Life is Just a Dream: Oneiric Film Theory and The Similarities of Oneiric Elements in the Modern Classic Film Inception and Its Iconic Predecessor The Wizard of Oz
    

    It has often been said that “life is just a dream”, but what does this really mean, actually? Through out history, the intersection of the line between what humans define as their “real world” and what is their “dream world” that lives in their subconscious mind, has been researched, debated, written about, sung about and in modern times, films have been made about this concept as well. The term “oneiric” refers to a depiction of a dream-like state. An entire body of film analysis has been developed around dream theory:  it is referred to as Oneiric Film Theory and is based in large part on the research and writings on dream theory of the great psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud, as well as many of his later followers. The 2010 modern science fiction film, Inception, directed by Christopher Nolan, is a classic example of oneiric elements in film. At its core, the film Inception draws the main character as well as the audience, into the ultimate question of trying to determine what is the “real” world and what is actually a “dream world”.  Albert Einstein famously wrote that “reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one” and this is a core oneiristic theme throughout the film, Inception. Another classic film that is surprisingly similar to Inception in its use of this same oneiristic theme, as well as similar oneiristic elements, is the award winning 1939 classic musical fantasy film, The Wizard of Oz, directed by Victor Fleming.  It could be argued that perhaps Christopher Nolan was influenced by the fantastical dream world created in the 1939 oneiristic classic in the making of his modern dream within a dream science fiction film. Both films make the structured dream settings that their characters find themselves in very real seeming; both films involve the main characters meeting people from their “real” lives in their “dream” lives or oneristic states where people experience love, joy, pain, fear, and even the threat of death. Both films also base their stories on the theme that one never knows what is real or just a dream. Reality in both is fluid and the movies both have aspects of different space/time continuums.  Both the classic films, Inception and The Wizard of Oz, are at their core similar in their respective structured and effective oneiristic settings, and in how they draw the audience into their oneristic state, with both having an underlying theme that reality is hard to distinguish, until at the end of both movies, both the audience and the main characters are left wondering if the “home” that they have fought so hard to get back to, is actually their “real home” rather than the dream- like, oneristic home that they just left. 
    The idea that there is a connection between films and dreams is the core of the oneiristic theory. Oneiristic film theory analysis is almost as old as the film industry itself and that theory draws much of its dream theory analysis from the great psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud’s dream theories, as well as the dream theories of other renowned psychoanalysts, particularly Freud’s protégée, Carl Jung. Freud’s dream theories are based on the idea that dreams dramatize thoughts and ideas and that the dream work must visualize these thoughts (Rascaroli, 5). Freud never specifically analogized dreams or his dream theory to films, however his idea that dreams are a visualization of thoughts, along with his later statements that “psychic apparatus” is similar to microscopes and cameras, leads many to believe that Freud’s dream theories apply to film as well (Rascaroli, 4). Freud’s radical ideas that dreams were psychological expression placed emphasis on the idea that people can be analyzed and explained based on three aspects of their personality: the id, the ego and the super-ego. In 1900, he wrote his seminal book, “The Interpretation of Dreams”, which discussed his dream theories (Halperin, 15).  Several of Freud’s famous concepts that were discussed in this book became popular with filmmakers, especially his sexual symbolizations in dreams (e.g. phallic symbols), and his ideas that a large number of dreams are full of anxiety (Halperin, 16).  Another of Freud’s dream theories that many filmmakers have used is his theory of location as symbols. These are dreams in which the dreamers imagine landscapes and localities that are familiar to them and have the sensation that they have been there before, also known as “Déjà vu” (Halperin, 16). Freud theorized that the source of this feeling is always the genitals of the mother because there is no other place that people can assuredly say that they ‘have been there before’ (Halperin, 16) 
    Another famed psychoanalyst, Carl Jung, who was a disciple of Freud’s, also developed a dream theory that helped to develop the current oneiric film critic theory.  Jung’s dream theory was more structured than Freud’s theory that was largely about dreams’ visual language. Jung theorized “dreams develop according to an authentic dramatic structure, formed by a phase of exposition, in which setting and characters are presented; by a development of the plot; by a culmination or peripeteia, containing the decisive event; and by alysis or solution” (Rascaroli, 4).  Jung also noted that not all dreams need to have the solution at the end, just as some movies do not have a solution at the end (Rascaroli, 4). Carl Jung’s dream theories are more concrete than Freud’s and appear to be structured much like the development of the plot of a movie. Unlike Freud’s dream theories, Jung’s dream theories are less focused on sexual repression and are more focused on dreams serving the function of revealing inner turmoil (Halperin, 17). Jung also theorized that dreams tap into a collective unconsciousness, because there are so many motives and common dream symbols that transcend time and cultures (Halperin, 18). 
