When Inception was released in 2010, everyone had an opinion about the mind-bending thriller — especially about that ending. Was it all a dream? Was Saito the original architect? Was Ariadne? Either way, no one could stop talking about Christopher Nolan’s film. With a then up-and-coming cast, stunning practical effects, and that cerebral Nolan stamp, Inception is remembered as one of the great modern entries to the thriller genre. Not only did it introduce most people to Tom Hardy, but Inception‘s creation is pretty fascinating. Take a look at these facts about Nolan’s process and everything that came together to bring fans this great film.
Christopher Nolan didn’t research dreams before writing the script.
Despite the complex subject matter, Nolan didn’t want something pesky like facts or research getting in his way. According to Collider, Nolan was worried that the influence of outside sources would cloud the creative process.
“I think a lot of what I find you want to do with research is just confirming things you want to do. If the research contradicts what you want to do, you tend to go ahead and do it anyway. So at a certain point I realized that if you’re trying to reach an audience, being as subjective as possible and really trying to write from something genuine is the way to go. Really it’s mostly from my own process, my own experience.”
Nolan had to convince the studio that the dream levels wouldn’t be too confusing.
With the different dream levels, Inception was bound to be complex. However, the big wigs at Warner Brothers were worried that it might be too complex. However, Nolan was able to lay it out for them in a way that seemed doable.
“One of the dream levels is in the rain, one of them is a night interior, one is outdoors in the snow … even in a close-up, you would be able to tell which level you were in as you cross-cut.”
Inception certainly isn’t an easy film to digest, but Nolan trusted his audience to be able to follow along. The actors didn’t have too much trouble figuring out which dream level they were shooting and came up with little tricks to keep track. Tom Hardy told Collider about his sartorial clues:
“It was easy to orientate which dream sequence I was in because of my costume. If in doubt, I could just look at my shoes and say ‘Oh! I know which dream I’m in.’ “
Casting centered around Leonardo DiCaprio.
Nolan knew from the start that he wanted DiCaprio to play Dom, so he picked a supporting cast that complemented the actor. Nolan told The Star:
“Leo is the character with the most history: the character whose history, whose back story, is going to most influence things. So I certainly wanted to get a young, energetic cast around him who wouldn’t make him look younger, if you know what I mean. I think it was important that Leo felt like the leader of the group, felt like the most mature.”
His choices showed great foresight, as Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy, and Ellen Page all went on to become A-list stars. He also included some of his regular actors, like Michael Caine, Marion Cotillard, Cillian Murphy, and Ken Watanabe, who rounded out the exceptional cast.
There is an Edith Piaf connection.
Edith Piaf’s song “Non, je ne regrette rien” was an integral part of Hans Zimmer’s script as the “pre-kick” song. Coincidentally, Marion Cotillard won an Oscar for her portrayal of Piaf in 2007’s La Vie En Rose, and even ended the film with a haunting performance of the classic song.
The practical effects featured incredible sets.
In order to film the hallway fight scene, the crew built a set that would actually rotate 360 degrees, and Gordon-Levitt was suspended on wires, in order to make the scene as authentic-looking as possible. According to MTV, this made filming pretty wild.
“It would’ve been different if he had put me in front of a green screen and said, ‘Pretend you’re floating. Pretend you’re off-balance.’ Instead he put me in the middle of this set that spun around 360 degrees where he hung me on wires or put me on this see-saw contraption,” Gordon-Levitt continued. “So all of those moments where it looks like I’m off-balance, that’s because I was off-balance, doing my best to keep my balance and fight this guy while the floor would be becoming the wall and the wall and ceiling would be becoming the floor.”
Gordon-Levitt trained for weeks with the stunt crew to get in tip-top shape for his intense action sequence. Apparently, it was no small feat.
“It’s unsettling in a wonderful way,” Gordon-Levitt remembered, “it was six-day weeks of just, like, coming home at night f*ckin’ battered…The light fixtures on the ceiling are coming around on the floor, and you have to choose the right time to cross through them, and if you don’t, you’re going to fall.”
Names have meaning.
“Mal,” the name of Marion Cotillard’s duplicitous character, means “bad or evil” in French. Additionally, in Greek mythology, Ariadne was in control of the labyrinth in Minos that housed the minotaur, and eventually helped the hero Theseus defeat the beast and save his would-be victims.
Nolan doesn’t want to clarify that ending too much.
Fans have agonized over Inception‘s ambiguous ending pretty much since things went dark in the first showing, and Nolan kind of wants to keep it that way. In this year’s Princeton graduation speech, he addressed that spinning top again.
“I feel that over time, we started to view reality as the poor cousin to our dreams, in a sense. … I want to make the case to you that our dreams, our virtual realities, these abstractions that we enjoy and surround ourselves with — they are subsets of reality. The way the end of that film worked, Leonardo DiCaprio’s character Cobb — he was off with his kids, he was in his own subjective reality. He didn’t really care anymore, and that makes a statement: Perhaps, all levels of reality are valid. The camera moves over the spinning top just before it appears to be wobbling, it was cut to black.”
Whether that is a sufficient answer for viewers, it’s nice to know that Nolan still thinks about it too.
