"Dreams are a universal experience ...
but a very private one."
-Christopher Nolan
Push play to listen to the soundtrack.
How do we know what is real and what is in our minds?
-Christopher Nolan
In the late 1990´s when we all thought when the year 2000 gets around there is going to be an apocalypse or an electrical shut down. Everything will go crazy. A new SUBgenre was born in movies such as : The Matrix(1999), Dark City (1998), Strange Days (1995), MEMENTO (2000), Fight Club (1999) , eXistenZ (1999) or the Thirteen Floor (1999).
Christopher Nolan realized "Dreams feel real in a dream " so he decided after doing Batman Begins, his next project would be "INCEPTION". I wanna really absorb the audience, that was Nolans goal.
Imagine someone can enter your mind using a new revolutionary technology so he could plant an idea.
A facinating and frightening thought.
Nolan had wanted to do something about dreams since he was a kid but it wasn’t until 10 years ago that he zeroed in on the idea of doing a heist film that takes place within dreams. Despite his clout after the success of the Batman reboot, he finished the entire script before pitching it to Warner Bros. because he wanted them to see his whole concept.
Mixing Movie genres, fantasy, love story, action, suspense, drama. As dreams often do . It all begins with the sound of the sea. A calm , relaxing atmosphere that brings us to the character of Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio). A strange man, in a strange place. He is taken prisioner and brought to questioning to an elegant room where there is a very old man.
"I feel ....that with every film i do, i want to be...pushing myself, moving on, building on what i´ve done."
-Christopher Nolan
(Excerpt of Hans Zimmer's "Inception" Suite performed in Vienna on Oct 23 2012 with "Time" and "Dream is Collapsing" at film music concert "Hollywood in Vienna". Conducted by DAVID NEWMAN. )
As the film has many layers or dreams inside dreams. Our own mind and perception is expanded and manipulated by very intelligent craftsman. As we become active viewers, we are not bored by the complexity of the plot. Nolan knows this, so he uses every single device under his sleeves by using images, sounds, colors, feelings, every emotional tie to the audience. Even what we know about movies is tested. To feel comforably in a multi-layer audiovisual experiment. I love the use of a non conventional soundtrack. By using electric guitars, to me amplifying every single note.
The zero-gravity hallway fight scenes were achieved by using massive, rotating sets that twisted and turned and forced Gordon-Levitt to maneuver with utmost caution. Five-hundred crew-members were involved in the scene, which took a full three weeks to complete." The sets were built in a London airplane hangar, including a horizontal hallway that rotated 360 degrees, a vertical one and a set with steel trolleys to which the actors were attached by wires (later erased using visual effects).
The biggest challenge for producer Emma Thomas was shooting in six countries, including Morocco, France and England. When she read the first 80 pages of Nolan’s script many years ago, she had no idea how it could be brought to the screen. By the time the script was completed, she had the Batman movies under her belt and was more equipped to take on a big project like this.
Nolan made clear there would be no strange color palettes to indicate when someone’s in a dream. He wanted all scenes to look real so audiences would never be sure where they are. Director of Photography Wally Pfister and Nolan do very little pre-planning when it comes to lighting, keeping it natural and allowing the locations to dictate how they should light them. There was never any scheme to use lighting to delineate between the dream levels.
" For me ...the character , this man goes through a therapy session of 4 different stages of the human sub conscious, the deeper he gets through out the film the closer he comes to terms with his own nightmares and the truth about his past. "
-Leonardo DiCaprio
"This man was a drug addict, this was a guy who was addicted to the dream state. A man who was escaping from the reality at all cost. "
-Leonardo DiCaprio
Nolan looked at different formats to shoot the movie. It was mostly shot in 35mm, some 65mm, up to 360 frames per second.
Nolan tested 3D conversion in post-production and got good results but didn’t have enough time to do it in the scientific way he wanted. When asked if any images from his subconscious are in the movie, Nolan said he had no idea.
Worth watching the trailer one more time.
"WELCOME HOME MR. COBB"
There is a fan theory that claims Cobb’s wedding ring is his totem. Watch it carefully during the movie and you’ll notice that it disappears and reappears at specific times.
By specifically we mean it only appears on his hand when he’s inside a dream. It fits the criteria of being a totem.
It’s small, personal and no-one else touches it.
He often checks it during the dream sequences to ensure that it’s still there.
And at the end of the movie…it’s not there.
