I am very disappointed in general by Catholic movie reviewers. Any product coming out of Hollywood should be looked at with very critical eyes because the underlying philosophy is secular humanism. Inception has a subplot of suicide and euthanasia. It also has a gnostic theme that reality is just an illusion. We should not just turn off our sense of Catholic morality when we enter the movie theater. If we don’t press Hollywood on these issues, then they will continue doing what they do. Please see the following review: http://publicvigil.blogspot.com/2010/09/mad-world-of-inception.html

Another awesome video!

The ending of Inception wasn’t so much confounding, to me, as it was total [a certain barnyard vulgarity]. Next time Nolan should just put up a big “THE END” title after the final scene of his movie and then have a giant question mark fade up. I also get the feeling (from the winter wonderland dream level) that what he really wants to do is direct a second-rate Bond film (“Dream Another Day”). It kind of pains me to say it because I was really excited about “Inception” before I saw it, but “Stargate: Universe” has had more mindbending plots.

@ Victor: Thanks! I don’t know if “mind-bending” is the right word, but Nolan definitely finds some brilliant extrapolations from his initial thesis, such as the way the rolling/falling van affects the gravity in the hotel, etc. And I do think there is a riddle in the final scene that no one has yet explained to my satisfaction.

@ Michael: Your essay raises some interesting angles—in particular, the torture subtext is worth exploring—but your arguments suffer from a lack of critical rigor. For instance, you claim support for your “unreliable narrator” hypothesis—in itself definitely worthy of consideration, as I indicated even in my 30-second video above—in the suggestive character names, and even in the fact that Michael Caine was also in Nolan’s The Prestige. Actually, the suggestive character names are a familiar device of Nolan’s that says nothing about the diegetic reality or unreality of the onscreen world—and Caine is one of a number of actors that Nolan likes to work with again and again. (Caine was also in Nolan’s Batman movies, along with Ken Wantanabe and Cillian Murphy, who were also in Inception.)

You obviously feel much more certain that you know what Inception is about than I do. That said, while I’m far from certain that I know what the film is about, I’m perfectly certain that I know what it is not about.

For instance: Inception is definitely not Gnostic. That word is seriously misused and overused in contemporary cultural discussion in ways that have no meaningful relationship to historical Gnosticism. In particular, way too many movies are called “Gnostic” when they aren’t. I need to address this in the near future; thanks for raising the issue for me again.

There is a complex suicide theme (not a euthanasia theme)—but it must be noted that suicide is portrayed as a tragically wrong, solipsistic, selfish act. It is precisely the wrong choice made by a character who has lost faith in the reality of the real world and the context of her relationships with those around her, which is the opposite of Gnosticism. Inception is about making a leap of faith to reject illusion, but it’s also about making a leap of faith to accept perceived reality as reality.

I’ve written about the importance of not “turning off our sense of Catholic morality when we enter the movie theater” for over a decade now. I have emphasized again and again and again the Church’s teaching in Inter Mirifica regarding the “absolute primacy of the objective moral order” which “surpasses and fittingly coordinates all other spheres of human affairs — the arts not excepted — even though they be endowed with notable dignity” (IM 6). We may disagree on the interpretation of films, but not on the fundamental criteria by which they should be evaluated.

There is no ubiquitous “underlying philosophy” governing Hollywood movies. Secular humanism is certainly an important influence in contemporary culture, but it’s far from monolithic. As for “pressing Hollywood on these issues” in order to prevent them from “continuing to do what they do,” exactly what sort of “pressure” do you imagine we can bring to bear to make them do otherwise? I call out problematic or objectionable moral content in movies when I see it, and encourage my readers not to see objectionable films. Beyond that, efforts to “pressure” Hollywood are often more likely to have an effect that is the opposite of the intended one—if they have any effect at all.

Michael: you may need to watch Inception again more carefully. Whatever it might do, the film most certainly does not endorse Mal’s suicide, or her idea that all reality is an illusion.

It seems that my two-sentence response is superfluous in view of your in-depth one. Feel free to delete it if you want.

@ Pachyderminator: Not at all, I appreciate the converging opinion!

That said, it’s fair to note that the question is more complicated because there is also the “suicide” motif within Dom and Mal’s dreamworld, in which they return to the real world by lying down in the path of an oncoming train. That could be interpreted as a pro-suicide motif, though I think it’s more reasonable to see that scene primarily in light of the dream-lore convention that dying in a dream merely awakens the dreamer. Certainly Mal’s subsequent suicide seems clearly to add a powerful anti-suicide motif that more than counters the train scene. It could even be argued that Mal’s suicide undermines the seemingly “good suicide” of the train scene, since Dom’s efforts to bring Mal back to reality in this way ultimately fail. In that sense, one could say that in the world of Inception suicide is never the answer.

