Detailed Review of the Movie 'Inception' and its Comparison with the Anime 'Parika'

Inception is a 2010 film made by Christopher Nolan and produced by Emma Thomas. The main character is one of the most popular film stars - Leonardo Dicaprio. In the story he acted as a professional thief who steals the information by infiltrating the targets subconscious. The main character – Dom, is offered a deal which he is not able to refuse. It is a chance to work for people who are able to erase his criminal history. In exchange he has to implant an idea into a targeted mind. The job is very risky but that may be the only way for him to get back to his family.

Christopher Nolan actually came up with the idea in 2000. Later on, he wrote 80-page treatment of the film that was presented to Warner Bros after the completion of “Insomnia”. The treatment that was presented was based on lucid dreaming. It means that the person who is dreaming is aware about it and understands that it is not real. During it the dreamer is able to control everything inside it to some degree. The idea was complicated and to visualize it to the audience is no easy job. For the sake of the film Christopher Nolan decided that he needed more time and experience before making the production this complex. Nolan retired the production and instead worked on his other projects like Batman and The Prestige. Fortunately the treatment was revised and purchased in 2009 by Warner Bros after the huge success of “The Dark Knight” which made $1 billion worldwide.

The film was shot in six countries, from Tokyo to Canada. The budget was around 160 million $ and split between Legendary and Warner Bros. After the premiere in London on 2010, July 8 it became the fourth highest-grossing film of 2010. Even the critics praised the film to have outstanding screenplay, cast, effects, sound and cinematography. Inception won four Academy Awards and gained great popularity which it certainly deserved. The film made over 800$ million worldwide.

Inside the plot, the main character - Dom Cobb is an “extractor”. He and his partner Arthur are using experimental military technology to infiltrate the targeted subconscious and extract valuable information that they possess through the shared dream world. Unfortunately on his last job, his wife, Mal, betrays them and eventually they fail the mission. When they wake up, they also wake up the second time. That is explained later on in the story that the dream they were in was actually a dream within a dream. And Dom with Arthur was trying to extract the information from the target – Saito. Of course what Dom and Arthur were doing with the shared dream world wasn’t legal and the company that they worked for are not the type to easily forgive for failing the mission. In the story as Saito appears again, he explains that the whole thing was only a test and Cobb passed it. Saito offers him a deal – if Dom is able to do the job he might be able to come back to his family back home. The job is not easy, but it’s worth the risk for his family. The deal is – if Cobb is able to make an inception, his criminal records would be gone. The idea of it is to plant an idea into a targeted mind and make them think that the idea is their own. The conversation between Saito and Cobb ends with a quote that is also seen later in the film “So… do you want to take a leap of fate or become an old man filled with regret, waiting to die alone?” Of course Cobb has to accept the deal as there is no other way to go back home. After gathering the right people they still needed a plan. Of course no idea is simple when you’re doing an inception, so preparing for anything unexpected was vital. Cobb and his team want to subconsciously repair the relationship of a targeted son and father to break his Empire. While the plan is in motion and they enter the dream within a dream the only way to proceed with the targeted son – Fischer is to make him fight against his own subconscious by making him realize it’s a dream. Unfortunately they are short on time and have to proceed to the third level of dream. Cobb convinces Fischer to do so and jumps right in to the deeper level. However there, Mal appears as Cobb’s projection of his wife and betrays him once again. She shoots Fischer and makes the mission even more complicated for the crew. Eventually they succeed on bringing the Fischer to his father’s projection and so Cobb full fills his part of the deal. But unfortunately, while doing the job, Saito dies within the third level of the dream and so ends up in Limbo. Cobb stays in the deepest level of dream – to save Saito. In the end Cobb meets Saito as an old man, waiting to die alone, and uses the same quote to remind him that he is still dreaming within Limbo. They all wake up in the airplane and as Saito makes a call – Cobb is finally able to meet his children back home. Or is it still a dream?

In the project each character is representing a filming industry role. For example Leonardo Dicaprio (Dom Cobb) is a director that gives him parallels to Christopher Nolan. Arthur is the producer. Ariadne is the production designer. Eames represents actor and the main target Fischer is the audience.

Nolan himself says “It’s rare that you can identify yourself so clearly in a film. This film is very clear for me”.

Ariadne is an intelligent graduate student in Paris. She was offered a job by Dom Cobb – to design three complete dream layer mazes for the targeted Fischer inception. Since it is a very dangerous task she wouldn’t accept the job right away. Of course Ariadne wanted to see more about the dream world and so she came back to Dom. She couldn’t pull herself away from this unique opportunity to explore such world. She is naturally curious and very creative. Ariadne also has the ability to think out of the box that works well inside the dreams. She is very perceptive and tries to help Cobb with his personal problems. Within the plot she designs three dream layers for the inception job, despite being with the least experience for the job. It made it obvious that she was essential to the crew.

As Christopher Nolan says: “In writing the script for ‘Inception,’ it was very important to me that there be a conduit for the audience—a character who is being shown this world for the first time and is eager to explore it. That’s how the character of Ariadne was born. It was also very important for the audience to see Cobb through Ariadne’s eyes and get to the core of that character. And when I met with Ellen, she had the perfect combination of freshness and savvy and maturity beyond her years. She is an extraordinary performer with incredible creativity and an innate curiosity of her own and, therefore, naturally infused Ariadne with those qualities. Ellen was able to balance the emotional life of her character with the need for Ariadne to bring the audience in and show them the truth.”

Arthur is Cobb’s right hand. He takes care of the details and verifies that everything would be as planned. He is fascinated by his own work, that’s mainly why he is continuing working together with Cobb. It’s because for him dream sharing is not a job, but an inspiration since he first heard about it. “He wouldn’t risk his life for a good paycheck. He loves it”.

