"Inception" entered theaters mid-summer amidst tremendous hype due to the bold and creative filmmaking tendencies of writer/director Christopher Nolan. In subsequent weeks, the box office ballooned with ticket sales alongside a unanimously positive critical consensus.
Such critical and financial success has become a pattern for Christopher Nolan films, from his first mainstream movie, the fascinating "Memento," to his more recent work, a sophisticated revitalization of the Batman series. This pattern, I believe, is predominately due to one simple fact: Nolan is a psychologist disguised as a filmmaker.
Indeed, there are two underlying themes within Nolan's films that mirror the aims of psychologists: a relentless dissection of common yet complex mental processes, and a case study of relatable characters battling psychological woes. In short, Nolan tackles the sort of mental mysteries found in therapy offices, and he treats the material with the kind of careful and sophisticated stance nurtured by clinical training.
In "Memento," for instance, Nolan discussed retrograde amnesia and a protagonist who devolved from an innocent victim into a killer consumed by obsession. "Inception" is a bit lighter but just as thought-provoking, as Nolan examines dreams and a traumatized hero struggling to find his way home.
The World of Inception
In "Inception" the next frontier of espionage is the mind. The central character, Cobb (played brilliantly by Leonardo Di Caprio) is the best in the business at inception - the art of infiltrating the dreaming mind of another in order to steal ideas. Cobb, we quickly learn, is on the run for mysterious reasons and unable to return to America and his beloved children. That is, until Saito, a powerful billionaire and business tycoon promises to efface Cobb's dark past in return for an unprecedentedly difficult inception. Saito desires for an idea to be planted - not simply extracted - into the mind of his rival, Robert Fischer Jr. Specifically, Saito wants Fischer, the recent inheritor of his father's energy empire, to dissolve the monopoly.
With such an attractive offer on the table Cobb goes to work. He assembles the necessary crew for creating and controlling a dream space and together they construct the mental seed to be planted: "My father actually loved me. He wants me to be my own man. I will do things differently." In addition to Cobb's role as the extractor, the team is made up of a master role player (Tom Hardy), a chemist (Dileep Rao), an architect (Ellen Page) and a loyal associate (Joseph Gordon-Levitt).
What unfolds is a clever and intricate con, in which the team induces the unsuspecting Fischer into a state of deep sleep. The team enters his subconscious and at this initial dream level they kidnap Fischer and bombarded him with subtle primes and persuasive notions related to his deceased father and a secret will that reveals the "seed." Here's where things get a little confusing. The crew convinces Fischer that he is dreaming, and that his father's business associate, Peter Browning, has attempted to hijack Fischer's subconscious out of self-interest. The crew further convinces Fischer to enter Browning's mind - a second dream level - in order to find out why. At this deeper level the team has Fischer break into a fortress in order to find the "will," so that he can then confront his father (really a projection of Fischer's own, manipulated mind) in a cathartic climax. As with most heist thrillers, all goes well. Because the planted idea took root with such depth and deceptiveness Fischer misperceived the planted idea as genuine inspiration.
The World of Dreams
As the con unfolds, so do the various rules and regulations of Nolan's dream world. As it turns out, various qualities and outcomes of Nolan's dreamscape are accurate reflections of clinical research and theory on this subject.
To date, there are numerous ideas about dreams that rotate on the stage of theoretical prominence like a game of musical chairs. Some theories posit grand, underlying explanations for dreams while other studies seek to validate a single feature of the dreaming process. And, theories that have stood the test of time are increasingly challenged by more contemporary ideas. The net outcome of this literature is an array of vastly different, sometimes contradictory theories, all of which seem plausible and none of which supply a complete, unquestioned explanation.
Ever the psychologist, Nolan loosely borrows from each of the top, contemporary theories so that he can construct a dream world that is as "real" as possible.
The contemporary theory of dreams most central to Nolan's plot posits that dreams serve a therapeutic function. According to this theory dreams are the cognitive echoes of efforts to work out conflicting emotions, as negative experiences are dissected, re-examined, and repeatedly experienced in the service of resolving negative emotion and improving coping for future threats (Hartmann, 2006). Nolan uses this idea as the springboard for the crew's con. In the film, Fischer is put to sleep and the crew gently guides him toward an imaginary confrontation with his distant, recently deceased father. At the end of the dream Fischer experiences (or so he thinks) a positive catharsis in which his familial relationship is clarified and resolved. He awakens, and although he has been manipulated, Fischer's life is now brimming with the aftereffects of healthy mourning, positive affect and increased meaning.
An equally prominent theory utilized by Nolan proposes that dreams may serve as a training ground for self-preservation in which life-threatening scenarios are rehearsed in a safe and virtual environment so that, later, real-life crises are responded to in a maximally optimal and efficient manner (Hartmann, 1995). Nolan creatively flips this idea on its head. In his brave new world of subconscious infiltration, the mind is most vulnerable when asleep. As such, a cottage industry of subconscious protection has arisen, so that powerful and vulnerable figures like Fischer can receive training in real life that prepares them for life-threatening scenarios in their dreams. Unfortunately for Cobb and his team, much of the film is spent fighting off Fischer's "resistance," as gun-totting bodyguards serve the mental equivalent of anti-bodies fighting off a foreign infection/planted idea.
Yet another popular take on dreams, known as the activation-synthesis model of dreams, posits that dreams are simply the product of an innate attempt to make meaning out of the random neural firing of aroused brain circuits (Antrobus, 1993). Much of the film's comedic moments revolve around this idea. For instance, when the crew enters the chemist's dreaming mind, they must contend with a violent storm, because Dileep Rao foolishly drank a glass of wine beforehand and now has to pee.
Lastly, Nolan uses a prominent dream theory to explain how the crew members enter and exit the dream world. At any given time, each member must awaken to perform the next step in the con. This awakening process is triggered by music that is played into the specific crew member's headphones. Such a musical trigger is in-line with the idea that the dreaming brain seeks to interpret external stimuli, as evidenced by the intrusion of real-world occurrences like a blaring television (Antrobus, 1993).
In addition to the curiosity-driven exploration of unusual mental events like dreaming, the other way in which Nolan doubles as a psychologist is in his attempt to comment on mental illness processes. Research is only half the battle as psychologists also seek to translate empirical insights into tangible treatment interventions for psychologically suffering individuals. Nolan uses trauma as a bridge between the two worlds of clinical investigation and practice. For instance, research has shown that exposure to trauma exponentially increases the rate of nightmares, a central symptom of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) (Paivio & Pascual-Leone, 2010).
The World of Cobb
