Inception (2010): When we dream, do we accumulate capital?

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Wilson, Sheena
  • Anselmi, William

• Christopher Nolan’s Inception is first and foremost a film that unveils for the viewer the process of creating cinema as art. Insofar as technological developments have accentuated the phantasmagorical in cinema, as illustrated by the use of digital manipulation in Avatar, Inception, by contrast, concentrates on the role that cinema has played since its outset. Besides the fantastical and entertaining elements of mainstream film, cinema has developed a blind faith in technological progress as well as an overall sustaining economic discourse that has transformed history into a titillating show of a cul de sac. For cinema has characterized a displacement that allows the viewing public a sense of ubiquity, being in more than one place at once (from the split screen onwards); embracing the exotic as the possible; and by moving through foreign lands and cultures (something that television has familiarized at the nuclear level while erasing public space as a locus of political participation. Inception is then a mechanism of social criticism that attempts to provide viewers the necessary “kick” to reawaken from the dream.

• Date created

  2015-04-15

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Motion picture review

• Type of Item

  Article (Published)

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R39J2X

• License

  © 2011 William Anselmi & Sheena Wilson. This version of this article is open access and can be downloaded and shared. The original author(s) and source must be cited.