In that sense, one could say that in the world of Inception suicide is never the answer.

 
Perhaps. I note, however, that the psychological problems leading to Mal’s suicide were not caused by the dream suicide itself, but by the inception Cobb performed which made the suicide a thinkable option for her. If she, like Cobb, had realized of her own free will that she was living in a dream, the dream suicide would not have led to waking problems. I would rather say that in the world of Inception mind control is never the answer. That is, failing to respect someone’s independent agency is never ultimately for their good. As I see it, this adds another dimension of complexity by calling into serious question the “catharsis” granted to Fischer. No one in the film explores this point, but it’s there for anyone with eyes to see. The climactic dream-deathbed scene, then, though it is played straight, is tinged with irony and uncertainty.

@ Pachyderminator: Excellent thoughts, and I entirely concur with your final sentence. The same insight may apply, not incidentally, to the film’s final scene, in which it is not Fischer but Dom—and, by extension, the audience—that may be offered a false catharsis. Will we accept Dom’s happy ending because that’s how we want the film to end, because positive emotion trumps negative emotion? Is that a true leap of faith or a false one?

Steven: Thank you for your detailed reply! I apologize. This is the first article of yours that I have come across, so I don’t know how you have responded to other Hollywood films.

With regards to “pressing Hollywood” I’m mostly thinking of the Catholic Bishops (USCCB) movie reviews. These seem to be affected by a sort of “regulatory capture”. The reviewers seem so star-struck by Hollywood that they can hardly bring any criticism. I find their reviews to be useless in judging the moral content of movies and they never do any sort of in depth analysis of hidden themes in movies. I feel this is important because many movies do have an agenda. For example, I’m sure you are aware that there are homosexual groups that demand that a certain number of favorable gay characters are depicted in TV shows. (I assume this goes on in the movies as well.) Simply by depicting gay characters in a certain way has an effect on the perception of homosexual sex in the general culture. Similarly, showing young people involved in casual pre-marital sex as part of a movie tells the audience that this is OK.

We agree that the theme of suicide is important to Inception. Remember that suicide was a taboo subject in our culture not that long ago. Simply presenting it in on the screen in an ambiguous fashion serves the purpose of breaking down that taboo. And an acceptance of suicide is necessary in order for people to accept a patient’s “right to die”. I would suggest that this is euthanasia whether the patient makes the decision or not. In the same way abortion is still wrong whether it is imposed or done with the woman’s consent - the “right to choose”.

I have to say that I see a pervasive gnostic theme in most sci-fi/fantasy films from Hollywood. The aspect of gnosticism that I find to be present in Inception is the idea of our world as “typically an inferior simulacrum of a higher-level reality or consciousness.” (This quote is from the Wikipedia article on Gnosticism.) I interpret this as meaning that the world is viewed as some sort of elaborate illusion or a dream. (Or in the case of the Matrix, the world is a computer simulation.) Inception creates many dreams inside of dreams. The people inhabiting those dreams are not aware that they are living in a world of illusion. So how do we know that our everyday reality is not a similar dream? That seems to be what the movie is suggesting.

I do think that Hollywood has a philosophy and I think the best way of describing that is secular humanism. It certainly isn’t based on Christianity. Hollywood needs to make a profit and sex and violence sells, but I don’t think that is the whole story. Watching a movie with the objective of seeing how it reflects secular humanist philosophy is a good exercise which can make us aware of how far the morality of Hollywood movies has drifted away from Christian morality.

I also get the feeling (from the winter wonderland dream level) that what he really wants to do is direct a second-rate Bond film (“Dream Another Day”).

Have your ever played the Goldeneye video game for Nintendo 64? If not, look for some videos of it on YouTube. The 007-ish snow sequence in Inception is nearly identical to the first stage of the game (visuals, action and all).

By the way, my second viewing of Inception a few weeks ago reinforced my belief that the movie has a great execution but a fundamental conceptual problem; it has a concept that could become a great video game, but I don’t think it makes for a movie.

@ Michael: Thanks for your reply.