    Early film critics used these new psychological theories to develop the oneiric theory to analyze film. While psychoanalysts were writing that dreams are like film, many early film scholars were arguing that film was like a dream. In a 1965 article, the film critic Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote that cinema spectators can read films because they are used to reading the images from the visual reality surrounding them, and that dreams and memories are part of the significant images that people use to read their world, making dreams a precursor of cinema (Rascaroli, 5). Additionally, many psychoanalysts and film theorists feel that films allow “spectators to immerse themselves in a dreamlike world, in which their repressed desires find fulfillment” (Rascaroli, 9). Other film scholars theorized that watching a film puts the viewer in a dreamlike state, while other scholars wrote about film either being dreamlike in the way that it is created, using different filming or editing techniques to create the dream- like imagery, or a film can be dream- like, and therefore oneiric, based on the fact that it is in fact about a dream and/or has dream sequences (Dickenson, 17-18). Although the cinematic scholars differ on what makes a film oneiric, one scholar synthesized what makes a good oneiric film: 
“A truly affective and effective oneiric film will always exhibit a tension between the concrete and the strange without the viewer ever having to question its logic—at least until after the film has ended. In order to experience a dream, one has to accept it as real. The dream must deceive us and present its world as or like reality. In the oneiric film, reality and non-reality will appear as indistinguishable” (Dickenson, 20).
    Based on the above, both Inception and The Wizard of Oz, are excellent examples of effective oneiric films that similarly draw the film spectator into the dream worlds that the filmmakers created to such a degree that in the end, the viewer is as confused as the protagonist as to what is or is not reality and what is actually a dream. Both directors, Christopher Nolan and Victor Fleming, respectively, create a dream-like experience that draws both the protagonists and the viewers of the films in through their creation and design of unique dream-like worlds, including their treatment of how the dream world and the real world are positioned against each other.  Inception, on its face is an oneiristic movie, as it is about an “extractor” or thought thief named Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) who specializes in entering peoples’ dreams in order to steal information from them.  He does this by secretly sharing dreams with his victims. Cobb and his dream team are hired to try to plant a thought into the mind of Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), an heir to a corporation, so that Fischer will change his mind about what to do with his father’s corporation after his father’s impending death, which would benefit his father’s corporate rival, Saito (Ken Watanabe). The very complicated act of planting an idea in a person’s head during a shared dream experience is new to Cobb and this act is referred to as an “inception”. Cobb only agrees to this dangerous act because Saito agrees to help Cobb get murder charges dropped, for supposedly killing his wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard), as he is desperate to get back to his home in the United States so that he can return to his two young parentless children.  In order to put this complex dream-invading plan into motion, Cobb hires a dream “architect”, Ariadne (Ellen Page), who is given the complex task of creating the very structured and realistic dreamscapes for the inception project. 
    Nolan’s dream spaces that he creates in the film Inception are very regimented and the dreamers as well as the viewers are drawn in by these spaces to the point that they start to feel “real”. Even though this is a movie about dreams, the oneiric elements are not based so much on human unconscious thoughts and suppressed emotions, as Freud’s oneiric theories would dictate. One film analyst wrote, regarding Nolan’s choice of regimentation in his dream space, that “the film argues for a construction of dream space that is far separate from the traditional oneirological systems of the Freudian reflection of the subconscious, or even more recent experimental theories. …Instead, dream space is constructed and overseen…” (Young, 1).   In one early scene, Cobb instructs Ariadne about the methodology of creating effective dreamscapes. As they sit at a café in Paris together, he instructs her to create a space that is authentic, however, he warns her not to base the space on actual, or real places from the world, as this is the best way to lose one’s grip on what is real and what is a dream.  However, many of the dream settings that the architect Ariadne builds are relatively realistic places: the inception dream starts in an urban setting, moves to a remote mountain lair, and finally to a more abstract limbo. In this way, the viewer is kept guessing at times, as to whether the action is taking place in a dream or in reality.  Another way that Nolan keeps the characters and the viewers guessing as to whether the action is taking place in a dream or reality is by introducing actual people from the dreamers’ lives into the dreams. For example, Cobb’s children, whom he loves and misses, are recurring characters in his shared dreams and Cobb’s guilt and continuing love causes his dead wife, Mal, to become an increasingly menacing presence in his dream world. Additionally, another way that Nolan confuses the audience into questioning if a scene is real or a dream, is by allowing the dreamers to experience pain, and even the threat of actual death, as evidenced by the scene in the first layer of the inception dream sequence where Saito is shot. . This is consistent with dream theory that “the dream experience is an all-encompassing one which can utilize all of the senses in the body. Dreams are truly a visceral experience that creates an illusion which envelops you into another reality by mimicking every aspect of the one in which you already exist” (Stowell, 33). Because the dreamers feel love, loss, fear, pain and can even die, the dreams in Inception are not merely visual sensations, but are more visceral and therefore more “real” to both the dreamers and the viewers.
