General Background:
- Released in July 2010 in the middle of 'Blockbuster Season'
- $160 million budget
- Won academy awards for: Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing (among others)
- Non- Linear Plotline
- Recurring Contrast between light and dark
- Grossed $292,576,195
- Made by Warner Brothers and Legendary Pictures
- Has many big name actors
- Has some auteurial influences from Christopher Nolan in that he uses the same actors and has a lot of creative control
Concentration on Passive Spectatorship due to Mainstream Content
Key Points:
- Layers of Reality
- Sense of Spectacle
- Exposition
- Stock Character of Action/Adventure
- Complex Plot but explained simply
- Simplistic Cinematic Styling
- Open Ending (active)
- Artificial Set-Up (passive)
- Mostly Naturalistic (passive)
- Totems and Train (active)
- Settings (trend of A/A)
- Deals with personal issues of characters
- Possibility of changing personal mistakes that haunt you. Exploration of deep-seated psychological emotions
- Pure 'big screen' entertainment that doesn't have to be viewed as anything more than a spectacle for enjoyment
- Sets a drama in the context of a high budget hybrid that can be viewed in a polysemic way by a diverse audience allowing multiple readings.
Theories Around Inception:
- Cobb wears wedding ring in dream but not in real life (he doesn't have it on at the end)
- Title is what the film is about (Auteurial aspect of Christopher Nolan)
- Cobb still in a dream at the end
- Whole film is a dream as everyone is always in the middle of the action
- Audience is in Inception (song to wake up in credits)
- Film Crew Theory: Cobb = Director, Eames = Actor, Saito = Producer etc
- Whole mission and idea that allows Cobb to get back to his kids is planted and Cobb is actually experiencing Inception and no longer believes he's dreaming
- Names spell out DREAMES
Mainstream Cinema:
- Something that is ordinary or usual
- Familiar to most people
- Available to the general public
- Has ties to corporate or commercial entities
- Often has a lot of exposition within the scene
- Intense orchestral scores
- Enigma Codes
- Binary Oppositions
Comparative Spectatorship Essay - Winter's Bone and Inception
Inception Presentation - Viewer Identification with Cobb
Kick Scene:
This scene opens with an intense orchestral score which is carried through throughout the film. This is a trope of mainstream filmmaking. The score is meant to evoke emotion in the viewer and at the start of this scene it significantly cuts when Fischer goes to open the vault. This adds an importance to this action as this is what the entire film has been working towards. There is a series of close-ups between Fischer and his father that gradually get closer to each other which reflects their relationship getting closer even though his father is dead. This scene is perhaps one of the few in 'Inception' where active spectatorship is requires as it cuts between all the levels of the dream in quick succession. These shots follow a formula. Internal dream shot with intense score and no diegetic sound followed by close-up on one of many of the character's faces followed by establishing shot of how close each level is getting to the kick. To follow each level the spectator must become active.
The score when the kick becomes active becomes a lot more tense and climactic. The editing becomes a lot more fast paced and the special effects come in full force with explosions on multiple layers of the dream and the layer of 'limbo' being almost completely CGI. Again this is a trait of mainstream cinema and actually encourages passive viewing because we know what to expect.
Useful Clips:
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