I N C E P T I O N

The Genius of Nolan’s Writing

J. Y. Gao

NOLAN’S SCI-FI REALISM HAS PERMEATED, FOR MORE THAN A DECADE, THE MAINSTREAM BLOCKBUSTER STAGE OF HOLLYWOOD. Yet, his highly complex concepts seem more suited for the niche stage of avant-garde independent filmmakers rather than the worldwide audience it has gained. How, then, do his films differ from that of the experimental auteur dabbling in dazzling intertextual references and philosophical concepts, and escape from the shallow meandering of all-for-money Hollywood sequels?

After his Batman Trilogy, which remains the pinnacle of the modern superhero movie in my opinion, Inception (2010), his most commercially successful film, has grossed over 892 million USD worldwide and was ranked 14th in IMDb’s top 250 films of all time. Inception’s premise is complex from an uninformed point of view: within the framework of dreams that have the capacity to be constructed, manipulated and layered on top of each other, Nolan wrestles with existential questions and the nature of the human subconscious. Unlike the one-sided, formulaic narratives of Marvel, Nolan’s conceptual depth expands the scope of his story onto the level of an epic; the story feels big, the constructed world space feels real, and there is a great sense of release at the end of it all. 

As a result, it seems as though it is his ability to leverage scope and broaden his authorial intent that makes Nolan’s films so integral. In Inception, Nolan’s narrative is expansive in space. His world of dreams becomes his leeway into this enormous undertaking as he occupies five disparate settings simultaneously over the course of the film’s main segment. In essence, and for those who haven’t watched the film, Cobb (DiCaprio) and his team, along with Fischer (C. Murphy), are on a ten-hour plane flight that serves as Nolan’s first layer of narrative. Quickly, the characters enter the second narrative layer (into Fischer’s dream) – rainy streets and busy car chases. The team then enter Nolan’s third narrative layer (a dream in a dream), the Hotel, after which they follow in the fourth narrative layer of snowy mountains and fortresses (a dream within a dream within a dream). Finally, the film’s climax brings the audience down into the fifth layer of the narrative, referred to as limbo, a beachy coastline that manifests Nolan’s depiction of the subconscious. 

Five layers of narrative mean five different settings: plane, car, hotel, mountains, and beach. During the film’s climax, the story was cut frequently between these layers, with the characters left in each layer facing distinct problems and experiencing rising tension. Yet, despite the spatial complexity, Nolan’s clear story-telling techniques and imaginative organisation allow the audience to navigate the plot easily. 

More impressively, Nolan’s construction of these settings is not linear, they are concentric. Each world exists in the mind of a character from the world ‘above’; in such a way, the worlds of Inception are vertically stacked on top of each other, and it is the ease at which the audience is able to grasp this concept that emphasises Nolan’s consistency and clarity. 

Indeed, Nolan’s ambitious scope doesn’t stop there. Since his second directorial project, Memento (2000), he has fiddled with the concept of time in almost all of his features; Inception is no exception. Of course, the simultaneity of the five disparate settings and distinct narrative worlds demonstrates Nolan’s ingenious manipulation of time, knowing when and for how long the story stays at any particular level; without hesitation, he constructs together the simultaneous events of each narrative without split screen and creates a fragmented story that is digestible and even palatable for the mainstream audience. 

Furthermore, Nolan also meddles with the experience of time and generates a sense of cosmic horror as he redraws the passing of time. Much like his later film Interstellar (2014), time dilation in his story means his characters experience time at different speeds. During the film’s initial exposition, Cobb explains the brain functions faster within a dream (twenty times faster), and so the ten-hour plane flight is roughly equivalent to a week in the first layer (car), 6 months in the second layer (hotel), and ten years in the third (snow). So from an objective point of view, each level above is travelling in slow motion, and Nolan is careful in allocating a calculated amount of screen time for each narrative layer. 

This is most prominent in the film’s climax, as the van from the first dream layer is intentionally driven off a bridge to act as the ‘kick’. Nolan is able to craft time so that 30 minutes of run-time (from 1hr 45min to 2hr 17min) felt like ten seconds had passed in the first layer, three minutes in the second layer, and an hour in the third. Including Cobb’s retrieval of one of the characters, having been lost in limbo for ten years, Nolan compresses four different lengths of time into a sequential, singular storyline. Albeit his frequent cutting between these times, the pace doesn’t seem confusing or frantic at all. The motivations are clear, the emotions are clear, and the audience is left mentally ‘full’, tired, but content. 

But of course, Nolan’s genius doesn’t stop there. The most ingenious aspect of the film is its thematic consistency. A trait shared by epic, large-scale, emotionally rewarding stories is the ability to start threads of ideas during the first half and resolve each and every one in the second half. This is evident in Inception. 

In the first half: 

• Questions are raised about the first scene. It is completely disjunct from the rest of the story in the first half. Where are they? What are they doing? What happened?
• During Ariadne’s (E. Page) training, Arthur (Gordon-Levitt) introduced her, and by extension the audience, to the idea of paradox within a dream. 
• Cobb’s motivations are made clear by his phone call to his children, and the theme of not seeing their faces is begun.
• The strained relationship between son and father is also introduced early on between Fischer and his father. 
• “There’s no room for tourists on a job like this,” is said by Eams (T. Hardy).
• “I’m an old man, filled with regret, waiting to die alone,” is said by Saito (Watanabe).
• The idea of inception is introduced to the audience.
• The totem is introduced, Cobb’s is the spinning top.

In the second half:

• The first scene is shown again near the end of the film 2 hrs 14 mins later, and forms part of the resolution.
• Arthur uses his stair trick paradox to get rid of one of his assailants in the second dream level.
• Cobb refuses to see the face of his children throughout the film, and we finally see their faces in the last scene.
• The relationship between Fischer and his father is restored.
• “There’s no room for tourists on a job like this,” is repeated by Saito in the third dream layer as he is about to die.
• “I’m an old man, filled with regret, waiting to die alone,” is said again by Saito in the third layer, and Cobb and Saito alternate each phrase of the quote in limbo in the resolution to remind themselves of who they are. 
• The idea of inception is not just relevant on a corporate scale, it was the cause of Cobb’s wife’s suicide. The inception of the idea that her ‘world may not be real’ was existential, and Cobb’s guilt in instigating that catalyses the traumatic memories that he stores.
• The film ends on the spinning top, Cobb’s totem.

Not only has Nolan been able to achieve conceptual complexity successfully, but he adds a layer of meaning and existential resonance that makes the story truly profound. Woven masterfully between the sophisticated science fiction of his multi-layered story are consistent, lasting themes and questions that exist on every layer and at all points in time. The immovable, unwavering themes that last within the cacophony of narrative details, characters and other aspects are Nolan’s way of showing them as the core aspects of humanity. No matter your time nor your place, guilt, love, and the question of reality will always remain, immovable and unwavering.