
            Time is an infinite progression of events in which reality of life never stops, changes, or gets interrupted. Film directors Christopher Nolan and Martin Scorsese challenge this world-wide concept with their movies Inception and Shutter Island, respectively. In both motion pictures, time is tampered with through the use of dreams and delusions. The plots, while confusing at times, are masterworks of complexity that play with conceptions of reality through the use of these dreams. Leonardo DiCaprio, coincidentally the main character in both films, displays his incredible acting skills as he portrays two different technics of portraying time and manipulation of reality. In Inception, his character Cobb, intentionally dives into dreams while attempting to harbor the reality of his unconscious mind. Teddy Daniels, DiCaprio’s character in Shutter Island, is unaware of the passage of time and the implementations of his own life. The passage of time and alluded dreams these characters’ experience directly influences their perception of reality. While the influence of time and dreams are depicted differently in both of these films, each motion picture creates complex delusions, ones of which question life and sanity.

            In Inception, Dom Cobb and his team of skilled con-artists enter other people’s dreams in order to extract information from their unconscious mind. Along with his complicated job, he has a complex background. His own wife sabotaged him, taking him away from his kids and after she did, she took her own life- the reasons for which will be discussed later. In the beginning of the movie, however, Cobbs is offered a deal. If he can plant an idea in the mind of a corporate business man, rather than extract information, he will be able to return to his kids. While in the beginning, this was deemed as an impossible feat, Cobb needed to risk it in order to hold on to a little bit of his reality, and ultimately, sanity. This leverage is the first thing that indicates Cobb’s dark reality. As they go through the task of planting this idea, Cobb’s unconscious becomes more uncontrollable as they progress deeper into their mission. This idea of an instable, hidden reality is displayed in the other film as well. In Shutter Island, the plot is centered around Teddy Daniels, a U.S. Marshall who came to the island to investigate a supposed missing person. While this case is eventually solved, Daniels continues to search for a man named Andrew Laeddis, who killed his own wife. Throughout the movie, Daniels experiences extreme migraines and dreams of his time in war and his wife who died. As time passes, Daniel’s begins to display signs of instability- he has a constant migraine and consistent dreams about his wife and kids, implying that he is hiding a dark unconscious. In the end, it is revealed that Teddy Daniels himself is the insane Andrew Laeddis he was looking for. In his real life, his wife drowned their three kids in the lake behind their house and when he learned about this, he killed her. Laeddis created this persona and alternative life as a way to run away from this reality. While this deception can be compared in both Inception and Shutter Island, the difference is the use of these dreams, the passage of time, and how each character confronts reality.

            Dreams are depicted differently in each film. In Inception, dreams can be created and manipulated no matter who is the host. There are particular measures that Cobb and his team have to take in order to enter and exit the dream safely. Five minutes in reality is equivalent to an hour in a dream, so if their physical bodies stay sedated for too long they could be stuck in that particular level of consciousness for years in dream time. In order to exit a dream, a “kick” has to occur. This is when they die in a dream or the dream itself comes crashing down. Using their master plan to plant the idea of corruption as an example, they planned three parts to this mission in which they will have to “kick up” in each of them. Each part is a different level of consciousness, a deeper level of dreaming. These kicks are based on the construction of the dream and how much time has passed. To have enough time in each level before the “kick” occurs, Cobb and his team have to be sedated for ten hours; this allows them to spend a great amount of time extracting all of the information they need in order to properly plant the idea they created. After planning a ten-hour plane ride in reality and creating each level of consciousness, Cobb and his team enter the first realm of the dream. The beginning of this deception poses a new threat to Cobb himself. As his past holds terrible recollections, these dreams Cobb and his team put themselves in become unstable the deeper they go, directly comparing to Cobb’s own denial of his responsibility for his wife’s suicide. While this movie gives the idea that dreams hold secrets of time and reality, Shutter Island uses dreams to reveal Teddy Daniels’ true identity and his obscuration of reality. However, there is one particular moment in which Shutter Island closely compares to Inception. Daniels suffers from an extreme migraine which lures him into a deep sleep. In his dream, he passes bodies frozen on the ground but in particular, he stops at a woman and a young child. Suddenly, the child awakes and says, “You should’ve saved me. You should’ve saved all of us,” indicating the guilt he holds by not saving his children. The dream changes and Daniels is in the study of the doctors on Shutter Island. There, he encounters his perception of Andrew Laeddis. this same scene, he comes across Rachel as the woman who he came to Shutter Island to find, accompanied by the same young girl who was frozen on the ground and two other young boys. They are dead and covered in blood, signifying the crime that took their lives and Daniels’ guilt concealed by his own deception. After helping Rachel place the dead kids in the lake where they were drowned, Daniels wakes up, similar to the “kick” in Inception. Although he is supposed to be back in reality, his dead wife appears and warns him about Laeddis still being alive and in Shutter Island. Still under the deception that he is not Laeddis, Daniels physically wakes up, finally returning to reality. These “kicks” both characters experience present the passage of time in different ways. In Inception, they represent the time passing within each dream, rather than actual reality, which compares to how long Cobb feels he has been holding the guilt the death of his wife. Even though it has only been a few years in real life, time is longer to him because he has spent most of his time in dreams, therefore his guilt and denial seem endless. Each kick gets him one step closer to fronting this reality. In Shutter Island, the two “kicks” represent how deep Daniels’ self-deception has gone over the past two years. Even though these “kicks” represent something a little different in each film, very “kick” is one step that each character takes, unconsciously getting closer to confronting their pasts. These dreams and conceptions of time allow both characters to discover how they’ve manipulated their realities. Daniels and Cobb are similar in the way that their dark, unconscious problems interfere with their perception of reality. This goes to say, dreams, whether consciously created or not, hold things that represent reality and cannot be controlled. Time within these dreams influences how deep or complex a deception can be. The perceptions of time, places, people, and things are more than just perceptions. They hold an extensive library of unfathomable, unconscious issues of reality. With the help of these dreams and time, Cobb and Daniels both refuse to accept their true lives and they deceive themselves into a dream-like state of thinking.