The situation with the USCCB reviews is complicated. The culture at that office changed a lot as people came and went over the years, and your unhappiness with some reviews came to be shared by many, including some of the bishops themselves. The upshot is that after August of last year the USCCB Office for Film and Broadcasting became the Catholic News Service Media Review Office, and reviews are no longer published in the bishops’ name. One person who wrote a number of controversial reviews has moved on to other things. The older reviews archived at the USCCB website remain a valuable resource in my opinion.

I agree that positive or accepting depictions of homosexuality and suicide/euthanasia are very problematic and can help change social attitudes on these subjects for the worse. Feel free to stop by Decent Films check out my reviews of, say, Brokeback Mountain and Million Dollar Baby for my take on cinematic treatments of those subjects.

The Matrix is one of the few films that I would now agree has a real Gnostic dimension to it. Most other films often cited in this regard, including Pleasantville, The Truman Show and the recent The Adjustment Bureau, are misread as Gnostic parables when in fact they are about something else entirely. More on this in the near future, hopefully.

For example, The Truman Show can be persuasively read as a pop-media take on solipsism and the problem of other minds; to the extent that its driving inspiration has a philosophical basis, the question that it asks is: “How do I know that all these people who seem to be just like me are anything like me at all? What if I’m alone in the universe and everyone else is fake, or in the know, and everything is a trick on me, or a projection of my mind?”

That’s almost the opposite of Gnosticism, according to which we are all in the same boat, and the world is a common veil of illusion pulled over all our eyes, a cell in which all mankind are imprisoned. And that’s also one reason among many why Inception isn’t Gnostic. Inception is about illusory worlds that exist solely for the sake of a single victim, populated by phantom projections of their own minds and by perpetrators in the know. The questions it asks are about solipsism and skepticism, not Gnosticism.

What’s more, Inception plausibly rejects rejects solipsism and skepticism, along with suicide. There are multiple layers of illusion, but the habit of skepticism, the inability to accept reality as truly real, is a deadly trap, a corrosive force destroying all possibility of happiness and love, and finally destroying the skeptic himself (or herself). I don’t think Inception encourages us to ask “Is the world around us unreal?”, except ultimately to reject lingering doubts in this regard as destructive. If it has a message in this regard, I think it’s more plausible to read it as something like “Take a leap of faith, reject solipsism and skepticism, and believe in the world and the people around you.”

Inception depicts suicide as a horribly wrong and destructive decision of a mind separated from reality, not ambiguous at all. One can argue that the train sequence offers a countervailing image, but I think most viewers will (correctly) interpret that at the narrative level as not really a suicide because Dom and Mal are in a dreamworld. The danger of rejecting the real world as a dreamworld and committing suicide in the mistaken hope of escaping the dream couldn’t be more strongly emphasized on the narrative level.

I would add that both the intrinsic and dramatic power of the in-dream suicide image actually depends on suicide being thought of as a horrible thing. Cobb’s commitment to reality is demonstrated in his willingness to endure this, even this, to get away from dreams and illusions. It is clear in Cobb’s reassurances to Mal while they wait on the train tracks that both of them are fighting real fear, and the train, every time we see and hear it pass (including when Ariadne sees it in Cobb’s dream elevator) comes as a sudden shock. The sight of them lying on the railroad tracks waiting for a train is supposed to shock as well.
 
It’s true that at the end, when we see Mal and Cobb in old age in the dream world, the image of the two of them lying on the tracks becomes peaceful. But this only adds to, not contradicts, the earlier image. It shows that at the end, the acceptance of necessity - meaning not a passive resignation but a willingness to go to any lengths to escape from one’s own mind and return to the world - ultimately leads to peace on the other side of fear.

Steven: Thanks again for another great reply! I was wondering what the relationship was between Catholic News Service and USCCB reviews. Thanks for clearing that up. But even the newer reviews don’t seem to have much to offer.

I understand your defense of how Inception treats the topic of suicide, but I’ll just say this. Hollywood has a tendency to do things like showing a character having a great time at drug parties for 90% of the movie and in the last 10% they’ll show how it ruined his life. Yes, the moral of the story is that drugs are bad, but meanwhile they have introduced a lot of people to what a drug lifestyle looks like. It is a way of introducing a socially unacceptable behavior into a film and making it look acceptable, while at the same time condemning it. Anyway, I think that suicide and the “right to die” is a hot topic for the Hollywood humanist crowd. And I think anytime they get a chance to link it in somehow to a movie plot, they will do it.

