Christopher Nolan's Inception Essay

In his essay “E Unibus Pluram” David Foster Wallace critiques the fast-cutting tropes of contemporary cinema and television as meretriciously catering to our desire to transcend our average daily lives. These hysterical collages are, in his words, “unsubtle in their whispers that, somewhere, life is quicker, denser, more interesting… more lively.” We leave these films dazzled, punching the air, ready to do combat with a gang of bad guys or lose a pursuer in a car chase, but enjoy none of the edifying potential that Leo Tolstoy and other early theorizers of cinema’s potential saw in the fledgling art form. Contemporary independent cinema often works in stubborn self-conscious contrast to the transcendence aesthetic, but too

In the film Inception one follows Dominic Cobb who is a skilled thief, the absolute best in the dangerous art of extraction, stealing valuable secrets from deep within the vulnerable subconscious while the mind is in the dream state. Cobb's rare ability has landed him a job with a corporate espionage to try and earn his way back home after he has lost everything he has ever loved. This final job could give him his life back but only if he can complete the seemly impossible task of inception. Cobb and his team of highly trained architects and extractors have one chance to complete their task. Now instead of stealing an idea they must supplant a new one. Failure is not an option for Cobb and he has taken extra care to exclude information

When the film The Matrix debuted in 1999, it was an instant box office success that captivated many viewers. However throughout the featured famed actors, costumes, special effects and fight scenes, many viewers failed to notice the philosophical issues. Plato and Descartes, just like the characters in the movie are faced and driven to extreme measures to understand the world around them. They are compelled to seek knowledge in understanding what is real, evaluating the mind-body problem, and are left wondering if there is any good. These philosophical features of the movie have raised questions and have made it an interesting film to watch. While many viewers can agree that The Matrix is highly action packed, not all can truly appreciate

“The Dream thrives on generalization, on limiting the number of possible questions, on privileging immediate answers. The Dream is the enemy of all art, courageous thinking, and honest writing. And it became clear that this was not just for the dreams concocted by Americans to justify themselves, but also for the dreams that I had conjured to replace them”(Coates 55).

The Matrix is the war between man and machine, and the possibility that reality is a deception. In a sense, the Matrix is a constant struggle of identity and reality. This struggle of identity and reality is based around the character of Thomas Anderson, an ordinary person living a mundane life.

Your analysis should introduce the essay and summarize its main points and its thesis. Your

In the film industry, there are directors who merely take someone else’s vision and express it in their own way on film, then there are those who take their own visions and use any means necessary to express their visions on film. The latter of these two types of directors are called auteurs. Not only do auteurs write the scripts from elements that they know and love in life, but they direct, produce, and sometimes act in their films as well. Three prime examples of these auteurs are: Kevin Smith, Spike Lee and Alfred Hitchcock.

The first section will explore how the philosophical question of determining dream from reality is brought up in the movie, Inception. By using scenes and dialogue from the movie, the personal dilemma of determining dream from reality for Cobb will be illustrated. The second section will use Descartes’ Rationalist theory and Hume’s Empiricist theory to examine Cobb’s dilemma and to explain the challenges faced by one who questions whether they are dreaming or in reality. In the third section, the writer of this paper will provide advice to Cobb on how to handle his dilemma of dream versus reality and compare and contrast which philosopher, Descartes or Hume, would agree with that advice. The paper ends with a conclusion highlighting the philosophical question of whether one can determine the difference between dreaming and reality, Cobb’s dilemma of dream versus reality, and how Descartes and Hume would view it.

Imagine living through life completely bound and facing a reality that doesn’t even exist. The prisoners in Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” are blind from true reality as well as the people in the movie “The Matrix” written and directed by the Wachowski brothers. They are given false images and they accept what their senses are telling them, and they believe what they are experiencing is all that really exists. Plato the ancient Greek philosopher wrote “The Allegory of the Cave”, to explain the process of enlightenment and what true reality may be. In the movie “The Matrix”, Neo (the main character) was born into a world of illusions called the matrix. His true reality is being controlled by the puppet- handlers called the machines who

Usually at least once in a lifetime a person will question whether a dream was reality or not. It is rare to think “I am just dreaming” in a dream. In the 1990s movie Total Recall the director, Paul Verhoeven, attempts to illustrate the puzzling question of “what is reality and what is not?” With Arnold Schwarzenegger in this futuristic flick, the director cleverly confuses the audience about what is “real” in the movie, making one doubt each previous scene. Total Recall begins with the main character, Douglas Quaid, on a mission to decipher a reoccurring dream that takes place in Mars. His curiosity and frustrations take him to ReKall Inc. who has a specialty in a very

The greatest pieces of abstract work either allow the viewer to create their own interpretation or require a clear explanation the artist; the 1966 film Blow-Up is no exception. Both the editing choices and mise-en-scène throughout the film, by the final scene the audience is left with great uncertainty. Quite similar to Inception (Christopher Nolan) or One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Miloš Forman), viewers question the reality of events or even characters. Without clear declaration Antonioni causes the viewer to question the events witnessed. Presumptively, the main curiosity from the viewer pertains to the final scene where our main character, Thomas (David Hemmings), seems to vanish from the same field shown during the opening credits.

2001: A Space Odyssey is just that: a long wandering voyage of the body and mind. Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clark collaborated brilliantly. In examining both works, the film and the novel, there are certainly differences, yet the theme and overall idea coincide thoroughly. That this was made in the 1960's augments both accomplishments. The visuals, seen in 2004, are still captivating. What they must've seemed like in 1968! I flout those who received this movie poorly in those days. Would I have received it as well without having a preconceived idea of its greatness? I can only hope I would have known what I was watching.

In service of this argument, the essay unfolds in three parts. The first section sketches an appropriate framework for understanding how cinema marshals and moves viewers by engaging them in a fully embodied experience.4 The second section offers a brief overview of the film's plot before turning to an analysis of its triptych narrative and affective development. The third and final section considers the methodological, critical, and theoretical implications suggested by the preceding analysis.

The good thing about films is that we not only have the opportunity to choose from a wide selection of different genres, but also compare them and understand their purpose in the world. The Horror genre has used the basic principles throughout time, and as a result, films of this type have not proven to be as timeless as another genre: Science Fiction/Fantasy. At first, these two genres might at times seem similar as they have at several occasions been blended together, but their basic, common theme serves different meanings about humans. I shall compare and contrast these two genres and focus on both classic films and modern films. From the Horror genre perspective I shall discuss Psycho (1960) and The Mist (2007), while in the Science Fiction/Fantasy genre I will examine 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), and Serenity (2005). Although the Science Fiction/Fantasy genre and the Horror Genre share some similarities, the differences lie in their focus on human progress.

The intention of this essay is to discuss the romantic notion of a film director who has etched their own cinematic vision into the body of their film work, and whether the theory and practice is dead and an infringement of the spectator’s imagination and is it the spectator who finds meaning in the film. I will be closely looking at critical material, primarily André Bazin and Roland Barthes and applying them to several case study films directed by Christopher Nolan including The Following (1998), The Prestige (2006) and Inception (2010), to examine whether Nolan possesses the qualities of an auteur and if so, does that imply an ideological view of what the auteur resembles or an artistic one.