    Just as Inception uses a relatively structured dream environment for its primary setting so as to confuse and deceive both the protagonists and the film spectators as to what is real or not, so too does the oneiric classic, The Wizard of Oz. This classic film begins with Dorothy (Judy Garland) living on her Aunt Em (Clara Bandick) and Uncle Henry’s (Charley Grapewin) farm in Kansas. In order to indicate to the film spectator that this farm world is “real” Fleming shot these scenes in sepia tones.  However, after Dorothy, her dog Toto and apparently her house, are swept up in a Tornado and plunked down in a strange new place called Munchkinland, the film changes to Technicolor.  Fleming uses this structured visual cue to indicate to both Dorothy and to the viewer, that Dorothy was “not in Kansas anymore” and that she was now in a dream -like oneiric setting where she and her co-horts, the Scare Crow (Ray Bolger), the Tin Man (Jack Haley) and the Cowardly Lion (Bert Lahr), like Cobb and his co-horts, spend the majority of their respective films.  Even though Dorothy’s oneiric world is very fantastical, with Wicked Witches, flying monkeys and Wizards, there are elements to this world that make it seem real to both Dorothy and to the viewer, thereby creating confusion in both the characters and the viewers as to whether this world that Dorothy finds herself in is real or not.  When Dorothy and Toto first set out on the Yellow Brick Road in search of the Land of Oz on her quest to get home, Dorothy is hungry, tired, and scared when she first meets the Scare Crow, Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion. Dorothy and her comrades experience fear, joy, pain and the threat of death from the Wicked Witch of the West throughout the film. Just as Cobb’s dreams had people in them from his real life, so too does Dorothy’s oneiric world that she suddenly finds herself in. Although Dorothy, and perhaps many of the audience members as well, do not realize this until the end of the film, when she wakes from what apparently was a concussion from a head injury during the tornado, and she tells her friends, the three farm hands, that they were all with her in the land of Oz—they were in fact the Scare Crow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion. Just like the film Inception shifted settings between the ‘real world’ and the ‘dream world’, so too does the film The Wizard of Oz, with equally good effect. Both films successfully create a convincing oneiric world where the majority of the film’s action takes place. 
    Another similarity between these two oneiric films is the underlying theme that the world that we live in may not be the only world, and therefore the homes that both Cobb and Dorothy were so desperate to return to from their dream-state homes may in fact not be their real or only homes. Both filmmakers seem to embrace theories that hypothesize that there is a space/time continuum and under this scenario, there could be parallel worlds. Throughout the film, Inception, Mal argues with Cobb that there is no one reality.  Mal came up with this idea after she and Cobb shared a dream and became stuck in limbo for what seemed to be 50 years in their dream, but when they finally came back home, they had been gone for only months.  At the end of Inception, Cobb finally makes it back home to his two beloved children who are playing in the yard, as he has imagined them in his many dreams. Reflexively, he spins his top on the table, which is his totem in the film that helps him determine if he is in a dream or in reality. If the top keeps spinning, Cobb is in a dream. At the end of the film, the top is spinning and as it appears that it might falter, the scene cuts to black, ending the movie and leaving the audience to wonder—is Cobb really home or is this yet another dream?  As one film scholar wrote about Inception, “The characters in the film are challenged to retain their sense of reality though out and Nolan hands over the responsibility to the audience at the end of the film” (Stowell, 42). Similarly, Fleming in The Wizard of Oz uses the oneiric elements of a space/time continuum and alternate realities. Dorothy clicks her Ruby Red Slippers and suddenly finds herself back home in her bed in Kansas (and back in a sepia-toned world), even though she seemingly had been gone for weeks or perhaps even months while on her quest to find the Emerald City, meet the Wizard of Oz and subsequently kill the Wicked Witch of the West so that the Wizard of Oz would help her get back home, only to be told to her disbelief that she had been knocked out and unconscious in her bed for only a few days. In the end, even the audiences in both films are left wondering about the reality of the homes to which both Cobb and Dorothy worked so hard to return.  As Dorothy famously said, “there is no place like home”, but the audiences of both films is left to wonder.
    Both, Inception, and its classic oneiric predecessor, The Wizard of Oz, similarly depict structured dream settings that were mechanisms for exploring the narrative, themes and climaxes of these respective films. The oneiric or dream-like elements in both films draw the film spectator into the dream worlds created to such a realistic degree, that in the end, the viewer is as confused as both the protagonists, Cobb and Dorothy, as to what is or is not reality and what is a dream. To that end, both the filmmakers, Nolan and Fleming, successfully created effective oneiric experiences for their audiences through the settings they artfully created and the experiences of their dreamers. Both depicted complex, and realistic dream worlds that effectively created the illusion of reality for both the protagonists and the audience—leaving both to wonder, is life just a dream?