Modernist Principles in Inception
One shining example is the nonlinear structure. Inception starts in medias res and so does this blog post. The movie does this better. The film opens where it ends. Cobb lands on the shores of his imagination and is sat at the table with Saito. The top spins and he snaps back to reality.
The same happens at the end, or does it? Cobb snaps back to reality and is reunited with his family. He finally sees his children after being away for what seems like years. He spins the top; however, the screen fades to black before we see it topple. This begs the question: is he still dreaming? This sort of ambiguous ending is very common in modernist literature, as it reflects how nothing in life has a straightforward resolution.
The movie also features the repeated use of the quote: "I'll tell you a riddle. You're waiting for a train, a train that will take you far away. You know where you hope this train will take you, but you don't know for sure. But it doesn't matter." At the end of the film, the significance of this quote is shown when Cobb gives Mal the kick to escape limbo by running her over with a train. This is an example of how language is not always transparent, as a seemingly simple metaphor also represents an actual event.
Perspectivism plays a great part in the film. Each person's dream is a world of their own construction, filled by people that represent pieces of their subconscious. This allows us to see the world from the points of view of various characters, despite the movie taking place in the third person.
Nice Blog Post. I really like how you structure your blog post to exemplify the modernist principles you describe. You do a good job explaining the different principles and use good examples from the film. I hadn't realized the significance of the train until I read your post.
ReplyDeleteHi Dan, this is an entertaining and thoughtful take on modernism in Inception. I had not thought of the train riddle as language not being transparent though it is just another one of many examples of modernism in Inception.
ReplyDeleteThis is very interesting. Much like a painting, you need to look at the details multiple times to realize the inner meaning of each detail. After watching the movie for the second time, many more things made sense to me and I began to pickup the non transparent language, such as the train example
ReplyDeleteNice blog post i really like the beginning and how you wanted you post to be nonlinear like the movie. It hard to imagine that a movie with such action sequences has could have such a detailed non-linear plot. it is amazing what movies are capable of.
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