{"id":973,"date":"2010-09-30T09:14:53","date_gmt":"2010-09-30T01:14:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/?p=973"},"modified":"2013-11-23T18:07:58","modified_gmt":"2013-11-23T10:07:58","slug":"inception-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/chaosfactory\/2010\/09\/inception-week\/","title":{"rendered":"Inception Week!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Longtime readers of the site will know that we here at the Chaos Factory are financed almost entirely by our sponsorships from the hit movie, Marmaduke<\/strong>.\u00a0 This is understandably confusing for some of the junior staff, which is why I feel it is my responsibility as Senior Editor to intercede on behalf of the integrity of this site.\u00a0 Inception<\/strong> is a good movie.\u00a0 By any conventional metric \u2013 be it box office gross, critical acclaim, or the ability to remain culturally relevant months after release \u2013 Inception <\/strong>has succeeded.\u00a0 And, while we at the Chaos Factory still prefer the convivial voice of Owen Wilson paired with a dog in sunglasses, we can no longer deny that Inception <\/strong>also has its moments.\u00a0 As a token of our sincerity and recommitment to a betrayed public, the Chaos Factory is declaring this week to be Incepti<\/strong>on <\/strong>week.\u00a0 There will be a competition to see who can expound the longest on their interpretation of the movie in the comments section (with cash prizes!), and all proceeds from Inception <\/strong>week will be left in a purse on the doorstep of director Christopher Nolan.\u00a0 To begin the festivities, I submit an entry from one Bobby Grenadine, who is writing to the Chaos Factory all the way from Brigham Young High in Provo Utah:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat some critics have seen as the hobbling strike against this last summer\u2019s blockbuster is perhaps the most interesting thing about it \u2013 its narrative discrepancies and discontinuities.\u00a0 The script goes beyond mere ambiguity \u2013 that is, a disinterest in resolving some element of plot \u2013 and employs an even more curious device \u2013 deliberate internal contradiction.\u00a0 I say these contradictions are deliberate because they are too blatant to have gone unnoticed by Christopher Nolan and the filmmakers, but yet it is not clear that they serve any purpose other than to support contrary interpretations of the narrative.\u00a0 For instance, when Cobb\u2019s team is in the hotel room preparing to delve into the next level of dreaming (the hospital\/arctic fortress dream), it is explicitly stated that, while they have told Fischer that they are breaking into the mind of his uncle, they will actually be inhabiting Fischer\u2019s own dream.\u00a0 Now, this raises a number of difficult questions.\u00a0 How does Fischer dream an environment that Adriane has designed?\u00a0 How does the dream persist after Fischer has fallen into limbo?\u00a0 Why is he populating his own dream with a security team that attacks him?\u00a0 Etc. etc.\u00a0 These are things that might possibly be explained away as inconsistencies that the filmmakers simply did not have the energy to address, but the audience never gets a chance to ponder them because, in the midst of all the action, there is a brief shot of Eames back in the hotel, wearing headphones.\u00a0 The headphones are used for the synchronization of the kick, or exit, from the dream, and in every other instance in the movie, they are worn by the dreamer.\u00a0 That Eames, the English forger, is wearing them, strongly indicates that the arctic hospital is his dream, anticipating a suspicion the audience may have felt creeping after Fischer falls into limbo, leaving Eames still running around in the snow.\u00a0 It does not make good sense for the dream to be either<\/em> Fischer\u2019s or Eames\u2019, and the two interpretations are mutually exclusive of each other.\u00a0 But yet, the narrative acknowledges and gives some credence to both explanations.\u00a0 This isn\u2019t likely to be a careless mistake.\u00a0 Even the simple shot of Eames wearing headphones on the floor of a hotel takes a group of many filmmakers to prepare for, and it is something the director would see over and over again while editing.\u00a0 The inclusion of both the scene with the headphones and the earlier, incongruous explanation of the arctic dream world has to be what Christopher Nolan ultimately intended.\u00a0 Another example of this can be found at the end of the movie where Cobb comes back home to his two children.\u00a0 The staging of the scene mirrors Cobb\u2019s flashbacks of when he left home, and the implausibility of the similarities (the children look to be the same age, are wearing the same clothes, and are even posed the same) suggests that Cobb has perhaps dreamed both the departure and the return.\u00a0 However, a visit to Inception<\/strong>\u2019s IMDB page (http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt1375666\/fullcredits#cast<\/a>) reveals that two sets of actors were hired to play the children, one pair being about two years older than the other.\u00a0 The director has cast actors that reflect the time that has elapsed in the narrative, but then deliberately disguised that difference.\u00a0 Again, some trouble has been consciously taken to confound the prevalence of a solitary rationalization for a narrative thread.<\/p>\n

