Cinematic illusion: Double interpretation is the "Inception"

- Spoiler alert -

The con, the reality-bending neuro-technology, the parallel revelation of the characters' relationships, the mid-movie twist, multiple levels of consciousness and subconsciousness... "Inception" throws the narrative at the audience on so many levels at once that we are dazzled and rewarded for following the plot at the same time. As one critic in Hong Kong says: "It's like Christopher Nolan is playing Jungle, the Flight game, chess, and bridge with his opponents simultaneously and winning all." This critic also regards Inception's success as potent counterargument for Hollywood's continued investment on formulaic, unimaginative blockbusters due to the supposed lack of taste or intelligence of us the general audience.

Cannot agree more.

But what exactly was thrown at us? What happened, really? Let's take a look at the most traditional building block of a narrative - the motif - and see if this tightly constructed puzzle of a movie can be figured out.

The most resounding motif of the movie, as evident in the recurring "wake-up" song Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien and repeated phrases such as "leap of faith", "become an old man, filled with regret, waiting to die alone", is obviously "regret". Regret for lost moments, regret for paths not taken, regrets for wrongs that can never be corrected. This theme is thoroughly explored through the parallel storytelling of two relationships: Cobb and his deceased wife Mal, and Fischer and his disappointed father. The latter relationship reminds me of "Citizen Kane" reminiscing his past on his dying bed (in fact, all the "totems" in the movie serve as a sort of "rose bud", a psychical object that connects its owner to another reality, or a humanity that he/she once knew), while Cobb's relationship with his wife brings to mind "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", where the guy cannot sustain a love and has to let go, only to find that he is overshadowed and gradually consumed by guilt and regret.

When I was watching the movie, I found these two relationships to be intriguing but not emotionally relatable since the other layers of subconsciousness kept interrupting with their pressing actions. For this reason, I can understand A. O. Scott's not-so-favorable review in the New York Times.

However, while I had the same reactions at first, I've come to disagree with Mr. Scott's final remark: "...though there is a lot to see in 'Inception,' there is nothing that counts as genuine vision. Mr. Nolan’s idea of the mind is too literal, too logical, too rule-bound to allow the full measure of madness — the risk of real confusion, of delirium, of ineffable ambiguity — that this subject requires."

To explain this change of mind, let me step back and talk about the two main ways to interpret the movie: a positive way and a negative way.

- Major spoiler alert! -

The Positive Way is the way the movie is told: Cobb, thief of secrets of subconsciousness, is offered a job to implant an idea into an powerful industrial heir's dreams, and in completing this job, he will be granted the immigration status to go back to his home country and to his kids. Cobb's attempt to finish the con is frequently sabotaged by the guilt he has for his dead wife in his subconscious.

Straightforward enough right? What is really messed up is the negative reading of the story. I only came to see the movie this way after reading a number of explanations for the movie's ending (an inception?).

The Negative Way is the hidden narration of the movie: suppose Mal, Cobb's wife, is the one who wakes up in the "real world" by jumping off the building, she may be the real inception planter in the limbo dreams of the still unconscious Cobb, hoping to convince Cobb to give up his multi-level dream world and "take a leap of faith" to wake up.

The second interpretation is hard to see at first because the story is consistently told from Cobb's perspective. Because of Cobb's guilt of inadvertently pushing his wife to "death", Mal is seen (by Cobb the storyteller) as projections of his memory and an "sabotaging" force ("Mal" is "evil" in Spanish) against his efforts to reunite with his children in what Cobb determines to be "reality".

And this brings us to the second, less obvious but central, motif of the movie: Any simple idea we choose to consciously or unconsciously adopt in our lives will in time come to define our reality; when these simple ideas steer us into alternate paths, we will inevitably deviate from the "shared realities" or "shared dreams" we create with our loved ones, creating the dilemma of having to choose among realities (the former, shared reality or the new, diverging reality). In other words, the "dreams" in the movie are metaphors of "realities" we create with and within our minds. The story itself is constructed like the paradoxes it keeps referring to: it works one way or the other; it can be the face of an uglg old witch or a fair young maiden; either can be the right answer, though you know that at the end of the day, things don't add up.

And with that the movie reveals one of the grandest pitfall of our consciousness: the human mind, with its imagination and prejudice, is capable of creating the most complicated mazes that guide us to somewhere new or nowhere at all. (Fun trivial: character names Fischer and Ariadne, are likely borrowed from M. C. Escher and Adrian Fisher; the latter is one of the world's leading maze designers).

