first thoughts after seeing it was: “Awesome action, but not as deep as I hoped.”
I am a big fan of Nolan’s Films “Following”, “Insomnia”, “Memento”, “The Prestige” “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight” and I am also a big fan of psychology. That’s why I was pretty disappointed how trivial “Inception” was. Nearly all Nolan movies were inspired by psychological events(The Prestige not directly so I leave the interpretation to someone else) :
-In Insomnia it was a sleeping disorder
-In Memento it was a shot-term memory disorder
-The Batman series handled a fear disorder
-In Following it was a obsessive-compulsive disorder which let the stalker stalk
When I was reading the first interpretations saying that “Inception” is a movie about movie making, I was convinced that Nolan wanted to say much more with this movie than I first thought.
Some days ago I was watching some old 80s/90s childhood TV series on Youtube. There was a really extreme patriotic series and my thoughts were:
“It’s a shame planting this idea into a child’s head. When this child is grown-up it could be that it acts patriotically because it was watching this series decades ago. What a disgusting psycho trick..”
At this point I realized what "Inception" is all about. "Inception" uses the same process to manipulate “Robert Fisher” so that he breaks up the company of his deceased father. It all became logically to me. “Inception” is the perhaps the last Nolan movie of the psycho series. It ends the psychological theme, the disorders of men, with a movie about healing/recovery. Many mental disorders are having their root cause in childhood. Dark/evil events in this time will be suppressed in the subconscious mind. And from there it harms the ill carrier with fear, panic, depression and perhaps pain.
With this connection I find it very sad that “Inception” was in theaters with “Shutter Island” at the same time. With the same headliner Leonardo DiCaprio. It handles the same story:
- A huge psychological role-play just to heal the patient.
Exactly that and nothing more is “Inception”. It is just a metaphor for a successful behavioristic therapy with different specialists in psychotherapy.
-Robert Michael Fisher Jr.: The Patient. He is suffering from a narcissistic personality disorder. He never has the feeling to be good enough. He saved the information that his father never accepted Robert as a full-value son in his subconscious. He was always disappointed about his son even at his death, and that made Robert suffer even more. Robert can’t live a normal life with that information, he will always think that he is not “enough”. Of course he would be a great leader of the father’s company but he will never be a lucky and never be able to live a fulfilled live. Just like everyone with a narcissistic disorder.
-Mr. Saito: The patient’s health insurance. He is paying for the operation. He tests if the operation leads to the desired success. He is always with the therapists but he will just control the process and “bleed” money and other things (“I bought the whole airline”) to support the operation. And it is very important to have him on board. Without him the whole operation is in danger. He would love to see Fisher leaving his narcissistic behavior behind because if Fisher carries on with it, it will lead to more suffering/depression: More costs for a health insurance.
-Dom Cobb: The Psychoanalyst. He is a master in analyzing the patient but he is also influenced by his own disorder. He feels guilty for the death of his wife. It seems that they’ve tried a lot of psycho drugs (LSD, Mescaline etc.). This lead to the perception of his wife that all feelings in the subconscious mind are real and the reality is just a lie which can be overcome by death. Cobb can’t live with that guilt… all his thoughts are spinning around the suicide of his wife like a spinning top. Funny thing that a spinning top is also his totem. This is why he needs support of a more talented psychologist who is focused on behavioristic role-plays:
-Ariadne: The Talented Behaviorist. It is easy for her to create perfect psychological role-plays. These have to be created without personal experience or personal influences. That’s the tricky thing in behaviorism. There is no almighty formula for every patient, you have to create new situations that fit the patients needs perfectly. Ariadne is also a name of a Greek mythology princess.
She helped Theseus (the patient) to destroy the minotaur (the patients disorder) by giving Theseus a sword (the gift to reflect his own personality) to kill the minotaur and a thread that leads out of the labyrinth (subconscious mind). This thread is the “kick” in “Inception”.
-Arthur: The Supporting Social Pedagogue. He is the guy for the hard work. He takes care about the patient when he is sleeping. In really hard cases he needs to tie the patients to their beds. He goes deeper then the drug specialist Yusuf, but not as deep as the real therapists. He has to report status to the higher doctors.
-Yusuf: The Drug Specialist. He knows what drugs need to be given when fighting the different mental disorders. Psychotropic drugs are helping the patients in modern therapies to reflect their mind.
-Eames: The Actor. Because Robert’s father is already dead the team needs another father figure for Robert. The perfect surrogate for him is Roberts godfather Browning. So Eames is choosing this role to influence Robert’s subconscious mind.
