Okay, so let's talk Inception and let's talk about the Inception ending and let's talk spoilers. Yes, SPOILERS, this post is a SPOILER!
Obviously, if you haven't seen the movie yet you aren't going to want to engage in this conversation, but considering it's been such a long while since we had a movie to discuss I felt it was only best to open a forum. Especially considering there is quite a bit to talk about outside of whether or not you liked the film, which we all want to know as well…
Outside of liking the film, I think the biggest question here is whether or not you believe the movie ended with Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) dreaming or in reality? The great thing about this one question is it leads you to question everything else about the movie in order to come up with your answer.
After seeing the movie twice and putting all my thoughts down in digital ink I have come to a personal conclusion, which I will detail shortly. First, I have put together a list of seven things I think can be used to spin your final decision one way or another. Some aren't as important as others, but a collection of two or three may cause you to doubt your ultimate determination. Let's dive in…
1) The children (of which I can't find a single frame of online) at the end of the movie are in virtually the same position on the lawn as they were in Dom's visions. They also seem to be wearing the same clothes.
2) The ages of the children are also noteworthy. Not only do they appear not to have aged from the last time Dom saw them, but there's a moment when he's on the phone with them and Phillipa sounds much older than she appears in these visions and at the end of the film. Of course, there is never a moment we're told how much time has passed since Dom had to leave them, but this creates a seed of doubt (or should I say a seed of "inception").
3) Where's grandma and how did Miles (Michael Caine) know to pick Dom up at the airport? Sure, there are things we can chalk up to simply having happened and the director didn't show us, but considering this is a movie where the audience is left to evaluate every turn in the plotline these are two things that aid the "Is it real or just a dream?" question. We hear grandma on the phone when Dom calls, but she's not there when he arrives at the house and on his way to seeing the children Miles just walks past him and out of frame, which is when Nolan zooms in on the spinning top.
4) The chase in Mombasa and Saito's (Ken Watanabe) timing. Here's a scenario that seems directly out of a dream – an impossible chase, a tight squeeze and an improbable rescue.
5) Saito's interruption of Dom as he tries to spin the top in the bathroom. This was the one thing I kept going back to in my discussions about the movie and trying to convince others it was a dream. Dom never gets a chance to confirm he's in reality as the top falls to the floor and never tries again after that. Are we in a dream or reality at this moment? We assume reality, but based on the rules set up by Nolan we don't know for sure.
6) Can you adopt someone else's totem? The importance of totems is made quite clear and it's also clear your totem should be kept to yourself and not shared. This makes me question Dom's use of Mal's (Marion Cotillard) throughout the entire movie. Saito spins it while the two are in shared limbo and it just keeps on spinning while falling elsewhere, but it's not his totem. Can he get a false read from it? Or is it simply a matter of understanding a totem's dream space design that gives the user an accurate read? This theory also opens the door to the final spin of the top… Does it spin forever? Does it fall? Does it matter?
7) Ariadne's (Ellen Page) immediate acceptance of shared dreaming can be looked at one of three ways – 1) a plot device you don't get too upset about; 2) a plot hole meaning she accepts it quickly to save time; or 3) another example proving this is all a dream and the dreamer simply overlooks exposition and projects onto people the qualities necessary for the dream to continue.
Now, the portion of the movie that will most likely have everyone arguing one way or another comes just before the very end. The jump to level four where Mal has kidnapped Fischer (Cillian Murphy) and Dom and Ariadne follow. Let me see if I can coherently describe my take on this and tell me if you agree, disagree or have a different interpretation altogether…
First off, there are a few things to consider I find particularly important. The first thing is that limbo is not a "place" but a state of mind. The second is to always realize our group of dream thieves is heavily sedated and all sharing the same state of mind and can follow each other through it. These two things, in my opinion, are key to figuring out the final sequence of the film…
To begin, Fischer "dies" in level three when shot by Mal therefore sending him into the limbo of this shared dreaming experience. At this point we learn Mal (which represents Dom's guilty subconscious) has kidnapped Fischer (the dream world equivalent of his subconscious) and she can be followed/found in the limbo Dom and Mal constructed. This explains why Ariadne and Dom can then enter Dom's subconscious, which is where Mal and Fischer's kidnapped subconscious now reside. After all, it was Dom's subconscious projection that killed Fischer.
