"Show, don't tell" they say. Who says? They say "showing, not telling will make your film better.". They say that "exposition" in dialogue ruins the film. Who they? What do they know? They?.... pff... Thought [Christopher Nolan]() one night before starting the script for his 2010 masterpiece *Inception*.

Pretty much the entire script of *Inception* by Christopher Nolan is filled with just exposition. Every single line of dialogue is exposition. Emotional scene? Exposition. Exposition scene? Still exposition. This movie is some kind of exposition-sception or something. There is exposition within exposition. And exposition within exposition within exposition.

An yet somehow it works.

Somehow, despite all this exposition, the film fucking rules! It is very interesting to watch, and the emotions are very emotionally emotional. The film is a very good movie. HOW???

Well let's put out theorizing ass-hats on, because I think I have a theory down there somewhere and I am about to shit it out.

I think the entire filmography of Christopher Nolan is filled to the brim with cinematographic social experiments. Think about it: [Tenet](/reviews/tenet_of_tenet) and *Dunkirk* is Nolan perfecting the art of telling a captivating story without character backstories. In *Tenet* he goes even further, by making the protagonist literally an unnamed hero with no past. Which is kind of even a part of both the plot and the philosophy of the film itself. *Memento* is about challenging the belief that a movie needs to move in one direction. The film is literally reversed. While the arcs and the beginning-middle-and-end structure is not reversed.

In Inception, I believe, Christopher Nolan asks himself a very important question: Can there be a good movie who's dialogue is just exposition?

And he answers yes. By maximizing everything else.

Tension, for example. Nolan is very good when it comes to tension. But in this movie he does in-tension. Tension within tension within tension. A lot of good movies will do a ticking clock sequence to get the action going. Nolan does a ticking clock within a ticking clock. There are so many levels of stakes that the movie never feels dull even for a moment. Even though, strangely enough it is all exposition.

And then there is the sci-fi mystery / complexity of it all that Nolan is very good at. The layered realities of dreams withing dreams within dreams. The rules and the paradoxes of all those dream-realities. The politics and the psychology of all the character dynamics. All of that is so complex that you are kind of happy to be explained everything all the time. Imagine if this movie didn't fucking have exposition!!!

**Happy Hacking!!!**