Paul Sandu – abridged for Henry Makow.com July 31, 2010
INCEPTION is a new blockbuster movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio. It has been dubbed a Science Fiction action thriller but it may be more appropriate to call it a Psych - Fiction action mystery movie. The premise is that technology has made it possible to extract information from other peoples' dreams.
DiCaprio is Dorn Cobb, an 'Extractor', a modern day dream robber. The movie has a feel of a synchronized swimming drill, where everyone plays their part as choreographed, but there is a sense of unreality that makes it impossible to fully relate to any of the characters. There are plenty of car chases, big explosions, and fantastical landscapes and cityscapes; it may be more accurate to term these dreamscapes since they are not to be found in the real world.
The catchphrase on all the promo materials for the film reads: YOUR MIND IS THE SCENE OF THE CRIME! Therefore the person that commits the crime of stealing the victim's thoughts is a criminal (the victim is cleverly misrepresented as 'Subject' in the movie, and is even cleverly made to participate in the crime).
However the main character, Cobb is portrayed as anything but a criminal and the morality, or rather immorality, and the ethics of the crime are not discussed. [The implication is that the dreamer is the criminal. The movie prepares the way for "thought crimes." Predictive programming. Ultimately Illuminati bankers want to own the oxygen you breathe. -Makow]
The clinical nature of the deeds of these modern day Ewan Camerons makes the sympathetic portrayal of Cobb as deceptive, for in real life he would have been a cruel, cold hearted, and merciless clinician like Mengele not a soft hearted thief like the Humphrey Bogart character, Rick Blaine, in Casablanca.
By the way, this was also true in De Caprio's earlier film
Shutter Island, where the crimes of Freudian psychiatry were cleverly covered up, and portrayed as good and beneficial for the victims (the subjects). Even though the horrors of modern psychiatry were alluded to, in the end were all shown to be justifiable, even lobotomies, such as shown in the brilliant Jack Nicholson film,
One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest.
An interesting idea that is central to the storyline is that of a mind's defences against outside intrusion. This is what makes both extraction and inception a challenging task. The training of the subconscious to defend itself against unwanted intrusions is an important part of the storyline, which also helps the filmmakers blow up things real good in the vein of 'The Matrix' movies, and provides the means to incorporate car chases, Hummers on skis and other innovative ideas for moviegoers who like big explosions.
I believe the story would have been better if they had dwelt more on the psychology, the nature of reality versus dreams, rather than James Bond type incendiaries going off every few minutes but it is what it is, and I am sure the storyline was intentionally made action friendly to appeal to a larger audience, a mission in which the moviemakers seems to have succeeded.
One major theme of the movie presented in a very low key form is the idea of 'Sedation'. In one scene, reminiscent of the opium dens of 19th century China, patrons were heavily sedated to escape the real world. They had become so dependent on the sedation, and the accompanying dreams that the dream world had become their real world. The chemist, more appropriately the druggist, concocted powerful potions to provide the patrons with a hallucinogenic experience in the vein of Timothy Leary's LSD induced hallucinations.
By deceptively calling their powerful hallucinogenics, 'Sedatives' the movie makers again introduce the idea that altered states of the mind achieved through powerful mind altering drugs are a positive thing for the 'subject'.
The very idea of a powerful sedative to induce a hypnotic sleep raises the question of how the extractors were able to maintain their own consciousness on a waking level, when they themselves were under the influence of very powerful drugs that were required to create multi layered dreams?
In conclusion I would say that INCEPTION is an above average movie with many layers, especially the subject of a dream within a dream within a dream, and how the mind is really like a networked computer that can be accessed by just about anyone with the right tools.
However, it raises more questions than it answers, which in itself is not a bad thing because the process of trying to find the answers makes one think, and also makes for some interesting discussions. Nonetheless, the movie is far from ideal, and it is the ideals of the movie that are most troubling.
Although the motto of the movie is that 'Your mind is the scene of the crime', none of the perpetrators of these insidious crimes is identified as a criminal. No one is held accountable for drugging people against their will, and stealing their most precious thoughts and ideas from them. None of us would approve of thugs who violently batter their way into a person's home, and steal their most valuable possessions, yet this is exactly what the protagonists in this movie were doing.
And did they hang for their crimes in the end? On the contrary they got a 'Get out of jail free' card! The hidden message seems to be that the end justifies the means, and that philosophy is never justifiable. So when viewing the film, please look at Cobb and Co. as violent criminals, not sympathetic villains, look upon their targets (no matter how despicable) as victims, not subjects; only then will you be able to see beyond the dream into the realities of dream sharing, which is the subject of this movie.
Trailers:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Sd0ff1sbJU&feature=related
www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3XzUYd6nrU&feature=channel
Complete review here
Related - Google and CIA fund Technology to Arrest You for Thought Crimes based on Net Surfing
www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/07/exclusive-google-cia/
Source: www.henrymakow.com/movie_inception_makes_dreams_p.html
Last updated 02/08/2010
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