Arthur is the most logical and skeptical person in the crew. His mind is stable and organized and is usually used for the second level of the dream. He is also intelligent, knowledgeable and is decent in Martial Arts as is seen in the scene where he defeats several guards.

Eames is an essential individual to the team. He is able to project any person he wants inside the dream and mirror the person behavior, thus making the inception job less impossible. In some sense Eames gives off a James Bond vibe as he smooth talks and flirts with an English accent. He is also able to explain any complex topic in a simple matter.

As for why he accepts the job - he appreciates the infinite capabilities inside dreams and mainly loves finding out what people are locking up in their mind. As seen in the story, he is quite capable of defending himself, showing that he may have had some self-defense training in the military.

Robert Fischer is the main target of the inception job that was offered by Saito to Dom Cobb. His father, while on his death bed, leaves his son with multi-billion dollar empire. Unfortunately Fischer doesn’t look happy as he is left with all sorts of psychological problems like not being able to live up to his father’s standards, thus making the inception possible.

Fischer is calm and has self-control, but is suffering from the desire to make his father proud of him. Sadly enough this desire changed into a hatred that appeared from realization that he may never get the fathers approval. Cobb and his crew took advantage of Fischer’s desire for the approval and reflected his father’s last words to him making the inception complete.

Dominick Cobb is the main character of the film. He is well known for his experience and knowledge as an extractor. Once he was also a gifted Architect, but now unable to create. Cobb has traumatic experience that appeared after the death of his wife. He is unable to leave his past behind, but later on in the story is being forced to face his wife’s projection, thus overcoming her tragic death.

Dom is able to easily read people and is a skilled extractor. He is trained in combat, shooting and planning. He also is experienced in stealth training and neutralizing the projections.

Paprika is a 1993 science-fiction psychological thriller novel written by Yasutaka Tsutsui. A manga adaptation of the novel was released by Reiji Hagiwara in 1995 but wasn’t published until around 2003. Later on the novel was adapted as an animated film in 2006, which eventually also adapted itself into a second manga.

The story goes about a research psychologist who uses some sort of device that creates a possibility for a therapist to enter the patients dream in order to help them.

Plot

The time takes place in the near future, where the new solution to help the patients is called a dream therapy. It is a new way to help those with mental disorders. By using the device “DC Mini” you’re able to view the person’s dream. Main character Doctor Atsuko Chiba starts using the device illegally to help out patients in need. She uses her alter ego called “Paprika” that she creates within the dream to guide people through.

Characters

Atsuko Chiba is the head of the DC mini device development team. She uses the device to treat the patients by entering their dreams with her alter ego Paprika. Since the system is still under development, she uses it in secret.

Toshimi Konakawa is a detective who appears in a dream with Paprika. Throughout the story he tries to uncover what is causing the anxiety dreams that he sees.

Kosaku Tokita is the inventor of DC mini device. He is irresponsible and immature, that’s why he doesn’t even consider the consequences that the device might bring.

Paprika is a cheerful girl that acts as a guide for the patients inside their dreams. She is Atsuko’s alter ego that is never meaning to do anyone any harm.

Comparung Inception and Paprika

Many people are talking about Inception like it was based on Paprika, since it was first to come out. And even thought Christopher Nolan never admitted it, it is still possible that it influenced him subconsciously. You can’t blame him for something like that. But you also can’t blame people for not trusting. Some of the scenes look almost identical, so the doubt of Inception film originality remains. Strangely enough the most fascinating element of the relationship between Inception & Paprika is not their similarities, but how these similarities can exist when both the Inception and Paprika has a fundamental difference. It is obvious that Inception is inspired by Surrealism, but Paprika seems like a Surrealistic film. Over all, without the visual effects and the main idea of the dream world, there are not many similar things left to discuss about both of these projects.

Surrealism

Surrealism was an artistic and literary movement that proposed intellectual movement that supports reason and individualism. Basically it means reuniting conscious and unconscious realms of experience so that the dream world and fantasy world would become one. In Paprika the creator used surrealism to illustrate his characters dreams and subconscious images. It helps to completely shape the films environment.

Christopher Nolan managed to use the paradoxical stairs perfectly. It shows that Nolan was inspired by the art of M.C. Escher. It is clear since Nolan wanted to build a paradoxical staircase that worked, but it was impossible. They built the staircase and turned to visual effects to make the stairs look like actual paradox through camera.

In general originality tends to be misunderstood. People are telling stories for thousands and thousands of years. That makes everything a rip off something. But that doesn’t mean that it can’t be original and unique. Original most of the time means something more than it might be. And Inception shows it perfectly, as it is creative and unique, but often it is not called original because something with similarities was created before. In this case, people believe that it’s a copy because some of the scenes are looking almost identical.

Interesting thoughts about Inception

Team of CGI worked on “Limbo City” scenes with DiCaprio and Page for 9 months.

One of the most important parts of the film is also the song used to cue extractors to wake up from the dream. Composer Hans Zimmer went to find the original master for the song, and so after he found it, he extracted one beat that afterwards he modified.

As amazing as it sounds Christopher Nolan finished earlier than expected and under the budget. It perfectly shows just how serious Nolan is and how efficient he does his job as a filmmaker.

Interesting thoughts about Paprika

Paprika represented the hidden desires and interests of the main character Dr. Chiba. In fact the whole story is stating how people are hiding their true identity and instead creating false identities that are presented in reality.

In the end main character found out that her ego was trying to stay socially acceptable and that’s mainly why she was feeling down. As she was trying to be normal, she forgot to be herself.

In general both the film Inception and the Novel Paprika are different, but have surrealistic similarities. Some might think that it means that Christopher Nolan has been influenced by the anime or novel after all, but there is no real evidence for that.