In this regard, "dreaming" is a powerful metaphor and the true "inception" of the movie. (Naturally, that the movie itself is an inception is not lost among critics). Our mind can free us or imprison us. It can inspire free will or be trapped by an idea (as fortunately or tragically exemplified by Cobb's stubbornness to believe in his own reality).

And this paradox, in my opinion/reality, is the true art of the movie and true genius of the director. -- Why didn't I see this all along? The clues were all in plain sight: the ridiculous B-movie plot, the impossible shifting of geographic location, the all-too-powerful Japanese industrialist, the suspiciously-neat happy ending, the unchanged children imageries... Cobb himself even points out in one scene: "Dreams feel real while we're in them. It's only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange."

Despite all these, I was all too willing to suspend my belief -- the movie ran so fast that it tricked me into accepting its technicalities as well as its realities. Since it asked me: "don't think about the elephant", surely all I could think about was the elephant.

The movie even plays on its own format. The foundational techniques upon which cinema experiences built upon for the past 100 years or so -- non-linear narrative, scene-cutting signifying time and set change, stream of consciousness -- are all revealed in the movie as tricks (quote: "...you never really remember the beginning of a dream do you? You always wind up right in the middle of what's going on."). And after unmasking these tricks, Nolan is somehow able to offer another dimension to the movie experience. In this experience, the storytelling continues after leaving the theater; the story lives on as we try hard to understand the movie itself.

In short, "Inception" is a flawlessly executed cinematic illusion that reveals the secrets of our reality-bending psyche: perception is reality. Neatly fitting to the premise of the movie? I believe so.

Extended reading:

• Critics of Inception
• This Time the Dream's On Me
• Inception Ending and Theories: What Just Happened?
• Dream a Little Dream
• Review: Inception
• HuffPost Review: Inception (2010)
• Wikipedia: Inception (film)
• Memorable quotes for Inception
• Author who inspired Inception: Jorge Luis Borges

美麗好笑悲哀真實的故事

喜歡看王雅雋在明報的《星期日談情》；喜歡她其中一個副題：〈戀愛中的香港人〉——彷佛我們也有精力時間戀愛，彷佛我們也戀愛得起。在一個年輕相愛的醫生律師奮力合作也買不起居所的城市，不在香港長大的雅雋告訴我們，香港人也會戀愛，雖然有時拘謹躊躇、有時殘缺不全。

最近看了一部短篇小說集 The Girl's Guide to Fishing & Hunting。裡面的短篇大都以同一女子的角度，敍述她成長戀愛工作的故事，讀起來更像一部長篇。也就是一個雕通眼眉、能言善辯的女孩，在閱讀世界、在學習成長。愛上了作者 Melissa Bank 簡潔深刻而又幽默感人的文筆，請容我抄一下書：

“[Her elder brother] turned to me and said, "Do you know your IQ goes up and down about fifty points in every conversation?"

I didn't know if this was a compliment or an insult, but I didn't like how he was looking at me-- as though from the great distance of his new life. I said, "No one likes being talked about to their face." Then I felt bad. "Anyway," I said, "E=MC₂."

小說一直處於這種半昧不明、抽離與投入之間的狀態。這裡主角 Janie 雖然只有十四歲，已知道：『沒有人喜歡別人在她面前議論她。』卻不能度量與將轉變成男人的哥哥的距離。換了是別的小說中的聰明女子舌戰贏了就只有在沉默中悲哀；Janie 可愛之處是她針鋒相對後隨即又過意不去，於是用幽默拉近她和哥哥的距離。

這樣的例子比比皆是。和中學好友的對話：

“She said, "You still get flashbacks?"

"I think I always will," I said.

"Remember," she said, "never say 'always.'"

"I really appreciate your support," I said.

She said, "It helps me stay strong."

I said, "Every days is a gift."

與嫲嫲的對話：

“What do you think was so good about the good old days?" I asked, in exasperation. But I heard how harsh my voice was and didn't like it. I said, "what do you miss, I mean?"

While she thought, I waited to make my point: that everything was much better now than it used to be; I'd cite the civil rights and woman's movements.

"The boy who lit the street lamps in the evening," she said, finally, "He carried a stool with him."

I understood then-- it was like missing Nantucket-- and I put my hand on top of hers. It occurred to me that everything was more complicated than I thought.