Next, Dom confronts his guilt as suggested by Ariadne throughout the movie. His guilty conscience (Mal) weakens and allows Ariadne to get Fischer. The weather begins shifting as the dream world begins to collapse. Ariadne throws Fischer from the window allowing him to kick back up to level three at the same time Eames (Tom Hardy) uses the defibrillator. Ariadne then follows with a leap kicking herself back up to level three with Eames and now Fischer, who rides the kick up to a level where he wasn't already dead.
From here the kicks all happen simultaneously – the van hitting the water, the elevator drop and explosion and the destruction of the fortress. Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Ariadne, Eames and Fischer all ride this kick back up and join Yusef (Dileep Rao) whose dream is level one. They then sit on the shore and wait for the sedation to wear off so they can wake up back on the plane.
Meanwhile, Saito dies in level three and was sent to limbo. Dom dies in level one by drowning in the sinking van, which is when he joins Saito in the shared limbo and explains why Saito has aged and Dom has not. This also explains why the shared limbo is populated with Saito's memories when Dom arrives.
When they meet they aren't quite sure what to make of the situation, but the memory of a shared real experience causes them to remember and realize they are dreaming and is why they "take a leap of faith." Saito shoots and kills Dom sending him back to reality and then shoots himself. The two wake on the plane, Saito makes a phone call and the movie goes on from there…
As for my take on all this, based on the progression of the movie it insinuates Dom is in reality when he wakes on the plane. However, everything that happens after they land in Los Angeles implies it's a dream. This sounds confusing but it actually works given all the information we know…
Dom tells Ariadne the only way he can dream is to use the dream machine. This is when we watch the elevator sequence and we see the memories Dom has locked away in his subconscious. Later in the film Ariadne tells him he needs to confront his guilt and relieve himself of it, something he does in the fourth level when we learn the extent of his guilt. This would imply Dom has reached a new level of consciousness and he is now free to dream once again without torment.
This tells me when Dom and Saito awake from limbo it is in fact reality, and Saito then makes a call clearing Dom's name. From here what we see is a dream. Dom can now dream again without the dream machine and he's dreaming of seeing his kids once again with the last memory of them he has. Perhaps it happens on the plane or is simply a dream his mind goes back to now and again, but it is a dream.
NOW, WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE?
What's the most resilient parasite? An idea.
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There are, of course, several different ways to interpret this whole thing. Some believe Saito is manipulating the whole thing. Some believe Mal was actually right and Dom needs to kill himself in order to join reality. The movie is all about what you choose to believe is real and what is a dream. As Yusef says at one point when Ariadne asks, "Who would want to stay in a dream that long?" He answers, "Depends on the dream." This could easily relate to everything that happens considering it all works out for Dom in the end.
With the final shot of the movie Christopher Nolan has attempted his own measure of inception. The question is whether or not the seed he planted was strong enough to convince you the movie was one thing or another. Do you realize it's an idea he planted? Are you convinced it's a dream? Are you jumping from the balcony with Mal, or sticking with Dom in whatever reality it is he's chosen to believe?
Really fun, well thought out piece sir.
I have a different take. Dom was dreaming the entire movie.
In the end it is absolutely clear Dom is still dreaming. The children are the same age, wearing the same cloths, even in the exact same spot on the lawn. Here is my take…
Dom was dreaming the entire movie. When his wife was on the window edge and jumped, she actually woke up. Thus leaving Dom alone in his dream riddled with guilt. The rest of the plot was all a dream story Dom built to cope with his guilt about losing his wife.
