Dream or Reality?

SIMPLIFIED VERSION

MOVIE REVIEW:

11-8-2010

I think ‘Inception’ could be one of the “best references books” for us to understand the impact of our deepest internal world – the sub-consciousness and its effect on our life.

In the film, we hear repetitively the classic hypnosis trance scripts or typical hypnotic language. Using these techniques, one can become more persuasive and empower others to expand his awareness, “implant” new ideas on him and even change his beliefs and value systems, thus changing a person’s personality and mindset. This powerful effect is typified in Fischer and Mal’s cases in the film.

Although the audience was bombarded by INCEPTION”s overwhelmingly abundant information, actions, suspicions plus its intensely creative plots, I am impressed by the message of the film delivered without any confusion:

For some people, Dream is reality and reality is dream (like in Chinese: life is a dream.) They take their dream seriously. Ironic!

The film reveals a fact that in our subconscious world, reality is the same as fantasy, imagination and hallucination. One can't tell reality and dream apart. To manipulate this phenomenon positively, one can hypnotize/implant positive ideas into subconscious mind which is similar to a child with age around 7 or 8 in terms of thinking system. This will affect one’s behavior and emotions profoundly and beneficially. Conversely, the implantation of negative ideas no matter consciously or unconsciously may ruin a person’s life. An example is Mal, Cobb’s wife who jumps from a height to find her destiny because of an idea implanted by her husband Cobb. Chilling and horrid!

Studies found that the human thinking system is full of self perceptions and imagination, thus, it can be changed if perception and imagination are changed, so can personality. This can be done through self hypnosis or external hypnosis, in which a human’s conscious and subconsciously mind are both active, except his critical faculty. In the film, the change takes place during deep dreams when the conscious mind is sleeping. I have to say that this is exaggerating, but the idea is thought provoking.

This film challenges a viewer’s boundary to extremes time and again. While I don’t believe anyone can invade into one’s dream, I like the most honest esp. the wildest imagination in the film. That’s the fantasy of the movie.

Why do I say so? I was shocked to find that many scenes in the film coincidentally appear in my recurring dreams - a bridge or a mountain trial or road collapsing out of blue, leaving me trapped or stuck in darkness or on the edge of a cliff; flying weightlessly in zero gravity; a magnificent city emerging from the ground or floating in the sky; a dream within a dream and within another dream …

I believe this is not only the case with me. The film has received exceptional high box-office globally, showing that that dream scenes in INCEPTION may have become a collective memory in a human’s twisting dreaming world during sleep and thus striking a chord with its audience.

Beliefs and ideas are like a strong parasite. Once it is implanted into our subconscious mind, it will grow and eventually rule our conscious mind, determining our life and destiny. Thoughts become things. So be careful of any thoughts or ideals fed into your mind no matter if consciously or unconsciously.

That is why critical thinking is crucial.

Here the director Christopher Nolan talks about his film:

The crucial breakthrough to completing his “Inception” script was considering what could happen if multiple people could share the same dream. “Once you remove the privacy,” Mr. Nolan said, “you’ve created an infinite number of alternative universes in which people can meaningfully interact, with validity, with weight, with dramatic consequences.”

“The potential of the human mind is infinite. It has to feel like you could go absolutely anywhere by the end of the film…”

Inception was the most breathtaking film I have ever seen. You know what, it is a film that I want to see again the first time for its constantly challenging audience’s boundary of imagination; for its ingenuousness and thought-provoking element and more…