was it all a dream now in a dream our
mind continuously does this we create
and perceive our world simultaneously in
our mind does this so well that we don't
even know it's happening
surrealism is based on the belief and
superior reality of certain forms of
previously neglected associations in the
omnipotence of dream in the
disinterested play of thought so goes
the definition of surrealism as laid out
by Andre Burton in surrealist manifesto
that 1924 document inspired a wave of
thought the belief in superiority of
dream logic in the decades after Freud
first costed the subconscious artists
created works to express the
inexpressible the subconscious the realm
of Dreams a movie about dreams ought to
be surreal one might think a movie like
Christopher Nolan's inception about
people who enter dreams has the making
of surrealist film a journey into
greater subconscious so what does
Christopher Nolan dream of shootouts car
chases a siege a mountain fortress the
stuff of James Bond movies of wish
fulfillment fantasies and the dreams
themselves are highly structured things
layers kicks cause-effect the logic of a
computer program of a video game of a
Hollywood screenplay
this is not surrealism this is
surrealism Satoshi Khan's paprika like a
dream it's wild and irrational a group
of doctors use a dream machine it goes
haywire and dream merges with reality
Chiba the doctor meets paprika her alter
ego her dream some paprika can
manipulate the dream she touches a piece
of the dream and it shatters like glass
revealing a new passage in Inception
dreams and realities stay in separate
layers and no one meets their dream self
but still a group of people use a dream
machine a woman manipulates the dream
she touches a piece of the dream and it
shatters like glass revealing a new
passage but this is not surrealism this
is surrealism David Lynch's Twin Peaks
like a dream it's alien and terrifying a
man Dale Cooper dreams one night and so
discovers a great truth he's years older
in the dream deep Reds like a womb or
like hell a strange man who speaks
backwards she's like nothing
but does this G look
almost like that you still eat wash or
or Falmer and Dale Cooper meets Laura
Palmer a dead woman with whom he's
obsessed much later after going deeper
into the stream work Cooper looks into a
mirror his true self looks back in
Inception a man has a dream and he's a
years older another man looks into a
mirror his true self looks back no deep
hellish Reds no strange backwards
talking men but a man enters a dream
nonetheless looking for truth and there
he meets mal a dead woman with whom he's
obsessed but this is not surrealism this
is surrealism Jean Cocteau's the blood
of a poet like a dream it's disjointed
and rough graceful and elusive it starts
with the tower beginning to fall and
artist has made a sculpture that has
come to life the sculpture tells him to
enter a dream and he does falling into a
pool of water to take him out of one
dream and into another inside this new
dream he peers to walk along the walls
as if gravity has been flipped at the
end of the film the tower finishes
falling the entire film takes place
inside of a split second
in Inception like wise men fight on the
walls as if gravities being flipped a
man falls into a pool of water to exit
one dream and enter another and an
eternity takes place between the
beginning of a fall and the end of James
Bond Satoshi Kong David Lynch Jean
Cocteau it seems that when Christopher
Nolan dreams he dreams only of other
movies but the movie that's most on his
mind is likely this one dziga vertov's
man with a movie camera the greatest
ever movie about moviemaking in 1929 in
Russia vertov's set out to show the
modern soviet city in its workings and
in doing so show moviemaking and its
workings look at this shot a car
speeding body the camera speeds with it
cut to a wider shot we see the cameraman
getting the shot
our mind fills in the blanks and
imagines vertov himself
getting the shot of the man getting the
shot layers of reality a movie within a
movie a dream within a dream
Syke ver Tov was a daredevil look at
this stunning sequence he's waiting for
a train he sets up a shot at the
oncoming engine placing his camera on
the tracks and he gets this drilling
shot it seems like he's been run over
elsewhere
someone's waking up as if the Train
startled her out of a dream but then we
see that he's fine he dug beneath the
tracks to get the shot carefully
obfuscating the trick until the last
minute as a punchline no such punchline
in this sequence Cobb and mal are also
waiting for a train and Nolan shoots
them using similar camera trickery to