Why didn't she just go back in then and get him out? Or better yet, why didn't she just shoot him to bring him back?
because in her time it may not bemuch, plus, we dont have any examples in the film of people joining shared dreams, it only seems possible to initiate a shared dream at the same time as the others you wish to share it with, not join it mid-session, and of course each can leave separately….
but what about the scene where Dom is hooked up to the machine on his own and is dreaming about Mal, and Adriadne sees him sleeping then hooks her self up to join him? He was "mid-season" through his dream with Mal when Mal notices Adriadne on the elevator and then Dom realizes shes there.
If the whole movie was Dom's subconscious, then explain how the TOTEM falls twice throughout the movie? Dom spins it and it falls, thus confirming it was real life at those moments.
The entire movie was certainly not a dream, but perhaps the last scene was Leo still stuck in limbo and now recreating his image of his kids and wanting to live with them for the rest of his life. The end was meant to be interpreted 2 ways, and the fact that it CAN be interpreted 2 ways is amazing in itself.
I loved the movie, the ending, the cast, the score, and just about everything about it.
It's like you relating the story to Shutter Island.
The totem is irrelevent because it was Mal's and we are told it may not work if given to others. It could have all been a dream.
yes. if she went to relity. she would of kicked him back to reliety.
Which is exactly the story of the last movie we saw starring DiCaprio (Shutter Island). Sounds a little like projection to me.
I believe this is the story….so that means he was like one of whose people that are in beds at yusefs place!??
perhaps if mal (in the case that she actually awoke upon killing herself) subsequently decided to kick dom awake as well, then there could be a time-delay perceived by dom in between her waking and executing the kick on him. could everything in the movie occur in the moments between when mal awakes and when she gives dom the kick??
it's been mentioned to me that there's a possibility that the whole movie is an inception on dom made by ariadne and commissioned by miles. miles wishes dom would let go what happened with mal and secretly hires ariadne to help dom out of his labyrinth, as her greek mythological counterpart does in the case of theseus (and mal would be the minotaur). ariadne might seem to be brilliantly intuitive in her improvisations, but could she actually be manipulating dom just as dom manipulates fischer?
My take? The whole film is one dream sequence. The film starts with Dom washing ashore. Where was reality ever established? His mind is creating all the levels. Nolan has used the same concept, but is getting better at involving diferrent levels. By the way, Saito never shoots Dom,or himself, we assume it due to the story line. The key are the children, Doms whole quest is to see their faces.Which he does only at the end.
Gahh it annoys me when people keep saying that children are their same age! If they really are, why are they played by two different actors? And how do you even know if they look the same age or not? You never saw their faces until that moment. I think the fact they're in the same spot is just for symbolism and stuff like that.
"If the whole movie was Dom's subconscious, then explain how the TOTEM falls twice throughout the movie? Dom spins it and it falls, thus confirming it was real life at those moments."
Because the top is an unreliable totem. Firstly, it's not Dom's totem. It's Mal's. And they make it clear in the movie that you have to have YOUR OWN, UNTOUCHED totem for it to work. Secondly, so what if the top topples over? If Dom is dreaming and he wants to believe it's reality, he can easily make the top topple over. Remember, Dom is an unreliable protagonist (Even Leo has said that in interviews). He's the one that tells us if the top topples over, he's in reality. But who's to say that's correct?
the kids are not wearing the same clothing. the boy jack is wearing close to the same thing but the color scheme is a little different but philipa is wearing a white overcoat over her pink dress. the second time watching the movie i paid very close attention and at no point is she wearing anything but that one piece pink dress. jacks hair is also longer at the end of the movie.
What about you ? Are you dreaming or in reality ? Go check movie Mr. nobody for better conclusion to state of consciousness or Dr. Awit Goswami .
