Yesterday Nathan and I caught an afternoon showing of Christopher Nolan’s new film, Inception. I absolutely loved it. It is the kind of movie that completely engrosses me. The cinematography was stunning, the acting was top notch, and the story was compelling. But most riveting, for me, is the fact that the movie raises a whole host of philosophical questions that utterly fascinate me: the nature of time and eternity, the nature of consciousness and memory, the battle between realism and idealism, the location and constitution of the “self,” and a whole lot more. In fact, what is great about the film is that so many philosophical themes collide in it that it is impossible to give a single reading of either the film itself or even the philosophical questions it poses. The movie itself asks us: where does the reality of this film reside, “in” the movie itself, in some objective content we passively receive as we sit in the theater, or is the reality of the film instead located in what our minds make of it? Is the movie itself an “inception,” a planting of an idea in our minds that is real only as we make it real?
I have been immersing myself in Kierkegaard lately because I am in the middle of writing my dissertation for my Edinburgh degree. So I was prepped to read the film in a Kierkegaardian way. I thought I would offer a few comments along these lines, fully aware that these are not at all a definitive reading of the film, if such a thing is even possible. I am supposed to be translating French right now, but these thoughts about the movie keep distracting me, so I thought I would let them out.
1) The film itself uses Kierkegaardian language and concepts throughout: “paradox” and ”leap of faith” are the most central of these. From one angle, the entire film asks: “Is a leap of faith possible? Can the gulf that separates us from our true selves be bridged?”
2) Cobb’s relationship to his wife echoes many of the themes raised in Kierkegaard’s relationship to his ex-fiancee, Regine Olsen. How does one continue to live with such a profound rupture in the relationship to one’s beloved? Is one’s recollection of that relationship enough? Can one truly recollect reality? Or is recollection always an idealized creation of one’s mind? Isn’t it true that authentic love can never be a recollection but only a repetition? A repetition that requires the present reality of the person?
3) The whole issue of “inception,” that is, whether an idea can be implanted in someone’s consciousness, can be read as a wrestling with the Kierkegaardian theme of “inwardness.” For Kierkegaard, true movement in life can never be the result of external necessity but only of inward passion and freedom. One must move oneself in the moment of free decision to move at all.
4) The way the film portrays time is very Kierkegaardian. Time doesn’t work like Aristotle thought it did, that is, as the incessant marching forward of equally spaced moments called seconds, or minutes, or hours, or years, or…Time is, rather, the space of existential movement. There are different “levels” of time, and time moves at different speeds in different circumstances. The different “levels” of dreaming in the movie portray this in a profound way. The deeper one goes into dreaming (into reality? out of reality?), the “faster” time moves; as one emerges out of dreaming (out of reality? into reality?), the “slower” time moves. In Kierkegaard’s terminology, when one acts from the depths of inward passion, time speeds up, life intensifies; when one simply floats along with the external world, time slows down, life becomes stagnant.
5) Is entrance into the deepest level of dreaming entrance into eternity? If so, then in the film we have a Kierkegaardian vision of eternity not as the cancelation of time but as an infinite intensification of time. Our time, what we think of as “reality,” is in fact a slowing down of eternity. Eternity relates to time then, in “the Moment.” Eternity cannot extend itself on our timeline because our timeline is too slow. We encounter eternity “in the twinkling of the eye,” when everything is suddenly changed by the intensity of eternity.
6) The end of the movie concentrates the question: “Is a leap of faith possible?” That is, can one gain back, i.e., repeat, one’s world–in Cobb’s case, his children–by letting go of the idealized visions of reality we hold to and letting oneself fall into the void that hopefully turns out to be our salvation? Was Cobb able to do this? Is the end of the movie a genuine return, i.e., a repetition, of his children, or is it yet a deeper level of dreaming? But what if dreaming is actually what is most real?