make it look like they've been run over
and they wake up startled out of a dream
see caberta loved such camera tricks
here he experiments with the
state-of-the-art special effect
double exposure he uses double exposure
to seemingly fold a city in half
Nolan also uses state-of-the-art special
effects CGI to seemingly fold a city in
half Dziga Vertov loved spinning in man
with a movie camera wheel spin gears
spin spools of string spin the film
itself spins spun but a hand-cranked
camera even the directors own name spins
his real name was Dennis Kaufman a pole
in Russia he took the more Russian
sounding pseudonym seek aver Tov which
translates to spinning top man with a
movie camera isn't surrealism per se
though it has its moments of fantasy
mostly about its camera a man appears on
top of the camera the camera dances on
its tripod and in this memorable shot
the camera lens appears before an eye
Vertov as part of a radical movement
called the keynotes Kino oki movie eyes
the camera is a dream machine showing
separate moments and creating a new
meaning out of their combination one
plus one equals three Vertov aimed to
show the truth about the modern Soviet
city even though his ideal city doesn't
exist it's actually several cities
Kharkiv Kiev and Odessa stitched
together a shot made here shot made
there parts of many cities to create the
idea of one city likewise mal and Cobb
build a dream space together borrowing
from many real locations to create the
idea of a happy life together an idea so
compelling that mal eventually prefers
the ideal life to her real one it's a
common theme in Nolan's filmography the
allure of the lie his films often end
with characters choosing fiction over
fat but comforting lie whether it be
lying to an audience lying to a city or
even lying to yourself like many of
Nolan's films Inception is about
powerful lies that Trump painful
realities
we want to be fooled inception simply
shows us how we are fooled a popular
theory of Inception is that it's not
about dreams at all it's actually a
metaphor for moviemaking Cobbs team
structured much like a film production
everyone with a distinct role to play
producer the one who runs the dream and
makes everything go smoothly
screenwriter the one who builds the
dream and gives everyone material to
work with
lead actor special effects supervisor
executive producer and of course
director who bears more than a passing
resemblance to the director of Inception
himself all working to perform for an
audience their goal as with all artists
is to plant an idea in the audience's
head because inception like all films
like all fiction is a series of lies it
is a set of misdirects and half-truths a
dream feels real when you're in it like
a movie even though you're never looking
at people you're only looking at
captured light shaped like people and
yet for the total runtime you think I
believe this we believe that this is
first-class seating on an airplane and
not a cleverly disguised soundstage that
this man is a wanted criminal hiding
from the law and not Leonardo DiCaprio
one of the most famous most photographed
men on the planet that this scene shot
in Tangier is actually taking place in
Mombasa 4,000 miles away Tangier is
closer to New York City that it is to
Mombasa this scene in front of the cafe
WC n to the scenery exploding CGI fakery
of course yet we accept this sudden
change in location from frisian rooftop
to a seemingly unrelated shot of a
warehouse then to a deli so how did we
end up here well we just
yeah
about it Ariadne how did you get here a
scene change as nothing new in cinema
but point out its strangeness and
everything goes haywire is asking us to
believe these mistruths any less strange
than asking us to believe that a city
can bend itself no one seems to be
implicitly arguing that film by its very
nature is surreal constructed dreams to
change your mind a nonsensical set of
images designed to trick you into
believing as Cocteau described it a lie
that always tells the truth
space and time orb in film as cone once
said everything warps if you think too
hard about it stops making sense but
Lynch once asked why people want art to
make sense when life doesn't make sense
and as Nolan himself said you're looking
for the secret but you won't find it
because you're not really looking you
don't really want to know you want to be
fooled
perhaps inception is surrealism after
all so was it all a dream considering
the film from this view the question
posed by the film's final shot is
utterly absurd of course it was all a
dream it's a movie isn't it no
no no alia gizabi yeah
Simon Yeti