People keep asking why Mal doesn't just wake him up if he is dreaming and she was right all along. I believe that the reason behind this is because he is so deep in his dream state, that time is much longer than the 50 years he spent with Mal. His wife will probably in fact wake him up, but he is so many levels deep into his dream that it may feel like an eternity
I think you can not tell what parts of the movies are "reality" and which are dream. the explanations given are not enough to know the rules of the totems good enough.
its only enough if you want to see this movie as an action movie. if you see the phylosophical level, theres only one answer the movie states.
you choose your reality.
but didnt dom and his wife kill themselvs under the train? leading them back to reality were dom saw his kids for the last time and kept that image with him throughout the entire movie
It is hard to interpret but do you remember when he is on LEVEL 4 and mal calls out to the children and dom looks away? Why does he do this? In his subconscious the memory of his children is them running away when their grandma calls them he cannot see their faces so why look away.
Now consider this. Would the kids have looked at dom or mal when she called them when on level 4 thus saying that the last memory of his kids was in fact mal calling them, not grandma. After all the kids are doing exactly the same thing in Limbo as they do in doms subconscious. But why are the kids in Limbo. Why are there projections of them?? Who's projection is it?? Doms or mal?
It picks my brain but i am going to see it again tomorrow. but i think the point i made is relevent. Think about it!!!!!!. "you musnt be afraid to dream bigger my darling"
Does it matter at all that we get to see dom's children's faces in the end? We don't get to see their faces throughout the whole movie because he didn't get that last chance to see them. However does seeing them in the end suggest that it is reality?
The reason that Dom looks away when Mal calls the children is because she is trying to get him to stay with her. If he looks at the children's faces, it will make him want to stay with them, thus making the entire mission a failure.
@Masn
I like this explanation – and I think it points to the fact that the Mal in Limbo after Fischer is killed is actually the real Mal in limbo and she's part of the team. She's planting/testing the inception.
She tries to show Cobb HER memory of the kid's faces, and he refuses, which shows her that he knows he can't stay and that he finally realizes he needs to wake up.
… I THINK! :D I love this discussion!
He looks away from the children because he's saving seeing them for reality.
Masn is right when he says taht Dom looks away because he'd want to say if he saw his children. It's not the real Mal calling them, it's Dom's projection of Mal. The kids are also Dom's projections of the kids so they'd look when anyone called them if he believes that they would look. It's kind of confusing, but basically you have to put everything into Dom's schema because we are led to believe that level four is his dream. That's why the kids are always doing the same thing, no matter where they are. There are projections of them because Dom wants to see them and has guilt about not having called them that one last time.
I think the whole movie is a dream, and the inception is the idea that cobb implants in his own mind. Because he is the very best at this process, he is able to project the entire team needed to convince him to "kill" mal. The first deep level-3 subconscious experience with mal, when he convinced her to kill herself, scrambled his brain and he can never awaken. All the other characters are projections representing different aspects of cobb's subconsious. Saito is cobb's well-disguised id, his deepest unconsious self; it is saito who is always there either to rescue or urge him on when times are toughest. Fischer is his "son" aspect; look at the last shot we are shown of fischer's beloved photograph…it is cobb costumed as the father (notice his profile). Cobb is exploring the deepest levels of his subconsious (the elevator), trying to relieve his guilt so he can be free of mal's dominance of his dreams. He is an old man, that's why he is talking so slowly with saito at the end in his mind's fortress. Remember the idea he wants to make happen for himself, his inception, is to see his children's faces once more. The "team" he assembles from his own experience, fools him successfully enough for him to dream his kids turn and face him. Ariadne is his personal psychotherapist (remember how the first thing she does is multiply his image in the 2 panels of mirror doors she creates, showing us that she show him all his levels…she guides him through the labyrinth of his mind, kills mal, and allows him to dream his children look at him.
Many of you have a question about what happens to the first architect; saito said he was a traitor. Because saito is cobb's "id", he captured the first architect because he wasn't skilled enough to deceive cobb. Therefore, cobb has to create an architect more skilled than the first one before he can perform a self-inception. As for his employer, the engineering firm is named "cobal"…the story can't be so obvious as to name it "cobb" engineering without revealing the whole story.
