Inception and Postmodernism

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1) Magic realism: Inception has the viewers guessing whether what they are watching is a dream or reality. It breaks the boundaries of what's real and what isn't. An example of this is the scene where Ariadne is sitting at the Cafe with Cobbs and he asks her to explain how they got to the cafe. The way this scene is edited it convinces the viewer that time has passed and that they walked there. However, as revealed they're both in a dream. Another example is seen at the end of the film where Cobbs returns to his children and spins his totem, it continues to spins and wobbles a little before the film cuts to black. This leaves the viewer guessing whether Cobbs is in a dream or reality.

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2) Intertextuality: In the film the Penrose stairs are referenced and used in the hotel dream so that Arthur could escape. As well as that the character Ariadne refers to the Cretan Princess in Greek mythology who is commonly associated with mazes.

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3) Pastiche: Inception uses elements from different film genres. I t pastiches Sci-Fi with the use of the dream machine and the vault that is seen in Fischer dream. Inception can also be seen as an action movie, all the fight scenes and shootouts. Lastly, there's also some elements of Neo Noir such as; flashbacks as narrative devies and Cobbs being a non-heroic hero.

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4) Simulacra: The dream worlds conceal the lack of a claimed reality. With each level of the subconscious acting as a simulation of the previous level. Limbo in the film is used to show how people can get trapped in their dreams and it's the furthest from reality.

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5) Hyperrealism: Through out the scenes that follow once Cobbs and the team have entered Fischer's dreams, all of the main characters remain unscathed. Fischer's defences kick in once they enter and except for Saito no one gets hurt. Especially once they enter the last level of the dream since it's a heavily guarded fort.





Illustration:

Fig 1: http://filming-locations.blogspot.com/2013/03/inception-cafe-debussy-scene.html

Fig 2: http://inception.wikia.com/wiki/Penrose_stairs_(dream)

Fig 3: https://georgetownvoice.com/2017/04/25/inception-a-movie-about-making-movies/