I highly recommend this article which contains an excerpt from “After the Ball - How America will conquer its fear and hatred of Gays in the 90s”: http://www.article8.org/docs/gay_strategies/after_the_ball.htm
It shows how psychological techniques like desensitization and cognitive dissonance can be used to change cultural attitudes I think you’ll find it very interesting.

On the Gnostic aspect, we’ll just have to agree to disagree with regards Inception.

I read your reviews of Brokeback Mountain and Million Dollar Baby. Sorry but I didn’t watch either of those movies. You obviously have a great love for film and are very knowledgeable on the subject. And your reviews are very well crafted, displaying excellent writing skills.

However, I think you may underestimate the effectiveness of the subtle approach taken by these films. This approach is much more effective in shifting public opinion than a more blatant pro-gay-sex or pro-suicide approach is. We need to be careful not to fall into the trap of “moral relativism”. To the extent that we fail to clearly condemn immoral behavior or show excessive tolerance for actions that are against the teachings of the Church we may end up facilitating the attacks against Her. (I did see a strong condemnation at the end of the “Baby” review, but the one at the end of the “Brokeback” review was a bit ambiguous.)

I was unaware of the assisted suicide sub-theme in “Baby”. Do you see how every movie is a form of “inception”? It is planting thoughts and images into a person’s mind. And then later when it comes up in conversation, the person thinks that they came up with the idea that assisted suicide (why don’t we just call it euthanasia?) is OK. But that is how public opinion is manipulated. This reminds me of an earlier article I wrote about “Mice and Men” and how that story is carefully contrived to justify the eugenic murder at the end. Surprisingly, most people never question the phony situation that the author creates in order to justify the killing of another human being.

It’s not surprising that “Brokeback” depicts all heterosexual male characters as the bad guys. This comes right out of the plan discussed in “After the Ball”: “The trick is to get the bigot into the position of feeling a conflicting twinge of shame, along with his reward, whenever his homohatred surfaces….  depict homophobic and homohating bigots as crude loudmouths and [expletive]”

I agree with Steven. I thought the movie reinforced the idea that objective reality matters. I wrote much more a few months ago about the movie on my blog here if anyone is interested: Inception and the Real Reality

Dear Steve,  I found it fascinating that in the end, the motivation was to reunite and “save” his children, while it is almost incidental to the plot.  I find that a tremendous number of modern (or post-modern!) films are at their core, about saving children or not letting them take the fall for adult mistakes.  3:10 to Yuma, The Pursuit of Happyness, Taken, Vantage Point (at the end of the movie),The Weather Man, Cinderella Man and many others I am too tired to think of!
I believe this is a common theme because as Hollywood thrashes around looking for the last unbreakable rule, the deepest contract which cannot be broken, it has come to the protection of children as that last stop on the road to moral anarchy.  No man or woman cannot be outraged at the idea of harm coming to his children.  There is certainly a visceral response to this deep in the psyche of a man that all bounds and restraints would be thrown away to protect his children.  This is why I think these films with this theme are so common and so successful.

Let me impose on your patience for one more comment, this time about the video: I’m disappointed that you tried to rhyme “admit it” and “bet it”. You didn’t resort to those fake rhymes in any of your other 30-seconders. Or is this some poetical technique I simply don’t understand?

No time for substantial comments, so here’s a brief one.

@ Pachyderminator: That middle stanza rhymes “did it,” “quit it,” “admit it” and “bet it.” Only the middle two are fully true rhymes, although typical American pronunciation no longer bothers with the voiceless dental stop on the final “t” in these cases and so they are pronounced indistinguishably from “quiddit” and “admidit,” and thus “did it” is effectively a true rhyme. In a string of more than two rhymes I have no qualms about cheating now and then. If “bet it” is the first cheated rhyme you actually noticed in my 30-second reviews, it’s either a tribute to my delivery or you haven’t paid attention as closely as you think. :‑)

@X:  YES! While watching that sequence in “Inception” that was EXACTLY what was running through my mind: “I just played this level in ‘GoldenEye: 007’,” only it wasn’t the first level, it was the level later one where you’re storming the Russian command center (after the MIGs crash).

@SDG: Which riddle in the final scene? I think at this point anyone reading this thread has seen the movie, so we can have an open discussion about it, spoilers and all.

I do agree that the rotating hallway sequence was amazing, and definitely worth the price of admission (or my Netflix subscription for the month). I still don’t buy “3rd Rock”‘s Tommy Solomon in that role, though. Nolan really should have hired a more mature actor for that role to make it at least somewhat credible.

@ victor: This riddle.