I didn't see any comments about fischer's photograph that keeps showing up in the movie. Did anyone else notice that cobb is the father in that photograph? (he just has long dark hair and a mustache)
Also, the quality of the relationship between cobb and saito is very intimate, not like one between an employer and employee. Saito knows cobb better than anyone else…he anticipates his every move, and shares his sentences. Saito is cobb's projection of his deepest, inner self. I wonder if miles is what cobb really looks like.
Iv seen this movie for the third time and i have now come to this conclusion.
Cobb wears his wedding ring in the dream world!This is because in the dream world his ring isnt there by choice but because his subconscious puts it there, whereas in reality he is not wearing the ring because mal is dead and he has accepted it.
Nolan cleverly hides cobbs left hand in various scenes throughout the movie but always gives you one chance to spot it until the final scene where he wakes on the plane and goes home. You never see the left hand there is one chance to spot it but its too fast. Nolan wanted this movie to be open to interpretation for a finish. I believe your just left to believe what you want to.
Now iv heard people say how can cobb and saito dream share at the end when they are not even plugged in. This is also left to be interpreted. I mean saito at the beginning stays asleep even when disconnected from the dream machine on the train. So who are we to say that maybe they were all disconnected by the flight attendant and dream machine removed before fischer woke and they gradually woke from their sleep.
To finish you do not know that he is dreaming on the plane nor if its real. Its your own opinion, make of it what you may. AND NO THE PASSPORT STAMP DOES NOT REPRESENT THE SYMBOL SHOWN TO ARIADNE BY COBB IN ANYWAY AT ALL. And one more crazy notion i must dismiss . The picture fischer gave his father is not Cobb nor is he related in anyway to fischer. the picture represents a happier time for fischer with his father Maurice. He's blowing one of those toy windmill things in the photo and thats what his father leaves him in the end or should i say eames leaves him because he needed the idea to grow naturally which is why he said he would think the picture would be so useful. It finally hits home and the idea the inception is put in place . It shows fischer his father loved him and he wants him to take is own road.
Thank you Brad for letting us voice our opinions and thank you to Chris Nolan a true Film maker
After seeing the movie twice, I totally agree with you about Cobb's wedding ring. I have to believe that Mal was alive the whole movie. I think "grandma" was Mal, but Cobb thought Mal was " grandma " because in his subconsious he thought she was dead when she fell from the balcony. But that turned out to be a dream going with the wedding ring idea.
Another thought: I thought Fisher's uncle in the hotel scene when Saito thought it was Eames, was really Mal. How else did she appear in Level 3 when she shot Fisher. Who else could it have been the projection of Fisher's uncle. What do you think?
Everyone is saying that they are the same age but i think this is because of the time difference in dream and reality i think he was in a dream and the kids never aged till he reached reality also in the scene where mal kills herself if u look in the hotel room its he exact same as the one behind cobbs also the totem wavers at the end it wasnt spinning endlessly nor was it falling it was in a state of lux i think that cobbs wasnt fully kicked and because of that he is stuck halfway from reality and level 1 of dream state and in the movie the grandpa says "come back to reality" this was suspicious i assumed he was just saying stop doing inception but i think it is a subconscious regret projected as how he learned inception and him wishing he never had. i think adriane is a subconcious redemption
Insanity or a world created…one in the same. Michael Caine's character implores Cobb to return to reality, to wake up, this is the line in the movie that tells us he has lost touch with reality. In essence, he is a modern day or sci-fi type Walter Mitty.
This is a huge spoiler, are you insane o.O? I didnt see the movie and you almost caught me, I read the poll question, tought –' My god you should at least wait more days or put a big warning to not read until the end
The headline tells you this is my interpretation and the first sentence says let's talk spoilers. What else should I have done? I guess I'll add another sentence to make it even more obvious.
