Close-Up - Inception, 2010

Watching Christopher Nolan's 2010 film Inception, especially in the cinema, is an overwhelming experience. The viewer has no idea what is going on but can marvel at the visual spectacle of cinema.
In this scene on a Parisian street, young architect Ariadne (Ellen Page) rebuilds the landscape with her imagination and without being bound by physical constraints. It is notable that Nolan forgoes a fully digital effect here, perhaps drawing inspiration from the work of Stanley Kubrick decades prior. This is live-action footage, seamlessly blended digitally. The "radical realness" of the impossible image - with cars travelling from vertically through space and the street folded onto itself - is what makes it so strange and so strangely unsettling to us as spectators.
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Written and narrated by Bruce Isaacs.
Sound edited by Shelagh Stanton, University of Sydney Digital Media.
Video edited by Wes Mountain.