很聰明的女孩子，但她不止聰明，她明白人生有些事比逞聰明重要，例如友誼，例如親情，例如自省，和同理心：

“
I tried to understand what Henry had told me. But I worried about that, too. Other people might not try as hard as I did to understand him. I was always on his side, no matter what. My parents were, too. All he really had to do with us was show up. More had been expected of him as Julia's boyfriend and at that party. More would be expected of him everywhere. I didn't know what had happened between him and Julia. It scared me to think that my brother had failed at loving someone, I had no idea myself how to do it.

個人覺得全書最感人的是 Janie 與後來患病的爸爸的交流。她爸爸堅強、樂觀，而且不吝於表達對女兒的感情：

“Over the weekend, my father told me he was concerned about my missing work; when was I going back?

"I am taking a leave of absence," I said, deciding then. "I'm malingering vicariously through you."

He said,"I'm glad."

Then he looked right at me, and said, "It means a great deal to me that you're here."

後來她工作和感情上遇到難題，想起一些她爸爸常常告誡她的話。看的時候我想，做父母能做到這樣已是最大能力。因為他不避惡的告訴她人生的真相：

“Life is unfair, my love

讓她做自己生命的主人：

“I can't make the decision for you.

然後提醒她不要躲避自己的人生：

“Don't take the easy way out, Janie

縱然是伶俐的女子，同樣和我們平凡女子一般有工作的軟弱和煩惱，這也是我覺得小說很親近的原因。

不過這本被 Wikipedia 稱做女生文學 "Chick Lit"的代表作、與 Bridget Jone's Diary 齊名的作品，寫的篇幅最多仍是感情：

“My mother hardly ever gave me advice about men, and I only remember asking her once, in fifth grade... I asked how you got a boy your liked to like you back. She said, "Just be yourself," as though I had any idea who that might be.

事實上，這本書之所以叫《女子漁獵手冊》，是 Janie 經過多次戀愛失敗以後，決定根據一本自助式的戀愛攻略書來「釣」男人。過程（很好笑）不講了，只想引用最後她遇到的一個畫漫畫的男生想畫的漫畫，來形容這本書：美麗好笑悲哀真實的故事。

“We go to Mere Mortals, a collection of one acts by David Ives. The one I love the most is about two mayflies on a date; they watch a nature documentary about themselves and discover their life span is only one day long-- after mating, they'll die.

Leaving the theater, Robert and I are both dazzled and exuberant, talking at once and laughing, and we spontaneously kiss.

He says, "I want to mate with you and die."

We have a drink at one of those old-fashioned restaurants in the theater district. Robert says the mayflies play is what every cartoon he draws aspires to be-- beautiful and funny and sad and true.

書裡的其他金句：

“I'm thirty-five" she says. "You try to plan your life, but that's not how it works."

“I see Laurel's shoulders rise and fall in a sigh.

“He was in a VIP suite, which had wall-to-wall carpeting, a mini-refrigerator, and velvety wallpaper. "This is a brothel," I said

He said, "Don't tell Mom."

“The way she spoke reminded me more of humming than thinking.

“It occurred to me that the quiet in the suburbs had nothing to do with peace.

“At Tortilla Flats, Jamie introduced his current girlfriend, a waitress named Petal. She had a little daisy tattoo on her ankle and seemed light and sweet and sure of herself in the particular way a very young woman can.

...

I looked around me. It was Thursday, a party night, and I could feel that bar-generated electricity-- the buzz and spark of sex-to-be.

“This is how I'd felt finding out about my father; it was like getting the subtitles after the movie.

“Saturday morning. I felt the way I had as a child, waking up in the summer and sensing what I could expect that day in the suburbs: the dry cleaner at the back door to drop off my father's suits; the damp smell of the changing room at the public pool; the dusty shade in the garage.

“"It's [being an editor's] all about judging," I said. "I'm not sure I'm the judge type. I might be more of the criminal type."

"Judgment is power," he said.

...

But I told me I didn't think I wanted power. " I think I want freedom."

He said, "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."

“[Being close to death] But you also find that you're stronger than you've ever been. You're clear. Your mortality is at optimal distance, not up so close that it obscures everything else, but close enough to give you depth perception. Previously, it has taken you weeks, months, or years to discover the meaning of an experience. Now, it's instantaneous.

“It started as a day job," I say. I tell him that I thought I'd write plays or novels or appliance manuals at night. But advertising made my IQ go down; every night I had to work just to get it back up to regular.

"What did you do?" he asks.

I got rid of my TV, I tell him, and read classics.

"Like which ones?"

"Middlemarch was the first," I say.

He laughs. "You say it like you're not sure I've heard of it."

We keep talking books, and when I tell him that Anna Karenina is my favorite, it seems to have the effect "I'm not wearing any underwear" has on other men.