The Analysis of Waking Life and Inception Movies - Essay Example

In the “Waking Life”, there is a person at the end of the film very similar to the protagonist, within the talk with whom the protagonist clarifies for himself that the reality is a single moment erroneously referred to as the time and, possibly, life, and this life is ignoring of the invitation of the God to unite with the universe. In “Inception”, such character is the wife of the protagonist Dominick Cobb, who he split up with because he could not stay in the world of fantasies that she was comfortable in and made her commit suicide for her to stay there, and for him to come back to reality. This unpleasant scene helped him understand which world he preferred. These two cases clarify that the unconscious, the desire to find one’s own identity, is present and even can dominate in our everyday life.

The architecture of the dreams in the movie “Waking Life” is the protagonist’s onlooking the events and conversations with the other characters, whereas the second film, “Inception”, depicts the dreams full of action and events. The first movie, as per its director’s opinion, provides a picture of “a sort of nongravity, upward pull away from what you felt the whole world was, but at the same time there was some force begging me to stay.” (Kehr). The second work of art, on the contrary, shows that the dreamer is the architect of his dreams and uses them for his purposes and tries to manage and control them. Therefore, the first movie provides a dream structure in a somehow prefabricated manner, whereas the second film demonstrates the way it is possible to create dreams on one’s own. It is also possible to suppose that when the border between the dream and the reality is merely seen, then the dreams are “imposed” on a dreamer, and when it is strictly known where the dream and the reality is, then the dreams are constructed consciously and subconsciously.       

The characters of both films realize that they are in a dream. As it was already mentioned, the protagonist of the “Walking Life” realized that the woman he talked to was only one of his fantasies, and he himself is in a world far from a realistic one. Dominick Cobb, the “Inception” protagonist, realizes himself in a dream because he uses it as a means of reaching his own goals and enters this condition intentionally. The subconscious is very active when the protagonist and characters of the movie “Inception” realize that they are not alone in their dreams: they start interacting with others the same way they do in real lives in order to reach their aims.  The characters of the “Walking Life”, namely the protagonist and the woman he talks to, exchange their ideas, and this is quite possible to happen in one’s dream.       Read More