This week, we are going to “dissect” a meaningful movie,《Inception (全面啟動)》. As a result, you may need to see this movie in advance. To provide convenience to those who can’t make it, please refer to the outline as below. Besides, because we want to dissect this movie from the perspective of dream and conscious theories, you are also welcome to read extended readings at the bottom.
P.S. Don’t worry, even though you have never seen this movie, you still can join our discussion. This features the meeting hosted by me.
Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), alongside pointman (守門人) Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) are on an extraction mission within the mind of powerful businessman Saito (Ken Watanabe); a form of corporate espionage through dreams. Extractors enter their mark (目標獵物)'s dream, with architects (造夢者) constructing the world, all sleeping in close proximity connected by a sedative administering device. Cobb carries a spinning top which spins unceasingly or topples to determine whether he is dreaming or awake, respectively. The mission is aborted when Saito reveals he is auditioning the team to perform the act of inception: using dreams to implant an idea. (植夢, any vague and tiny idea can grow up into a concrete decision, as the movie says, “an idea can transform the world and rewrite all the rules”)
The target is Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), son of Saito's terminally ill corporate rival, Maurice Fischer (Pete Postlethwaite). The objective is to convince Fischer to break up his father's empire. Cobb recruits Eames (Tom Hardy), a forger (偽造者) who can change appearance inside dreams, Yusuf (Dileep Rao), a sedative chemist (化學家), and Ariadne (Ellen Page), a student whom he and Arthur train as their new architect. Due to the plan involving multiple dreams within each other (多重夢境, 即夢中夢) and stronger sedatives, death will not awaken the person but send them into limbo (意識混沌無明的狀態), where their mind will be stuck for an indeterminate amount of time. Cobb's mind is continually haunted by his deceased wife Mal (Marion Cotillard), who sabotages his missions, and he reveals to Ariadne that he spent years in limbo with her as they constructed a world together. After waking, Mal remained convinced that they were still dreaming and committed suicide, incriminating Cobb in her death so that he would also commit suicide. Cobb refused and was forced to flee the U.S. and his children to avoid murder charges. In return for the mission, Saito promises to clear the charges and reunite Cobb with his children.
When the elder Fischer dies in Sydney, Saito and the team share the flight with Robert Fischer back to Los Angeles and drug him. They enter his dream, a rainy downtown area, and kidnap him. However they come under attack by his trained subconscious projections (潛意識「投射」出來的人物, in dream, one always projects and creates characters he knows or not, but most of them are parts of himself, for example, a father character may not indicate the dreamer’s father in real world, but the projection of his own sense of “authority”. In the same way, a dreamer may project sense of guilty as a person he knows, a monster as his inside “fear”)[/color], and Saito is badly injured. Eames changes into Peter Browning (Tom Berenger) (forger can change appearance inside dreams), Fischer's godfather, to extract information from him. They then enter a van and sleep into the second dream (dream in dream), a hotel, where the team makes Fischer believe that the kidnapping on the first level was orchestrated by Browning and that he must enter his godfather's mind to determine his motives. They in fact enter deeper into Fischer's subconscious, a snowy mountain fortress, (the 3rd dream) which Fischer must break into implanting idea. To wake and protect the team, a member stays behind at each level with timed kicks (a technique to wake people resulting from “kick”, that is, when some one push a sleeping man and let him unbalance, he’ll be scared to wake): Yusuf driving the van off a bridge, Arthur smashing an elevator containing the bodies upwards and Eames with explosives in the mountain fortress.
Fischer is killed by Mal and goes into limbo, so Ariadne and Cobb follow him down and confront her. There Mal attempts to convince Cobb to stay in limbo by making him question reality, referring to events that occurred while he was awake. Cobb reveals that he planted the idea in Mal's mind to wake her up, making him indirectly responsible for her suicide. She attacks him, but Ariadne shoots her. Cobb remains in limbo to locate a now dead Saito, while Fischer and Ariadne return to the mountain fortress where he comes to the conclusion that his father wanted him to be his own man. Cobb eventually locates an aged Saito and then wakes on the plane to find everyone up and well. Saito honors their arrangement; Cobb enters the United States and finally returns home to his children. Cobb spins his top to test reality, but is distracted by the reunion before any kind of resolution is seen.
[Reference]
Wiki
[Extended Reading]
Chinese plot based on timeline (I suggest you see the movie before reading this article for not ruining your pleasure to enjoy this movie)
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[Session 1]
I know it’s hard for some to recall his/her dreams, so I put 4 questions in case you don’t have much to say toward any single one. You don’t have to answer all of them.
1. In the movie, as Leo was teaching a green architect how dream works, he said we always “perceive” and “construct” our dreams at the same time; in other words, we are viewer and director of our own dreams, and that’s how brain works at night as well. Besides, we usually will not remember the beginning of a dream, we just pop up from nowhere and cut in the middle of our dream drama. So, do you have any experience that you are experiencing and constructing your own dream in which you are so clear that you are creating your dream, you have great power in controlling the plot? And do you always remember how a dream starts, how a dream develops or ends? Does every scene in the whole dream drama show up in a linear or random sequence?
2. In this movie, Leo mentioned that an architect shouldn’t use his/her memory to construct scenes in a dream or he/she will involve himself/herself into the danger of confusing dream world and real world. Similarly, do you confuse dream and real world at times especially at the moment of waking up? Or do you feel that you are living in a not so real world at times?
3. Leo also mentioned a dreamer should have his own “totem” to test whether he/she is dreaming or not. For him, his totem is a spinning top which never stops rotating in the dream world. Have you ever suddenly realized you are dreaming in you dream? How do you know you are dreaming? Do you use any technique to test you are dreaming or not?
4. In dream, an architect can construct beyond any restriction of material world like erecting a city vertically or creating an endless looping stairs as below according to this movie. Have you ever experienced any impossible moments in your dream that’s totally against natural laws in this material world?
[Session 2]
1. “A vague idea can grow into a concrete plan,” this is the core value this movie wants to covey, and that also makes it reasonable to implant an idea into deep down of one’s own deep consciousness (in psychology, they may say “unconsciousness”). If this technique is possible, how will you use it, who will be your target and what idea will you like to implant on him/her?
2. The movie also reveals an argument that whether implantation is possible cause’ we will naturally trace back any idea’s source. For example, when I tell you, “don’t think an elephant,” and then you will start to think an elephant and where you get this idea. From this viewpoint, can you tell you “own” idea from those “implanted” by others, including media? Are you really sure most of your goals, dreams, what you want to do, where you want to go, these daily chores all come from yourself?
3. One of the basic principle of implantation is that it should be connected with human being’s positive emotion or she/he will doubt the justifiability of that idea. In this movie, Watanabe commissions Leo to implant an idea into his business rival, Cillian Murphy, so he can dismiss his enormous enterprise inherited from his Father. They let Cillian believe his father doesn’t want Cillian to follow his step and construct an ever larger business that his father’s by dismissing the old one firstly, which makes the whole idea reasonable and not violates Cillian’s conscience mechanism. By following this viewpoint, do you find the principle useful in persuading people to do what they originally don’t want to do? Such as buying stuff or something else? Use the examples around you.
[mon][/mon]
