Anatomy of a scene - Inception

El Newburger and Nadiya-Bhaktika Weld

El: This movie got all around great reviews. People, such as Roger Ebert and writers from the Hollywood reporter say that this is Christopher Nolan’s best work. The movie concept is quite confusing and has a lot of twists and turns but Christopher Nolan and Wally Pfister, the cinematographer, did an amazing job with blending dream and reality seamlessly. The scene being analyzed is pivotal to the rest of the movie, we learn more about the dream world and about the personalities and curiosities within Cobb and Ariadne.

Nadiya: The main theme in the film is dreaming and not just dreaming but what it means to dream and what can happen within them. There’s a lot to unpack in the scenes because there’s so much going on at once it’s mind boggling in a sense. Throughout the movie the question of “What’s a dream, and what’s reality?” lingers in the mind of the viewer and it’s never answered even at the end of the film the question is left unanswered. Which leaves it up to the viewer to determine if the ending was a dream or not. In this scene laws of physics are tested as Ariadne takes control in Cobb’s dream as you watch the scene unfold. It takes a minute to adjust to what’s happening. The theatrics of the setting are so profound it’s almost like the buildings and the streets are their own characters, shifting in every direction. In the dream sequence when Ariadne learns how to build dreams she says “I guess I thought that the dream space would be all about the visuals but it’s more about the feel of it.” This quote truly explains the nature of the film. Even though the visuals are a key part of the dreams, the look of them would be nothing without the feeling that comes with the creation of them.

El: The camera movements are a big part of this scene. The handheld recording style makes the audience feel as though they are there with Cobb and Ariadne, an outsider learning about being an architect for dreams right alongside the characters. There aren’t many POV shots in this scene and it’s mostly laid out in a two shot sequence. This can be seen as a way to show the audience that neither character has the upper-hand in this scene, they are both in new territory even though Cobb has been in dreams many times before, each one is a new challenge. Not only does the handheld shot make the audience feel like a part of the scene but it gives the scene an uncertain undertone to it. The shaky movements let us know that something is unstable about this environment; even though the characters themselves seem quite comfortable in this dream space. The shaky camera movements could also be seen as a hint of foreshadowing, that something is going to go awry soon, we then see that it does toward the end of this scene. Ariadne toyed with the dream space and started creating areas from her own memory triggering a domino effect and the dream world became dangerous very quickly. There is a constant unsettling nature in this scene and when Ariadne takes it too far the cuts become quicker and of course the shaky camera movement is still there. At this point in the scene the audience is probably very confused as to what’s happening, again we are right alongside Cobb and Ariadne. This movie is all about dream vs. reality and due to the amazing cinematography it can get confusing what is dream and what is reality. To quote from Roger Ebert’s review, “The movie is all about process, about fighting our way through enveloping sheets of reality and dream, reality within dreams, dreams without reality. It’s a breathtaking juggling act…”