I was writing back and forth with a friend of mine about "Inception", and he brought up a number of excellent points I hadn't even considered. After reading them, I was kicking myself for not noticing these things; "As far as the ending goes - From what I could discern, totems are only good for determining whether or not you are in someone else's dream. In fact, I think Cobb says that line exactly when he introduces the concept of totems. This is because no one else knows the exact weight and properties of your totem, so they can't recreate it perfectly in their dream world. However, in your own dream, you could easily recreate your own totem, so Cobb's totem would have fallen down even if he was dreaming. That's why I think that if they wanted it to be an ambiguous ending, they should have just shown the top fall down. It wouldn't have proved anything! But then, I don't think Cobb's totem made much sense in the first place. Plenty of people had seen him use his top, and knew that if it fell down, Cobb would believe he was in reality. Wouldn't a good architect create a top for him which falls down? Putting it another way, what kind of retarded architect would give him an infinitely spinning top, even if they didn't know it was his totem? Other annoyances - What was the final "kick" which woke them up on the plane? They never showed this happening. The sedative couldn't have worn off, because they would have had to spend an entire week in the first level of the dream, and apparently they all would have died and been sent to limbo if that happened (according to Cobb). Furthermore, I didn't really buy into the idea of "kicks". The concept seems to be that if you are falling, your brain automatically wakes you up (such as if you fall out of bed while sleeping, or when Cobb fell into the bathtub at the beginning of the movie). If you are in multiple levels of dreams, you need a kick on each level to wake you up. My problem is this: why didn't the kicks work sometimes? When the hotel turns upside down, surely that would create the sensation of falling for everyone in the hotel. Why don't the people asleep in the hotel wake up? And further, when the van turns upside down, why don't the people in the van wake up? Can you choose not to wake up even if you do receive a kick? Also, why do the kicks have to be synchronized? If you failed the first kick, couldn't you just keep attempting kicks until whoever is still asleep wakes up? They did this in the movie, so apparently they can! But then why did they make such a big deal out of the music thing? For convenience's sake?" I argued that he is correct about the totem, but the viewer must accept its God-like ability on faith alone, not questioning its definition too much. But as for the "kicks", he's correct that they seemingly violate their own rules there.
The hotel doesn't actually turn upside down. Arthur tells the chemist to make sure to start the kick timing early enough so he can pull it off before the van goes off the bridge because while the van is falling they'd be in zero gravity. They're floating, not upside down. What I don't remember happening is why that didn't happen on the third level (the fortress thing in the snow)? I guess maybe it only goes down a level.
I don't see why the top is a good indicator at all as to whether Cobb is awake or in a dream. It isn't even his totem. It's his wife's totem. I can't remember what he says specifically about touching other people's totems, but isn't that kind of a weighty issue?
If you look carefully the children are wearing slightly different clothing, their positions are not exact and they are aged. The credits provide proof of this in that there are two sets of actors used to portray the Cobb children ( girl 3 years/5years - boy 20 months/3 years). Again Nolan could have done this simply to keep us guessing or as a clue that Cobb returned to reality. Do I know for certain whether Leo is awake or in a dream at the end? No. No one knows that except for Christopher Nolan and that is exactly the way he wants it.
Saw it last night in IMAX and holy shit. I felt so refreshed leaving the theater. Like: thank christ! A summer blockbuster that is original and smart. Everything about it was so unlike what we've been seeing for the last 5 years. I'm sure most people didn't overtly notice the relative lack of CGI but probably they were thinking "this movie seems more real than I'm used to." Around 500 VFX shots compared to 2,000 in the average summer shit show, and a visual treat that is so much more satisfying than Transformers or even Avatar. That in itself is a testament to what Inception has achieved. Add the story that is both complex and intriguing, the characters that are well played, and the subtle visual symbolism and you get, if not a perfect film, one that is MILES above the likes of Sherlock Holmes or Harry Potter or anything else coming out this summer. Nolan is quickly becoming my favorite working director, not so much because I love his films more than others but because he challenges convention, understands how to use visual effects to enhance a film world, not create one, and he doesn't fucking shoot in 3D. I'm so sick of every big movie being in theme park-esque, headache inducing 3D. If I wanted things to feel like they're flying at my face I'd go see "Honey I Shrunk the Audience" in fucking Orlando. My one wish was that the film got deeper and weirder. I understand the limitations of a blockbuster, namely having to earn back 200 million or so. But, like Nolan said in an interview, the power of the our minds is