5 Reasons Why Inception is Postmodern

1. Inception’s storyline is non linear, although the timeline throughout the story is. We understand the timeline that events occur in but the plot however sidetracks and then returns.
2. Inception has an unreliable narrator, we are told everything we need to throughout the film in order to follow it except right at the end. The last we see Cobb is still underwater in the van and hasn’t woke up, yet we see him wake up on the plane without knowing how he woke up. We know they needed a specific kick to wake and we didn’t see him get that kick. He goes home to his kids but for all we know he could still be in one of the depthless dream layers - the unreliable narrator has compromised his job and not given their audience all they need to know and this has altered our perception.
3. It’s an ahistorical fabulation (invented story) where the environments are a bricolage) something created from diverse range of things) of several pastiches (art work from different sources to imitate), the dreams cannot be a real place they have to take parts of real world to construct it but the places cannot actually exist which gives the audience an inability to know what we know.
4. Inception disconnects us from reality, we forget that we are in a dream with them until there are schizoid moments that reminds us - it destabilises reality. For example water floods a building that is several storeys up, or a street is bent back on itself, using mirrors to architect a street etc etc.
5. It has strong simulations, for example Cobb’s representation of his wife that he made from his memories (which the audience sees kept in a heterocosm made of several depthless levels of his subconscious) eventually becomes more than the real thing. We see more of “memory Molly” in dreams than we do of “real Molly” in flashbacks.