Scene Deconstruction

Scene from the movie "Inception": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HM5YBXkE9s

            The scene I chose is from the 2010 movie “Inception”. The protagonist has entered the dream of the antagonist. In this scene, the antagonists realize that the protagonist is in their dream. The theme is that the subconscious is still conscious and nothing is truly ever subconscious. It is always influenced by conscious thoughts or actions. The theme is exemplified in the scene because once the characters wake up from the dream, they are still conscious of what was going on. The theme is definitely didactic because you infer that the conscious and subconscious are related, they don’t tell you.

            The space and movement of the scene both help to reinforce the theme of the subconscious being part of consciousness. First let’s talk about the space. The scene starts off in a very small room and the characters are given a flat and limited space. Later, as the scene becomes more intense, they move to a much larger room. This deep space represents how deep into our minds that dreams can go. The affinity of the rooms look helps to show that they are both part of the dream, while the contrast between the sizes of the rooms shows that the dream can go much deeper. The affinity of the space of the small room inside the dream and the small room outside of the dream helps to reinforce the idea of the conscious and subconscious being connected.

            The movement also reinforces the theme. The scene is active in telling the audience that the man is going to wake up the protagonist and we see that his actions have an effect on the protagonist in the dream. His movements of shaking, slapping, and dunking the protagonist underwater provides another link between the conscious and subconscious. The characters also actively tell you that the dream has become unstable and is collapsing, which is reinforced by the movement of the rooms inside the dream that literally begin to collapse. Didactically the audience infers that when a character dies they are woken up from the dream and brought back into reality. This is how shape and movement reinforce the theme of this scene and how contrast, affinity, and active and didactic storytelling play a part in conveying the theme to the audience.