Revelations of the Dream (original) (raw)

Abstract

In the following, we explore the interplay between the movies Inception (Nolan 2010) and eXistenZ and the biblical Apocalypse of John (Book of Revelation). In each of these, inescapable, labyrinthine, and finally unmanageable dreams or virtual realities both undercut the reader's sense of reality and challenge the dominant modernist epistemology, for which the fantastic must always be secondary to waking reality. This intertextuality -a widely noted characteristic of much postmodern art and narrative, but also an important feature in John's Apocalypse -profoundly unsettles ideology's certainties. The underlying fundamental problem [is] the relation between existential realms, and the role of the dream as a tissue of potential connectivity ... (Shulman and Strousma 1999: 13) Like a dream, revelation has no beginning . . . . Nevertheless, it still starts somehow. Christopher Nolan's film Inception begins near the end of its story as a man named Cobb awakens on a beach and is hauled before a powerful, aged Japanese businessman, Saito. Abruptly, the movie cuts from Cobb and the old Saito to Cobb and his associate Arthur trying to sell a much younger Saito their dream-security services. The audience only gradually learns that they themselves are two dream levels away from the primary cinematic reality (if there is one) at this point. This learning process unsettles the audience's epistemological certainties, as each viewer often finds him/herself in a dream unaware in Inception. Cobb leads a team that raids people's dreams using powerful sedatives and advanced computers in order to discover their secrets. People can intrude in or invade these previously personal "spaces", and dreams can merge. 1 International corporations and powerful individuals pay well for this service and also for training in self-defense against such raids. Cobb has a troubled past. He is wanted for the murder of his wife, Mal, and therefore he cannot go home again to be with his children. One great danger of the dream manipulation technology is that talented dream "architects", such as Cobb and Mal, can become lost in dreams within dreams and no longer distinguish dreams from reality. Thinking herself in a dream, Mal had believed that suicide was the only way "home", since if you die in a dream (so they believe) then you wake up in reality. However, Mal was not dreaming, and she jumped to her death, leaving evidence that Cobb murdered her. must enter a fourth dream-level, where Cobb and another team member, the appropriately-named Ariadne, meet Mal. That Mal reappears frequently in the movie is quite troubling epistemologically, and she and their two young children serve as ghost figures that haunt Cobb's dreams and reality. This dream world then falls apart catastrophically, but Cobb stays with Mal amid the crashing rubble in order to complete the inception and to rescue Saito who otherwise may be lost forever in a dream. This adventure returns Cobb (and the audience) to the beach of the opening scene and to Saito as a very old man. This return to the film's beginning adds to the sense of interlocking dreams and increases the epistemological confusions.

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