Inception is the best film I’ve seen in many a while.  By what standard?  This – unlike others, it stuck in my mind far beyond the two minute walk from cinema to car on way home.  In fact, for the first week after I watched it, images from it frequented my head (although thankfully not my dreams).

I pestered people at work with the question, “What is the most resilient virus?”

Getting something to stick in someone’s mind is, of course, what the film is all about.  At least I think so.  But according to those with higher brows than mine, Inception is really about video gaming, or the shared dream of watching a movie.  Maybe.  But for me, when I saw it, one word shot through my head unbidden: marketing.  IMHO Inception is all about how to persuade others to alter their behaviour by planting  the seed of an idea into their subconscious.

The whole movie is a marketing lesson wrapped up in a film plot.  Some have likened it to a heist film, in which a team of thieves forge an elaborate plan for stealing an item(s) of value.  So according to this view Inception is a cross between The Italian Job or The Inside Man with a twist of The Matrix for sci-fi effect.  But remember - a heist is the opposite of what inception is all about.  Here, our team is hired to put something in, not take something out.

And what is it they have to place in the vault of their mark’s mind?

Cobb: What’s the most resilient parasite? An idea. A single idea from the human mind can build cities. An idea can transform the world and rewrite all the rules.

Isn’t planting an idea in someone’s mind the very essence of what marketing seeks to achieve?  And how are they going to perform this feat?

Eames: If we are gonna perform Inception then we need imagination.

Imagination is the key.  Yes, you have the strategy, the segmentation, the statistics, the sales techniques, and all the other tools of the modern marketing process.  But, finally, marketing is an act of creation by which you try to implant an idea of product value in the mind of potential customers/clients.

Inception gives us some tips on how this is best achieved.

Cobb: You see, I think negative emotions are always trumped by positive emotions.
Eames: You mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.
Cobb: Never recreate from your memory. Always imagine new places.

I could write a paragraph on each of these.  But it might be best if I left it to you to tease out the marketing implications for yourselves.  Go on – exercise your own imagination!

A final word on the film.  DiCaprio was in serious danger of being outshone by two of his team: Joseph Gorden-Levitt as Arthur and British actor Tom Hardy as Eames were superb.  And if you’d like a single visual represention of the whole plot in one glance try this.

Has this post planted a virus in your mind?

Image credit: cuttlefish.

You know how I believe that comics are smart.  Well it seems that children’s films are too.  I happened across an article recently that asked the question of how you make a kids flick engaging for an adult audience too.  The answer?  You place ideas in it.  (Are you listening Hollywood?)

For instance, the excellent 2004 film The Incredibles. It ‘satirises the litigiousness of US society, as those saved by superheroes take legal action against them, forcing their saviours into an equivalent of the witness protection programme.’  Good so far.  But here’s the bit that grabbed my attention.

‘Adherents of the individualist thinker Ayn Rand analysed the movie through the prism of her philosophy, noting that the film appears to attack the oppressive egalitarianism that forces superheroes to disguise their powers.

‘In The Incredibles, the superhero mother tells her son: “Everyone’s special.”  He replies sotto voce: “Which is another way of saying no one is.”‘

Too true!  I’ve blogged about Ayn Rand before in an attempt to raise some interest in her work in Northern Ireland.  We’re a victim-orientated society in which the only race people want to win is the “I hurt more than you (therefore give me loads of cash)” sprint finals.

Truthfully, though, there’s always been a bit of a tension in my own worldview between two beliefs.  (1) Everyone has the potential for personal development and the right to claim respect.  (2)  Only some people put forth the effort to succeed in life, and therefore deserve to reap the rewards.  The rest (perhaps the majority) will content themselves with a existence of TV and tedium or ‘wine and whineing’.  Especially if they’re guys.

The first of these is egalitarian, socialist, lowest-common-denominator; the second, meritocratic, capitalist, elitist.  Question is, which is the more heroic?  I’ve argued before that everyone is born with a set of intelligences but how you develop them is your responsibility and no-one else.

So heroes aren’t born out of wealth, education or any other privilege.  They are those who have raised themselves above the ordinary by their own persistence and resilience.  That is what makes them incredible, invincible, heroic.  As the lady said:

“Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it’s yours.”

Image credit: audi_insperation.