Brad,
I think u dint realise, the movie was the Inception. The act in itself has planted in your head by the movie end. The movie was Dom's subconscious. I had debated in my head that it would be DOm who is struggling and love will solve it for him and Ariadne helps him out. but the limbo in which Saito and Mal are the dead space in the dream so to say, was in the space that DOm created for himself with his wife which is where he looses her. Basically Dom is struggling in his own subconscious and the only thing proven is that the movie ends asking the audience, was it real or not. Now you acknowledge the inception. You walk away, but all you have is imagination, dreaming up sequences which are not there, as Nolan, you are clawing up reality, which is not there, the inception by Nolan is complete as you finished the credits I suppose. Did you understand.
You do realise right you are in Dob's dream in itself???
INCEPTION.
"Okay, so let's talk Inception and let's talk spoilers.
Obviously, if you haven't seen the movie yet you aren't going to want to engage in this conversation"
From the beginning of the article. Watch the movie, you will love it.
i definitely need to see this movie again. i couldn't figure the last scene out.. because it looks like the top is about to fall, right when it fades to black.
when you think about it, they didn't show any of his kicks
Aaaahhhh! That's so true!
They show his bathtub kick in Saito's dream at the beginning. Although you could say that whole extraction mission was a preamble to the "real" content of the film.
They didn't show any of the kicks because he was waking up from a single thing. He got the kick in limbo. He got to limbo from dying in the Van, so he was just on the first level of the dream making limbo the only level he was on. So when he was shot he wakes straight up on the plane.
I think the ending could also be a symbol to the theme of the movie. The uncertainty the audience has about whether or not it is a dream or reality goes along with the same uncertainty the characters have or face in the future.
This is a really great article, piecing everything back together with this movie is something we film buffs and story telling aficionados can't help to do with material as rich and layered as this. I believe that the film is all about coming to terms with your subconscious and being able to live in peace with it and your dreams. It is funny that we do not actually see Leo and Saito get out of stages 1-3, they just go from 4 to reality. You mention this in your article, I know, and you can logically put together that they were just dreaming on top of dreams anyway so as long as they get out of limbo they go back to their minds in reality, and then they get out of limbo. Dom and Mal were able to get out, so Saito and Dom should be able to get back to life as well, and the idea of inception that is planted in saito and dom to get out of limbo is taking a leap of faith. Having faith in whatever you can. If you do that then your dreams and reality can live and thrive together
They can only kick out of level four, since after the dreamer of each level (Eames for 3, Arthur for 2 and Yusef for 1) is kicked the level self-destructs as we saw in the opening extraction when Arthur dies. But even so, we do not see them getting out of level 4.
The aspect that I keep tripping up on is how Dom and Saito have developed a dialogue through several levels of dream space and time that will allow them to trigger each other's memory in the final scene (we can be young men again). This makes me feel as though the dream does end on the plane, which would necessitate the beginning of a new dream in order for the final scene to be one too.
Other tangential points that may or may not matter: isn't grandma Mal's mother? I heard a distinctly French accent. Don't the other team members seem a bit cagey in the airport–this isn't actual espionage so there is no need to really hide too much, except from Fischer.
exactly also if he can travel the world and stuff and is a genious couldnt he haVE Fforged a passport or something or snuck into the country i mean terrorists have got in why would he be stopped for unproven elleged murder of one person especially when she jumped from a building i kno she set him up but stilli feel like leaving the country and stuff is a little extreme for a murder i mean murders run around america for years just seemed blown out of proprtion
I love these types of pieces. They are almost just as helpful to the writer trying to piece together all of their thoughts and ideas as they are to the readers.
I did a similar one after I saw Shutter Island. It really helped me construct my interpretation and convey that to others who originally saw that movie in a different way.
Speaking of Shutter Island, as someone who read the book, I highly recommend checking it out because not only is it a great read, but it made comprehending the film a lot easier.