infinite. We have all had stranger, more surreal dreams than anything shown in the film. For instance, why would our subconscious project security as men in vans with guns? Why not awesome weapons, strange creatures, things that don't exist in real life? Conceptually, the leap from machine gun to grenade launcher is miniscule. Both are laughable compared to what our unbridled minds could come up with. I feel like if Nolan ever makes a sequel with the same concept much later in his career, he might believe he can go a little more off the deep end. Inception is more of an exploration of dreams and the subconscious through the visual medium of contemporary action films than a true dive into the horrors and wonders of our real minds. Also since the dreams were created, they had to be close enough to reality so that the characters could achieve their mission. It's a heist film that happens to be set in a false reality. But it was a very very good heist film. A few small things I noticed: Lots and lots of reflecting shots (mostly on the black table) early in the film to foreshadow the eventual change in gravity. That was one hell of a revolving set they built. I can't imagine choreographing a fight scene on 4 separate planes. It might as well be his. She's dead and so is not creating dreams anymore. As mentioned, the purpose of the totem is to determine if you are in your own dream or someone else's. Cobb is the only one who touches the top and he created the notion that it spins forever in a dream. I really like the idea that the end of the film IS a dream, but that it's Cobb finally having a real dream. It explains the kids in nearly identical positions and identical clothes, something that is to coincidental to happen in real life. I also like how the kid at the end says "look what I've been building" like we all "build" worlds in our dreams. The windmill in the safe of the heir of an energy tycoon. Alternative energy tycoon.
I saw this movie a week ago, and I hate to de-rail the current plot discussion, but there's something I just can't remember. Is it ever explained how they infiltrate a person's dreams? For the life of me, all I can remember is different subjects hooking themselves up to a machine, and then BAM, they're in that person's dream. Is it ever explained how exactly this works?
Someone (an architect) creates a dream world and then, upon being brought into that world, the subject's subconscious populates it with projections of people and their own hidden thoughts and motivations. The technology isn't explained thoroughly enough beyond the fact that they are somehow sharing a dream space through chemical and probably subtle physical means and that extraction is done from a secure mental place manifesting itself as a safe or vault. Still a few things I'm not sure about too, though. One viewing is definitely not enough.
This question can be a part of the whole 'Cobb is still dreaming-theory' (which, by the way, I disagree with), but I wondered: How the hell is Mal popping up in other people's dreams? I know Page said "The deeper we go into Fischer, we also go deeper into you." But what the hell does that mean? Does it mean that if an extractor has some serious emotional baggage, that baggage takes some kind of piggy ride on his back into the dream? Or does it mean that when an extractor hasn't got enough control over his subconsience, some things will spill over into the other dream? Like I said, I don't think Cobb is still dreaming at the end. But it's a testament to the strength of this movie that you can argue for the exact opposite and still find scenes and clues to ad to your theory. This page http://insidemovies.moviefone.com/2010/07/19/inception-ending-theories/ has some interesting theories. The one I keep thinking about is this:Is Cobb the real target? I don't believe some people are trying to get some secret out of Cobb. The entering of dreams isn't only meant for stealing secrets. The movie made that clear; husband and wive do it for shits and giggles and Africans do it to trip some major balls. But there was something that felt really intentional about some of the recurring quotes and actions throughout the movie: "take a leap of faith", "do you want to become an old man, filled with regret, waiting to die alone",the continuous efforts of Mal to convice Cobb that he never fully returned. The totem's are said to become useless if someone else holds them. The implication of course is that it has become useless to the totem's owner. But what if it becomes completely useless if someone else holds it. In that case, the spin means fuck-all, since it used to belong to Mal. I know a lot of this is meant to fuck with our heads, and I'm starting to ramble. But still, it could mean there are extractors trying to get Cobb out of there or something. But something else just popped in my head. Think about this: Nolan's Memento had a lead character, Leonard, that lived in his own world due to an unusual condition. His wife couldn't take it no more and killed herself. Afterwards, he deliberately perpetuated it's own fantasy in which he has no idea what really happened to her and tries to find closure (by shooting people). What if Cobb is something like Leonard (without the shooting people in the head)?
Well they do mention that any of the teams projections can pop up while there in there and that's one of the reasons only the architect should know the lay out to the dream. But for Cobb its not any normal projection its Mal and because of the emotional connection with her it makes his projection the most dangerous.
