INCEPTION: Transhumanist Dreams Resolve Grief

INCEPTION is a science fiction thriller, about a transhumanistic capacity to access and influence the mind by tapping the subconscious through dreams. It's billed as a film about corporate espionage. I say it's a film about resolving universal human issues around grief and sudden death through highly developed dream therapy.


The Hettle Rule is operant in this blog. Paul Hettle is a filmmaker and an important film educator.  I went to film school after I was a physician.  Hettle's style of teaching is the opposite of the medical education model. The Hettle Rule is: "Only acknowledge the positive while screening footage". This is his way of encouraging more of what he wants to see. He totally ignores horrendous errors, not wanting to inadvertently reward them.   Though it was the 1990s, this was a twenty-first century way of teaching.   The Minghella Corollary to the Hettle Rule is: "Never assume that anyone doesn't need to know when they are hitting on all cylinders, be they Oscar winning directors, cinematographers, actors or producers." There is so much good in the film INCEPTION, applicable to bioethics screen reflection, that I am compelled to think about it and to encourage others to do so as well.


INCEPTION is embroidered with references to the combined applied science technologies of medicine, psychiatry, psychology, architecture, chemistry, physics and sculpture.  With training in all of these, those of my household took an hour post-screening to be sure we had the plot straight and that it was consistent. We did and it was. This film is very likely going to be a major cultural phenomenon. Missing it will be like having missed M*A*S*H (Altman 1970).  INCEPTION is a good film for teaching clinical ethical issues. Its story turns on tension between key plot points: 1) lack of full understanding about the science underlying dream probing technology and 2) applying the science of dream probing technology without full informed consent of those at risks. There is also more than a passing nod to issues around world energy supply, depression, suicide, and intergenerational prolonged grief.


INCEPTION's application of film art and science is strong.  It is reminiscent of the first viewing of THE SIXTH SENSE (Shyamalan, 1999). These films build a world and a language which the viewer has to learn and follow.  You need to be awake and stay awake, start to finish. The rapid rate of cuts and images on the screen speak loudest to a post internet generation. However, the directorial and script structures honor classic film styles. The recurrent visual of "the maze" is homage to NORTH BY NORTHWEST (Hitchcock, 1959) protagonist, Roger O. Thornton, trapped like a mouse in a maze, in the extreme long shot on the grounds of the United Nations.


Classic film grammar is also used in INCEPTION but with a twist. The twist is that the script kaleidoscopes classic techniques.  An example would be the classic film technique known as the Griffith Escape. A simple version of the Griffith Escape: the camera cuts between the damsel in distress tied to the railroad track, the speeding train, and the cavalry in route to her rescue. The closer the train gets the shorter the interval between the cuts, heightening suspense approaching the climax. The plot of INCEPTION raises each shot to the power of four in the escape, demanding the viewer to function not in three dimensions but sixteen. The Kaleidoscope geometry expands likewise to heighten the sense of resolution. Bookending of themes, at the beginning and end of the story, are similarly mathematically assembled.  Further, each actor is moving in 4 story lines, simultaneously and together as an ensemble.  Albert Einstein would have loved this film for its ability to bend time and space. INCEPTION is a platform not only for exploration of a fictional technology, but also of film technology's influence on individuals and cultures.


Science fiction and horror films are often used to teach bioethics.  The prototypical film example is the monster built by Frankenstein (Whale, 1931). In Frankenstein, we see both scientist and society taught the lesson not to play God. The same lesson about new technology has been continuously taught over seventy years.  INCEPTION differs from much of horror and science fiction. This film explores the conflicts and dangers of a new technology without demonization of the technology itself. Instead, it shows how such access to the mind might serve humanity and enhance individual growth; as a dream therapist may do.


Transhumanism is a philosophical movement linked to bioethics, largely through the principle of beneficence; the obligation to do good with scientific knowledge. Transhumanism is known for exploring ethical issues around science beyond last century's negative portrayals. Though operant in much medical and other life-enhancing applied sciences, futurist films serve as the philosophy’s most frequent venue for re-examination of cultural attitudes around science and technology.  The film, INCEPTION, is an example of a complex exploration of cultural concerns around thought manipulation through dream technology and offers an atypical resolution. The resolution is the dissolution of the wall that separates the idea from the application; the concept from the reality. INCEPTION is about the expansion of human potential beyond its known physical and psychological limitations, complete with the inherent risks and benefits of the tasks.


INCEPTION. 35 mm. Directed by Christopher Nolan. USA. Warner Brothers. July 16, 2010 (148 mm)




For more Film/Bioethics on this site see: "Lighten Up" slides, 0.019, 0.020 (Informed Consent), .032 (Aristotelian Plot Curve), 0.059 (Camera Angle), 0.060 (Meaning of Shot Size to the Viewer).

ARMY WIVES: Aristotle Would Have Watched TV

Those who are looking at this blog for only reference to art house films, and heavy documentaries will be disappointed. Television is what is closest to the average person. The average person is where morality and ethics derive.

