Be braced for musical nerdiness

Last night I went to Inception with my dear brother Tim Pierce and my mum. I enjoyed the movie very much and we discussed it quite extensively after. One thing we neglected to discuss, though we would not have had time to do so as completely, was the music. I might be the only one who noticed... I certainly was not awake enough at the time to clearly verbalise much of anything much anyhoo.

I, being a musician, was intrigued by the key the scores were in. For some time now I've been doing what you could call an independent study on the musical theory and style on music used particularly in movies, and the effectiveness of the music in movies (and in general) for manipulating emotions. I have found this quite fascinating. Inception however threw a curve ball at me. Most of the music was a major key (non musically theoretical translation- happy (read not scary or depressing) or exciting music) especially in the scenes with the most intense action. This surprised me. More frequently, the music in intense scenes is a minor key (nmtt- eerie, scary, sad or tense music) with few or no accidentals (nmtt- notes that don't fit the key). But in Inception, in the most mind bending, contemplative moments was C minor chuck full of accidentals, which perplexed me because it would have made more sense to write it in E major.

Throughout the movie, there was a wonderful sense of symbolism. Musically, I wondered if the accidentals, breaking of rules of musical key signature, had anything to do with the characters breaking the rules of reality. You'd have to see the movie to understand.

I'd love to dialogue with any of you about this :) or any of the movie for that matter.