Just got back from the movie, absolutely loved it, have to see it again, etc. Something that bothered me (probably me being an idiot): Remember when Eames "dreams" up the grenade launcher? Why can't they dream up awesome shit to help them fight off projections/infiltrate where they want to go? At first I thought it was because it would make someone realize it was a dream and cause the projections to go crazy and attack, but Fischer KNEW it was a dream. I'm confused about the whole limbo thing, I don't understand who's "dream" it is, or where it "exists" if that makes sense? Is it a shared state between all dreamers? And if so, how is Cobb in limbo on his own if it's only one person dreaming (himself)? I won't argue the end, it is clear the ending is ambigious on purpose and I think it's a better film for it, I said "FOR FUCK'S SAKE" at the end when we didn't get to see totem it continue or land, which I think is awesome it even evoked a reaction out of me.
They mentioned something about Cobb being in limbo before therefor everyone in limbo is seeing Cobbs limbo. Does that make any sense or am I just talking crazy?
So limbo is what you go to when you continue through too many dream levels? Can limbo exist if none of the dreamers have had previous experience in limbo before? Or in that case would limbo be just everbody's subconcious dream space. Ahhh what a film.
I never thought about it until now but my roommate and I are talking and Cobb does mention how him and Mal pushed each other to see how far they could go. Which would be limbo...right? Limbo would exist for the others too, but if Cobb wasn't in that dream sequence it would look different. It would be someone else's and they could build in that. I know Ive seen it twice and even trying to answer these questions is hard to answer with out adding another question. Now lets just hope I'm right.
One of the best movies I've seen in a long time. I usually avoid summer blockbusters like the plague because they're all the same shit plots surrounded by explosions and one dimensional characters and shitty cliches. I'm just happy that movies like this are still being made, even if they're all too rare. Now that that's out of the way... I need to see this again before I comment too much on anything. Too many small details and rules to try to keep straight in my head right now. Does anyone else get the feeling that this whole thing might have been someone doing an inception on Leo? Making him believe the whole story with his wife the same way he made that guy believe his dad loved him and convinced him that breaking up the company was his own idea. I'm probably looking far too deep into this. And I am even confused as to what I'm trying to explain here. Just thought I'd throw some shit against the wall... One more thing, movies like this always remind me of something I heard Tarantino say (I think). He said that some people make movies so that if a million people saw it, they all would see the same movie. Others make a movie so that if a million people saw it, they would all see a million different movies. As frustrating as it might be to think about, I prefer the latter.
Finally saw it a second time. I wish someone would have brought up that Cobb's kids were in different positions and different clothes when I thought he was in a dream earlier... but meh. Pretty sure he was in reality at the end at this point. I still think it's awesome how he turns away from the top, and therefore the knowledge, of whether or not he's in reality at the end. Going off that, the part that stuck out to me the most wasn't the minutiae, but the quote he and Mal kept saying to each other throughout the film: That gave the film so much more emotional resonance for me. It couldn't help but make one think of death too, especially since Mal and Cobb may, at that point, have thought they truly were dying. Even if they didn't, there had to be some doubts, and I know that was in the back of my mind. The more I think about it, that emotional core is what made the film so good to me. The feeling that it doesn't matter what happens to you because you're around the ones you love, be it living in the inevitable face of death, going through rough times, or just the depth that such love inherently has. And it tackled that theme in a fresh new way. That's rare.
I think I figured this out the last time I saw it. Haven't seen this written anywhere else on the net, but anyways. I don't think it's an issue of time, even though that could be true too. I think it has to do with the nature of limbo itself. Limbo is free-form subconscious, right? A person's subconscious contains all a person's deepest motivations and desires, including their greatest fears. Early in the movie, though I don't remember exactly where, it was mentioned that Saito's deepest fear was dying old and alone, which is exactly what's happening to him in Limbo. Saito admits as much to Cobb early in the movie, and Cobb repeats it to Saito in limbo to get him to see the truth: that he's in limbo. Similarly, Cobb's greatest fear was confronting the truth that he killed Mal. I think that's why everyone viewed limbo as being so dangerous -- confronting one's deepest inner fears is one of the most difficult things in life to do, and in limbo, where such thoughts manifest themselves as reality, it would be so easy to be trapped there forever. I think Cobb's children were what kept him sane in limbo. Not seeing his children again wasn't a negative emotion -- it was something positive for him to look forward to. It cleared his mind of everything else. It's just like when they were talking about performing an inception, how they would have to use a positive memory. Remember when Cobb washed up on the beach in the beginning of the movie, he saw his kids? That's another reason I now think that he made it back to reality. And as for the projections in the end not speaking, that wasn't true either -- Fisher spoke to the stewardess.
Quick question, why was Fischer's mind filled with trained soldiers again? Was this the anti-Extraction preparation Leo was trying to bullshit Watanabe at the beginning of the film with? Christopher Nolan is awesome.