Christopher Nolan offers a bit of insight on Inception

Last Updated on July 23, 2021

With INCEPTION hitting DVD a week from today (December 7th), Christopher Nolan is out doing press. In a recent interview with Wired, the writer/director explained a bit about his recent hit film. Minor spoilers follow, but if you haven’t seen one of the year’s best movies yet you shouldn’t be allowed on the internet.

On the film’s origins: “The problem was that I started with a heist film structure. At the time, that seemed the best way of getting all the exposition into the beginning of the movie… But I eventually realized that heist films are usually unemotional. They tend to be glamorous and deliberately superficial. I wanted to deal with the world of dreams, and I realized that I really had to offer the audience a more emotional narrative, something that represents the emotional world of somebody’s mind. So both the hero’s story and the heist itself had to be based on emotional concepts. That took years to figure out.”

On its parallels to filmmaking: “I didn’t intend to make a film about filmmaking, but it’s clear that I gravitated toward the creative process that I know. The way the team works is very analogous to the way the film itself was made. I can’t say that was intentional, but it’s very clearly there. I think that’s just the result of me trying to be very tactile and sincere in my portrayal of that creative process.”

On viewers’ interpretations: “People seem to be noticing the things they’re meant to notice, the things that are meant to either create ambiguities or push you in one direction or another. But I’ve also read plenty of very off-the-wall interpretations. One of the things you do as a writer and as a filmmaker is grasp for resonant symbols and imagery without necessarily fully understanding it yourself. And so there are interpretations to be imposed on the film that aren’t necessarily what I had in my head.”

On the use of dreams: “I tried to highlight certain aspects of dreaming that I find to be true, such as not remembering the beginning of a dream. And that is very much like the way films tell their stories. But I wouldn’t say I specifically used the grammar of the film to tell the audience what is dream and what is reality.”

Those are the juiciest bits, but the whole interview is quite interesting – so give it a read if you have the chance. INCEPTION’s impressive cast includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page (below), Marion Cotillard, Cillian Murphy, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Ken Watanabe, Tom Hardy, Michael Caine, Lukas Haas and Tom Berenger.

Pre-order the film on DVD HERE or Blu-ray HERE.