Inception (2010) & Postmodernism

Inception, directed by Christopher Nolan is a sci-fi thriller released in 2010. The

film is filled with postmodern ideas and concepts, that create feelings of
confusion and disillusion.
The film is intentionally designed to be confusing and disorientating, with
scenes set within dream within dreams, like most of Nolan’s best works require
multiple viewings to fully grasp. The movie could be seen as quite meta and
self-referential in the way that it creates this idea of the lie of filmmaking,
through the way it displays different sorts of films, art and culture via the
dreams present in the film, writer John Avery describes, “Inception is an
allegory for movie-making, (with characters representing the audience, the
director, director of photography, etc) so depicting filmmaking as a lie or
deception is easily a sceptical interpretation of culture/art/fiction. Which is the
definition of Postmodernism.” (Avery, 2015) This demonstrates the
postmodernist view of the film via the way the audience experiences these
different forms of dream representing different scenarios of filmmaking. The
way the film is also quite non-linear and confusing forces the audience to drop
their pre-existing knowledge of film and focus on each scene. The postmodern
nature of the film put the audience in a different place to most films and almost
makes them sceptical of what is happening and weather it is a dream or not.
This almost allows the audience to become its own director and director what
they want to believe, this is also in relation to the open-ended nature of the film.

The film Is set in subconscious state of mind and focuses on dreams, focusing
on dreams is a very postmodern idea as dreams defy the confinements of
everyday life and rules, they create realties completely in contrast to the ones of
the real world, theorist Hörnqvist, states, “In other words, dreams lack the
consensus that defines the routines of modern waking life. In sleep, the ironies
and contingencies of dreaming penetrate the modern metanarratives that
prioritize waking life. Individuals navigate their dreamscapes not by accessing
the familiar metanarratives of waking life, but by an uncanny immersion in
ironies and contingencies that are ignored or made irrelevant in waking
consciousness. It is as though postmodern deconstruction occupies the
foreground in dreaming.” (Hörnqvist, 2004) Dreams can be whatever we want
and don’t have to conform to the modernist views of the world and are in fact
the complete opposite of what they stand for. In relation to Inception, Nolan
creates completely impossible dream worlds and realities that show the
postmodern nature of the film.

Another postmodern technique that is featured in the film are the intertextual
aspects of the film, Inception references the famous illusion and artwork of the
never-ending stairs, “One such detail is an optical illusion that is brought to the
screen in the form of an ever-ascending staircase. It is introduced by Arthur
(Joseph Gordon-Levitt) to Ariadne (Ellen Page) as a way to construct a never-
ending dreamscape within an otherwise finite world. The moment plays out
quickly, and, as with many of director Christopher Nolan's scenes, it is assumed
that the audience will keep up.” (Harshbarger, 2010) This combines the idea of
artwork, or culture that everyone is familiar with and wreathing the knowledge
into the film, showing a postmodern technique of intertextual ideas.

In conclusion through Inception, Nolan displays elements of postmodern

thinking and ideas, that aim to confuse and make the audience sceptical of
what’s going in front them.