As to why Christopher Nolan has chosen to engineer these internal inconsistencies into his movie; it is open to speculation.\u00a0 Perhaps he did not want to lose some set pieces that would be made nonsensical by a thorough explanation of the dream world\u2019s mechanics.\u00a0 Perhaps he felt that such explanations were acceptable sacrifices when balancing the economy of the script\u2019s energy.\u00a0 Perhaps he is experimenting with the limits of contradiction and elision as narrative techniques (that The Dark Knight<\/strong> uses the same techniques to a lesser extent gives some support to this). \u00a0Whatever the motivation, the important thing is that it works.\u00a0 Most people, it appears, had no trouble accepting the emotional logic and flow of the story, even if they may have had nagging doubts about the finer mechanics of it.\u00a0 In fact, many people were drawn further into the movie by their nagging questions.\u00a0 This runs contrary to the commonly held assumption that inexplicable plot holes only serve to disengage the audience from a traditional narrative.\u00a0 Inception<\/strong>\u2019s success <\/strong>is good evidence that, under certain conditions, the micro-scale narrative need not be subservient to the contextual macro-scale, and that an airtight plot is not all-important.<\/p>\n

The interesting question then becomes, what are the conditions required for the suspension of disbelief when breaks in a story’s internal consistency are permissible? Two possible answers present themselves immediately.\u00a0 First, that the complexity engendered by a series of competing narrative interpretations is in itself a potent benignant force that counterbalances whatever discord it might cause. \u00a0So, if a story element is sufficiently interconnected, it is still stimulating even though it runs amok of other themes, story logic, character motivations, etc.\u00a0 Alternately, the complexity might be a screen to obfuscate failings in the logic of the narrative, so that, if the story is moving along with sufficient momentum, no one will have time to clearly see that all the backdrops are just painted sets. \u00a0This willful confusion of the audience may have an inferior or even somewhat deceitful connotation, but in practice, there are things you can do with sets, and maybe their narrative counterparts, that you just can\u2019t do normally.\u00a0 Could Inception<\/strong> have worked otherwise? <\/strong>Also, the proper implementation of this directed obfuscation might not be something that is easily mastered.\u00a0 Exactly how many layers of complexity must a lapse be buried under before a storyteller can be confident it is forgivable?\u00a0 How many seconds can that complexity buy before a new diversion must be introduced?\u00a0 If you are weaving a web of inextricable contradictions, how do you balance the antipodal threads so that one strand does not protrude and make it easy to unravel the whole edifice?\u00a0 Perhaps the process is something comparable to a magician\u2019s act.\u00a0 Perhaps Christopher Nolan is not unlike one of his characters from The Prestige<\/strong>, using misdirection and a continuous showman\u2019s patter to usher the audience past the obvious impossibilities of the performance so they are free to revel in the fantasy and magic.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

While a structured defense against interpretative assays has historically been confined to more experimental art forms, it might now be finding a meritorious place for itself as a device in contemporary mainstream narrative. \u00a0Audience attentions have diminished, and with them, a filmmaker\u2019s allowance of expository dialog.\u00a0 There may no longer be time to take the long road up to the high plateau of novel ideas, so any form of expedited transportation ought to be considered with happy interest. \u00a0Furthermore, entertainment favors an exotic diet, and it may be that traditional approaches have become too confining for its tastes.\u00a0 Less traditional methods might be what are required to bring tantalizing new prospects within reach.<\/p>\n

If it is possible that Inception <\/strong>is only able to access the less-traveled territories of its storyworld so directly because Nolan has conned his way past the genre\u2019s usual obstacles, what other hidden realms might be discovered through such dissembling? \u00a0It could be worthy of some further exploration.\u00a0 However, even though the appetite of the modern audience for the incredible has increased, their incredulity has not.\u00a0 If paradox is to be substituted for reasoned persuasion, the manner and method in which it is deployed must be given close scrutiny and care, or there\u2019s risk of damaging the entire effort.\u201d<\/p>\n

by profadamworth<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Longtime readers of the site will know that we here at the Chaos Factory are financed almost entirely by our sponsorships from the hit movie, Marmaduke.\u00a0 This is understandably confusing for some of the junior staff, which is why I feel it is my responsibility as Senior Editor to intercede on behalf of the integrity […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":974,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1175,1199,1169,298,1197,1198],"class_list":["post-973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film_video","tag-christopher-nolan","tag-complexity","tag-inception","tag-marmaduke","tag-narrative","tag-storyworld"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/chaosfactory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/chaosfactory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/chaosfactory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/chaosfactory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/chaosfactory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=973"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/chaosfactory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1001,"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/chaosfactory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973\/revisions\/1001"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/chaosfactory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/chaosfactory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/chaosfactory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/chaosfactory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}