I have been tracking the development of ARMY WIVES since its first episode. Inherent in its story line related to war, knew it would of necessity deal with ethical themes. ARMY WIVES is an ensemble cast. It is the story of four women, and a man who are spouses of active duty army personnel. They are raising their families on an army base in the USA. They are of different socioeconomic backgrounds and they become friends. Last night’s episode deals with loss, grief and redemption on the domestic front.

Season 4, Episode 7, May 23, 2010 10 PM PDT Lifetime:

In this episode in the ‘A’ story line a pregnancy is lost by a couple who dearly wanted another child. The husband, who has seen active duty, has the strength to explore his own grief and feelings of inadequacy to support his and his wife’s pain. The second army wife, the closest friend of the woman who has lost her pregnancy, is struggling with issues around her husband’s absence in family life. He is often altered in his character, related to his secret missions. She is choosing between divorce and living through it and moves to a compromise -- an acceptable action for her moral tension. The third army wife, a nurse cum paramedic, struggles to reconcile the loss of her son to a reenlistment and fears that he will not finish college, ( loss of a dream for her progeny), and may have worsened post traumatic stress disorder or die in combat. The fourth Army wife, who has lost her eldest daughter to a bombing on domestic soil some episodes ago, now sends her daughter off to college. She chooses to regain something she lost, when she became an army wife, her own education. She dropped out of Harvard Law School and now wants to return to study law at the university near the army base where she lives.

Information flow and changes in technology, medicine, and ecology shift at warp speed. It is important to see how artist and media synthesize and influence morality in this shifting milieu. In particular, the genre melodrama is closest to the hearts of the majority of the people. In many ways, television is the equivalent to the Greek Poetics of Aristotle - yes the Greek plays. At the end of the day, many look at television and deal with aspects of their own lives that would be too painful to access without the distance of the screen. This is one of the ways that film and television work. It is also the reason that bioethicist and clinical medical ethicist especially need to understand how film and television communicate.

Season 4, Episode 7, May 23, 2010 10 PM PDT Lifetime

(For more on Film/Bioethics on this site see "Lighten Up" - slides 29 - 36, and in the reference slides at the end for Aristotle, On Man in the Universe, Walter J. Black. New York, 1943.)

LA MISSION : Prototype for the Peace Genre

I am not sure how much power a film has to have to not be slotted into the “Ethnic Film” genre, which restricts the market of its distribution. I am sure that the Bratt Brother’s LA MISSION (2009) has more than enough power to properly title its theme and genre. Written and directed by Peter Bratt, LA MISSION is about transitions from violence to an agent of Peace. Starring Ben Bratt, (co-producer) the main character embodies the film’s subtitle quote of a Spanish expression, “from the thorn emerges the flower.”

Peace in the world of bioethics is a universal “good,” and as such can only be held by the humanity as a whole -- not the individual. LA MISSION is about corralling passionate spirit and channeling it toward Peace. This film is not only about a Latino family, a black woman, low riders, gay teenagers, gentrification, gang bangers, medicine men, indigenous peoples, parents struggling to do what is best for their children, women who are victims of violence, city bus drivers , healthcare systems or healthier lifestyles; though it stars all of these.

The Bratt brothers are part of some exceptional company in the Latino Ethnic film genre - LA FAMILIA, LA MISMA LUNA, PAN’S LABYRINTH and THE SEA INSIDE, to name a few. But they have also created a cross cultural-cross genre film. Like other brilliant Latino, and black film productions. LA MISSION is not yet marketed broadly, so its universality is stealth. It’s hard to get a film like LA MISSION made, harder to get it promoted. Its audience is limited by an R rating; a bias against content tamer than the DVD’s being watched on most highschoolers hand held devices at lunchtime.

LA MISSION’s script is seamless down to the meaning of the posters on the walls of the lead character’s garage. It makes a strong argument for the writer-director hyphenate. The visuals are stunning, as would be expected from Japanese-American cinematographer Hiro Narita, set in the hues of San Francisco’s Mission neighborhood. The acting is gripping at every level also not unexpected from Benjamin Bratt but the rest of the cast pushes even his bar. Finally, this film is hot! It has all of the essentials of the best Hollywood drama. However, La Mission also goes to the head of the line for films important in clinical ethics. It looks at cross-cultural concerns in health promotion, violence prevention, and grief mediation.

In the case of LA MISSION I suggest we take a page from other parts of the struggle for Peace; we create a movement to pass the word. Assign it if you teach. Demand it in your local theater. If it is playing near you and you have 10 bucks to spare, see this movie. Defy the attempt of last century film marketing and critics to dice and slice our humanity. Pass the word -- the Peace film genre has arrived and its prototype is LA MISSION.

LA MISSION. 35 mm. Directed by Peter Bratt. USA. Screen Media Ventures. 2010 (117 min)