In Upstream Color, Kris, with the help of Jeff, must work out the clues, aka programmed compulsions she engages in, in order to locate the true the source of her neurosis. Cobb travels within those minds while his team supplicates investigatory roles and lookouts in his navigation. In Inception, our protagonist, Cobb, has a team of dream architects to build various levels of worlds to reveal secrets in the subconscious subject’s mind. Let’s think on Inception and Upstream Color, for a second, before I explore this brainworm in 8 1/2. What better way than the power of the dream and the subconscious to showcase where the real film magic happens: a director’s view as rendered in an audience’s brain. After revisiting the academic texts of Lacan, Deleuze, and Debord (as reviewers inevitably, albeit indirectly or subconsciously do), the psychological & sociological distortions of the directorial mind are augmented on film. There are two modern films that stick out for me when I think of Federico Fellini‘s 8 1/2: Christopher Nolan‘s Inception and Shane Carruth‘s Upstream Color.