            Through the use of these dreams, the wives of Cobb and Daniels lead them to think that everything in their lives are fine. In both cases, however, this is far from the truth. In Inception, Cobb harbors his unconscious perception of his wife. Cobb and his wife used to explore how are they could go within levels of dreams. They ended up stuck in their own created world for 50 years. Within the dream, they killed themselves in order to get back to reality. His wife, however, believed she was still in a dream. Through her insanity, she thought their kids were perceptions and urged Cobb to commit suicide in order to “kick up” once again. Ultimately, her own deception got the best of her; she made it so Cobb could no longer see their kids in an attempt to get him to join her while she jumped off a building, ending her own life. Cobb blamed himself for her inception of insanity. He was the reason she was exposed to the dream-state for so long. He was not able to confront this guilt, so he tucked it away in his unconscious mind, hiding his wife in a place deep within him. Cobb’s deception of reality is different from Daniels’ in that he was aware of his inability to cope with his life. Daniels’ identity, however, was hidden from himself. He had no idea he was actually Andrew Laeddis. Laeddis’ wife, Rachel, ironically the name of the inmate he was sent there to find, was a manic depressive. As mentioned before, the day he came home to find that she had drowned their three children, he killed her. Over the period of two years, he was sent to Shutter Island and convinced himself that he was a U.S. Marshall named Teddy Daniels. The whole scheme of Teddy Daniels’ being sent to Shutter Island was one last attempt at bringing Laeddis back to reality. While Cobb eventually confronts his perception of his wife and forgives himself for her death, Laeddis/Daniels has a different way of accepting his reality. At the end of the movie he says, “Which would be worse, to live as a monster or to die as a good man?” This implies that he is aware of what has happened to him but would rather accept the fate of insanity- death. Both of these films insinuate that dreams influence perceptions of reality. The more time spent in dreams or the more in depth they go, the harder it is to have a tight grasp on sanity.

            While time, dreams, and perception of reality are the main themes in each of these films, they are each portrayed differently on high levels of complexity. Each of the dreams in Inception represent a different period of time in the mission to plant the idea as well as times in Cobb’s life. Just like in real life, the dreams are related to the events that occur over time. These dreams, however, can influence perceptions of time and reality. By questioning what dreams mean and exploring how time has effected what is dreamt about, it is easy to get lost outside of reality. Like Andrew Laeddis, dreams can push someone further from sanity and convince them that the horrors in their life are not their own. There is a moment in Laeddis’ dream in which the smoke of the cigarette he has between his lips goes backwards into the stick of narcotic. This particular scene represents the passage of time within the dreams of both Inception and Shutter Island. Even though time moves forward in the realities they’ve created for themselves, they are actually confronting their past. The genius concepts presented throughout both of these films provide insight to how time within real life and within dreams can influence the mind’s perception of reality. Perhaps reality isn’t what people think it is, perhaps it is simply a dream. 