The recovery of Robert is pretty simple to explain. The team infiltrates Robert’s subconscious mind and tells him: “Your father loved you! He just couldn’t show you the right emotions. The only thing that disappointed him was that you choose not your own path. He kept your windmill always in his most important place” With knowing this Robert is able to let go finally. Seeing the situation from a different angle he realizes that his father just wasn’t able to show love but Robert was always respected as full-valued son. Look at him how relaxed he sits at the river’s edge, even his wet cloths don’t interfere him.
The last thing to explain is Cobb’s story. Therapists are only human so they also have memories and experiences which can lead to mental disorders. Memories (!Totems!) are making your life real, without memories there won’t be such a thing as life (see "Memento": This guy needed his memories as tatoos). But some memories are generating disorders like depression, paranoia, fear, panic and those are transforming the lives of the fallen ill into a living hell. Those people aren’t able to live a normal life; it is not possible to work as intended. Characteristic for a mental disorder is that the sick person believes that he needs this disorder to carry on with his life. So he is carrying his spinning top always with him. It helps him to get assurance that he will stay rational. The connection to his kids will always be difficult as long as he don’t let go his memories because they are reminding him of her. Eventually the kids are preventing him from going home because of that.
The final question every audience member is asking after seeing “Inception” is: “Does the spinning top spin or not?” But this question is the wrong question.
The right question should be: “Does Cobb take care of the spinning top? Or is it possible for him to let go and take care for the kids?”
And yes, he is able to. The movie fades to black. He is recovered from his disorder through the experiences he made in the subconscious mind, when he was working together with Robert Fisher.
-The spinning top is spinning, but the kids are far more important = Yes, my wife is dead, it’s hard, but I have to carry on with my normal life.
That is the final solution to “Inception”. All sick individuals are recovered. And the subheadline of “Inception – Your mind is the scene of the crime” does make sense. If you live in the past and are always complaining on how bad things are you are not able to take care of your life and will do crimes: You won’t be able to raise kids, or you will harm you, or someone else and that’s a crime.
Also Christopher Nolan said in an interview:
Question: Does the spinning top spin at the end or does it not?
Nolan: Much more important is that Cobb doesn’t take a look at it. He simply doesn’t care.
Quote (German source): http://www.filmstarts.de/nachrichten/18470098.html
The action scenes in the movie were bad rated. But in my opinion it is totally necessary to bring those scenes into that movie. As I said before Robert is a Narcissist. These kinds of men are feeling very weak and very powerful at the same time. They love to see themselves as great warriors with beautiful girls around. That’s why he is attracted by the blonde girl at the bar. And he is also cooperating when there’s some action going on. He wants to prove that he is a strong man who is able to fight in the front line. This is why the movie needs those big action settings: To manipulate the patient. I think Nolan didn’t even care about the audience…
Additionally the movie is a perfect ending for Nolan’s psycho series. He shows how far we have to go to clean up our mental disorders: Deep deep deep into our subconscious mind. And after we faced and controlled the root of our fears/depression etc we are able to go on with our lives. We are healed after that.
It is a figurative answer to the questions which were created through Nolan’s former movies:
-What should I do if I fear bats?
-What should I do if I suffer insomnia?
-What should I do if I lost my short-term memory?
Inception’s answer: A perfect psychological role-play combined with a capable team of doctors from different fields in psychology, the right drugs and a lot of time to find your way through your subconscious mind.
From now on Nolan is able to create movies without a psychological topic because he had shown us a solution to those problems.
Additional:
Source: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/11/pl_inception_nolan/all/1
Nolan: Anyone who’s worked with child actors, even ones as great as the ones in this movie, knows that you basically have to ask a kid to improvise and they’re going to say whatever they want to say. We certainly tried to choose the most apt takes. But yes, the film is about architects, builders, people who would have the mental capacity to construct large-scale worlds—the world of the dream. Everything is about how they would -create, whether it’s blocks or sand castles or a dream. These are all acts of -creation. There’s a relationship between the sand castle the kids are building on the beach in the beginning of the film and the buildings literally being eaten away by the subconscious and falling into the sea. The important thing in Inception is the mental process. What the dream-share technology enables them to do is remove physicality from that process. It’s about pure creation. That’s why it’s a film about architects rather than soldiers.
My comments to that answer: We begin to build our dreams/goals in our childhood. When we are older, we are able to create our dreams (build a house, raise our kids etc.) with our experience made since our childhood. Depressing memories (Death of your wife, bad father/son relationship) are interfering our goals/dreams.
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