Narrative Metalepsis as Diegetic Concept in Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010)

The paper aims to revitalise Gérard Genette’s literary term of ‘metalepsis’ within a cinematic context, emphasising the expression’s creative potentials for both analytical and creative approaches. Through its ‘mainstream complexity,’ Christopher Nolan’s 2010 film Inception provides a novel, and at best, progressive contribution to contemporary Hollywood cinema; exemplified in its playful take on the diversified possibilities that the metaleptic logic allows. Nolan hereby (and similarly to Memento and The Prestige) follows his auteur affinity of converting, moreover converging narrative and cognitive values into, and within a fictional story. By introducing a fantastic, but at least conceivably possible futuristic, world of permeable dreams in Inception, Nolan ‘diegetises’ the narrative feature of the embedded structures’ metaleptic transgressions, and inversely, by thoughtfully considering its viewer’s abilities of comprehension, ‘narrativises’ human cognitive skills into storytelling forms.