The gaslight­ing at the heart of Inception

“What is the most resilient par­a­site? Bac­te­ria? A virus? An intesti­nal worm? An idea. Resilient… high­ly con­ta­gious. Once an idea has tak­en hold of the brain it’s almost impos­si­ble to erad­i­cate.” These ear­ly lines by dream extrac­tor Dominick Cobb (Leonar­do DiCaprio) estab­lish the epony­mous con­cept behind Christo­pher Nolan’s mind-bend­ing sci-fi Incep­tion, where dream-share tech­nol­o­gy is used to sow ideas in the mind of anyone.

These implant­ed ideas are par­a­sitic and can come to define a person’s out­look, future choic­es, even their per­son­al­i­ty. Although the main plot con­cerns cor­po­rate espi­onage car­ried out through dreams, the emo­tion­al core of the film is Cobb’s fail­ure to cope with the loss of his wife, Mal (Mar­i­on Cotil­lard). How­ev­er, our empa­thy for him is com­pro­mised when it becomes clear that, through incep­tion, Cobb was the cause of Mal’s death.

Moral abso­lutism is hard­ly at the fore­front of Nolan’s fil­mog­ra­phy, and Incep­tion cross­es straight into moral­ly dubi­ous ter­ri­to­ry – the tit­u­lar act itself is a form of gaslight­ing, designed to sig­nif­i­cant­ly alter someone’s men­tal state with­out their knowing.

Despite being set up as a clas­sic femme fatale, Mal is a pro­found­ly trag­ic fig­ure with­out agency. She was appro­pri­ate­ly nick­named ​‘The Shade’ in pro­mo­tion­al mate­r­i­al, which per­fect­ly encap­su­lates her role in the film. The Mal we see is not the real Mal, but a vio­lent and malig­nant man­i­fes­ta­tion of Cobb’s guilt, a shad­ow formed of mem­o­ries and regrets. She is dis­turbed and quick to anger, sab­o­tag­ing his work and attack­ing his team in their dreams.

Yet from the per­spec­tive of Arthur (Joseph Gor­don-Levitt), one of the few char­ac­ters besides Cobb who knew Mal, ​“she was love­ly”. This begs the ques­tion of whether Cobb imag­ines Mal to be furi­ous and venge­ful to make him­self kinder by com­par­i­son, or if Mal was as tox­ic as he is.

In life, their bond appeared mutu­al­ly obses­sive: after all, they chose to spend the equiv­a­lent of 50 years in a dream world with just each oth­er for com­pa­ny. They reg­u­lar­ly quote a rid­dle about board­ing a train with no idea of its des­ti­na­tion, deem­ing it unim­por­tant as long as ​“they’ll be togeth­er”. The prob­lem is that their code­pen­den­cy is much like a dream state: momen­tar­i­ly appeal­ing but ulti­mate­ly an escape from reality.

They can­not prop­er­ly func­tion in the real world, at least not in a hap­py or healthy way, as we see with the progress of their dream exper­i­ment. When Mal refus­es to leave their shared fan­ta­sy, Cobb incepts and inevitably gaslights her. He jus­ti­fies his actions as an attempt to bring her out of the dream world, yet fails to con­sid­er how dan­ger­ous it is to fun­da­men­tal­ly alter her sense of real­i­ty and deprive her of her agency.

The 1938 stage play ​‘Gas Light’, where the term ​‘gaslight­ing’ orig­i­nat­ed, told the sto­ry of a hus­band psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly manip­u­lat­ing his wife by mod­i­fy­ing ele­ments of their envi­ron­ment while pre­tend­ing noth­ing had changed. Sim­i­lar­ly, Incep­tion blurs the line of real­i­ty and fan­ta­sy by using ​‘totems’ to dis­tin­guish between the worlds. Cobb explic­it­ly states that no one but the own­er should inter­act with the totem; even weight and dimen­sion are details only they should know. This lat­er reveals his hypocrisy as his own totem, a spin­ning top, orig­i­nal­ly belonged to Mal.

When Cobb dis­cov­ers Mal’s totem buried away in the recess­es of her mind, he spins it and Mal’s sense of real­i­ty begins to spin out of con­trol. Like the hus­band in ​‘Gas Light’, he nev­er reveals this infor­ma­tion to her, a cru­el act which caus­es Mal’s descent into mad­ness and even­tu­al sui­cide. After Mal’s death, he iron­i­cal­ly depends on the totem to estab­lish his own sense of real­i­ty. It is poet­ic jus­tice that the object which tor­ment­ed Mal ends up tor­ment­ing Cobb.

While Cobb grieves for Mal, it is ques­tion­able whether he earns his redemp­tion. Despite know­ing the dan­gers of incep­tion, he con­tin­ues to incept CEO Robert Fis­ch­er (Cil­lian Mur­phy) while endan­ger­ing his team by risk­ing falling into lim­bo, an uncon­struct­ed dream space from which one can nev­er wake up. When he final­ly con­fronts his actions, it is only to absolve his guilt and move on with his life; yet the pro­jec­tion of Mal tear­ful­ly stat­ing ​“you infect­ed my mind” shows that the dam­age he inflict­ed can nev­er entire­ly be undone.

Abusers delude them­selves into believ­ing that they are redeemable, that their actions can exist with­out con­se­quence. The final scene of domes­tic bliss may only be a pro­jec­tion of Cobb’s desire for a future where he is for­giv­en, a fan­ta­sy he has con­struct­ed to escape the awful truth of his actions. The spin­ning top begins to lose its bal­ance because, deep down, Cobb knows the illu­sion is not built to last.