Ideology in Christopher Nolan's Inception
2012; Issue: 88 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2562-2528
Autores Tópico(s)Intelligence, Security, War Strategy
ResumoIn West, propaganda films are nowadays an exceedingly rare art form. Few filmmakers are interested in making didactic arguments for or against the capitalist order or Western empire; investors willing to fund such work are undoubtedly even rarer. As a case in point, Christopher Nolan's Inception (1) is a conventional Hollywood suspense movie that completely omits any explicit reference to politics. Its narrative focuses on a corporate thief named Dom Cobb/Leonardo DiCaprio, as he frantically grapples with aftermath of his wife's suicide, while also trying to return home to his young children. The trauma of excessive guilt and necessity of grieving are film's most obvious and important themes. Yet despite Inception's supposed focus on individual psychology, this foregrounding of Cobb's emotional turmoil in fact sublimates and rationalizes some disturbingly violent behaviour. Hired by a corporation to neutralize an important competitor, Cobb and his associates use futuristic, Matrix-like technology to invade consciousness of a man named Robert Fischer, Jr./Cillian Murphy. They then succeed in implanting a suggestion in Fischer's mind that causes him to sabotage his own financial interests (the titular inception). By bracketing these acts as uncontroversial circumstance of Cobb's emotional struggle, Inception covertly legitimizes routine and far-reaching violence used to sustain corporate empires. In practice, if not by design, film proves to be a highly sophisticated vehicle for capitalist propaganda. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In production notes to film, Nolan indicates that [i]t was very important to [Leonardo DiCaprio] that [the emotional life of his character] be guiding thread of story, and with it he is able to draw audience through [film's] complex story in a very clear fashion. (2) DiCaprio's priorities are indeed evident from very first scenes of film. Cobb's unresolved grief for his wife Mal/Marion Cotillard is singularly responsible for failure of his preliminary mission into dreams of Saito/Ken Watanabe (his eventual employer). As he gathers a team of criminals and prepares to invade Fischer's mind, Cobb is repeatedly confronted with danger that Mal poses, both in regards to his own psyche and his corporate mission. Finally, and most importantly, Cobb's mission is accomplished only after he definitively rejects Mal's claims about nature of their relationship, and accepts his share of guilt for her death. It is this symbolic resolution--as much as success of team's real mission--that allows Cobb to return home to America and his children. The lack of emotional tension and conspicuous absence of Fischer during film's denouement is a final signal that Cobb's psychic pain is driving force of film. This emotional journey, however, does not merely function as an engine for film's plot. The role given to Ellen Page's character, Ariadne, suggests that there is a duplicitous agenda behind this emphasis on Cobb's psyche. As young university student recruited by Cobb to design mission's dream-world, Ariadne functions as a proxy for audience and as Cobb's personal psychotherapist. Nolan has admitted that [i]n writing script for 'Inception,' it was very important to me that there be a conduit for audience--a character who is being shown this world for first time and is eager to explore it. That's how character of Ariadne was born. It was also very important for audience to see Cobb through Ariadne's eyes and get to core of that character. (3) The very origin of Ariadne's name affirms this connection: i.e., a mythical Greek princess who helps minotaur-slayer Theseus to navigate a labyrinth. Coaxing and guiding Cobb through his darkest memories, Ariadne both demands and provides more objective interpretations of what she sees and what she is told. …
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