Sometimes
a complex and thoughtful film will offer a clue, often as a
throw-away line within a deceptively mundane seen, towards the deep
truths and meaning held within the film author's wholly intended
expression...
The
single most important line in the film Inception, a
thoroughly thought-provoking film written and directed by Christopher
Nolan, follows Ellen Page's antagonistic inter-subconscious run-in
with Marion Cotillard, in one such seemingly mundane scene where
Page's character is speaking with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and she asks:
“What
was she like in real life?”
Here,
Gordon-Levitt pauses before answering, “She was lovely.”
This is the exact point where the entire explanation of the film
should come into focus. But before I can explain this, let's take a
look backwards at the situational aspects of these characters:
Marion Cotillard is the dead wife of widower Leonardo DiCaprio.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt is the longtime friend and business partner of
Leonardo DiCaprio.
Leonardo DiCaprio runs a freelance business, based on his own
research and development of invading interfering in peoples'
subconscious version of their own 'selves'.
When Ellen Page's character asks the question, “What was she
like in real life?”, Cotillard's character would be thus far
setup to appear as a confrontational, somewhat unlikable character.
And at this point, if more exposition is required for you to
understand what's been set up for the film, then it would be better
if you watched the film before proceeding...
Whist in a training session, Page enters DiCaprio's subconscious
mind, which is where she ran into Cotillard, who is in a twisted way,
acting as a stereotypical jealous ex-wife, is presented as
“defending” DiCaprio's psyche from invasion. Hence the
aforementioned antagonistic inter-subconscious clash. But if we dig
deeper into this allegorical presentation, what is really going
on here? With Cotillard's character having already maliciously
thwarted at least one of DiCaprio's subconscious business endeavours
(and thusly putting the protagonist dream team in actual, physical
peril), can we then take a deeper inspection of this subconscious
relationship between DiCaprio's and Cotillard's characters and
decide, with the information that we're given by Nolan in his own
film, that DiCaprio's character is holding some sort of grudge
against Cotillard's character – or, perhaps, his subconsciously is
more widely seeing her in a negative light? I think the answer to
both halves of this question is YES. And again, herein lies part of
the key to solving the puzzle of Inception...
Throughout Inception, DiCaprio's and Cotillard's children are
involved as a motivational factor – DiCaprio must make it back to
America, from France, so that he can reunite with his children –
children whose faces are never fully realized within DiCaprio's mind,
indicating guilt and regret at being a non-present father, and also
indicating DiCaprio's wishes to redeem himself in this regard. So,
then, who does DiCaprio's character point his subconscious finger at
as being the “bad guy”? His wife and the mother of the children –
Cotillard's seemingly aloof character. And this is where the answers
and true theme of Nolan's film really start to shine out, if, as
audience members, we're willing to dig until we get to this fracted
light.
Like any human being(s), becoming the victims of the mundanity of
life is a psychological danger that resonates. Falling victim to this
is quite severe in the sense that we start to loath our ourselves,
our loved ones, and then perhaps start to blame these loved ones for
our own insecurities, and our own shortcomings. Like being an
absentee father. And like Sidney Poitier said in To Sir, With
Love, “Marriage is no institution for the insecure”. So then,
we start to build a subconscious reality where we can comfortably
shift our blame. The real challenge is to be able to destroy – and
to allow the destruction of – this subconscious world. In Nolan's
vision, DiCaprio's subconscious world is at least rotting and falling
apart, indicating his willingness to accept the idea that he's
merely blaming his own wife for his paternal shortcomings.
The character played by Ken Watanabe represents (directly), within
his dream-setting, the subconscious-invaded-by-DiCaprio's
consciousness (and this explains the opening shot of DiCaprio waking
up dazed on a beach, or, the initial “awakening” of his
character, both subconsciously and in reality), and he also
represents indirectly the symbolic aspect of DiCaprio's
own character – if he, DiCaprio's character, doesn't save Watanabe
(in essence, himself), then he'll grow old and become lost in
how own blame-and-guilt-soaked subconsciousness. Here, Watanabe is
the insertion of the objective correlative in Nolan's movie.
Or in other words, symbolically speaking, DiCaprio's character is
Watanabe's character. DiCaprio is waking up, mentally, in order
to be able to wake himself from the deep slumber of his own guilt and
inaction.
So then, in the aftermath of this initial “awakening”, we come
back to the proverbial ground-floor of Nolan's cinematic puzzle (and
it is a puzzle, as Nolan left it “up to the audience” whether
DiCaprio's experience was taking place in the real world on in a
subconsciously-manufactured reality...) – Constructed in its
purely subconscious form, DiCaprio's character, dealing with emotions
of guilt, loss, and regret, and avoiding self-realization and the
responsibility and results of his own actions (i.e. the
neglect of his children), he shifts this blame to his wife Cotillard
(whom, in real-reality, is “Lovely”, which is spoken by
Gordon-Levitt's character but is also a true notion buried deep
within the “defence” psyche of DiCaprio's character). Somewhere
outside of the borders of this cinematic tale, DiCaprio's character,
finally realizing that this subconscious subterfuge can't last, even
in the state of dream, he creates an escape scenario (the action of
the film); and following this, he “awakens” on the shores of a
finally ebbing dream-tide; now finding himself physically and
mentally enabled enough to save the Watanabe character – i.e
himself. The final frames of Inception are now just the full
waking of DiCaprio's dream-world, the final images before our eyes
flutter open to the morning light after a night of dream-epiphany, to
an ending that has been hinted throughout Nolan's cinematic vision
through flash-forward repeating shots. And although the focus of the
story (the dream) was placed on the foggy memories of his children,
DiCaprio's ultimate boon, after his own internal redemption (which on
all levels of the story's “reality” is what Nolan's film is all
about), is that he will likely be able to stand with his lovely wife
in his perceived and genuinely desired forgiveness from her.
~V.