I think I'm gonna agree with you Brad when you say that Cobb awoke in reality on the plane, and because he finally let go of Mal, as seen in the fourth level, he is allowed to dream again, hence everything from the airport on being a dream, what he wants the most. The biggest thing wasn't the top spinning at the end, it was the age of the children as you said. They are almost exactly the same as when he left them, and you would think he couldn't have been gone only a year, from what Michael Caine says in the beginning, how he turned his craft into money making and law breaking. You would assume this had been going on for a while, especially because of the cliched "One last time" line that Cobb uses to get Ariadne. Great article, you hit on everything that I was thinking when I saw the movie.
I actually interpreted the vision of his children as not from the past, but rather from the future. In a lot of our dreams we image things that end up happening in the future, that moment with the kids was such a potent a real moment and he didn't watch them when they were like that before. The kids were always in the same position next to each other to throughout the whole film. It's interesting stuff, I think the ending could be interpreted the way you say Brad, but I'm not so sure. to be honest, I like how open it is. he pulled a Kubrick without cheating or contriving the audience. What I mean by that is that so many other filmmakers try to be ambiguous, but at the end it just was a cop out. With this film Nolan has created a piece it is an Amalgamation of The existential aspects of time and loss of memento without any wholes in it's logic, but made on the scope of impressiveness of Dark Knight without any of the slight things that hold a filmmaker back while making a comic book movie. This is Nolan's masterpiece and it's supposed to be ambiguous because that's what life is, and that's what are dreams are.
The problem with that theory, unless I am misinterpreting what you said, is that in the scene where Dom is taking Ariadne through his stored memories we see the children as he remembers them. This tells us this is how he last saw them before he got the plane ticket and left and that is the same age we see them throughout the movie.
If Dom finally woke up on the plane and was back in reality and Saito made the phone call that would allow him to be with his family again…why would he need to dream about seeing his children the same way he saw them when he left? He's with them in reality now…so why is dreaming about them necessary?
He is so excited about seeing the kids again that he is dreaming about it in anticipation. The reason that they are the same age (in his final dream) as they were the last time Dom saw them is because he has no memory of them being older than that. He hasn't seen them older, so he can't imagine them being older.
Brad, I think your theory is brilliant, I never thought of the idea that this is just his dreams because he can start dreaming again. I was also trying to figure out if the totem looked as if it was just about to fall then we go to black. Of course, I will have to go see the movie again to get a final opinion. I had heard it was a mind trip but I didn't know it was that much of a mind trip. Brilliant film!
So, the real question isn't whether the ending is a dream. The question is when does the dream begin? We are just thrown right into the action, no real beginning which is the point that they make throughout the entire film. Also, we should see the Fisher connection with Tom Berenger (forgot his character's name), will that give clues as to whether the others are just projections. Okay, I can't get into this. My brain is starting to hurt. Again, brilliant film!
Good call Brad, you were reading me right, but there was a slight hole in my logic. The one question I have for you then is if the ending is a dream, but the waking up in the plane is in reality, then at what point did Dom go back into the dream world? Or was he already in it. I guess what i am saying is, that I think either the whole ending is an idealized version of what the world should be in his dreams after dealing with his subconscious, or it is in reality. I don't think that one part can be separated from the other though. That just seems like coming up with an answer for the sake of having one in my opinion.
maybe they dont show it because dreams always start in the middle
My interpretation is that the ending is just a regular dream Dom is having. Perhaps he takes a nap on the plane after Saito makes the phone call. Whatever or whenever, my assumption is that his mind is finally at ease. He has confronted and dealt with his guilt and is free to dream again and his first dream is of seeing his kids' faces.
If Mal was a manifestation of Dom's guilty conscience she died in that fourth level, which is a metaphor for his guilt also dying.
I think the trick Nolan plays is brilliant. The entire movie has you questioning reality vs. dreams. So by the time the ending comes around you are still questioning that, but Nolan is simply playing it straight forward as a dream, and in doing so makes you question everything you've seen. Then again, that's all based on my theory.
Either way, the fact a $200 million blockbuster has us even asking each other these questions is fantastic in and of itself.
I don't think so. I think the whole movie was a dream. You realize this if you think of the movie itself being constructed like a maze. There's actually a couple of clues I think should be considered.
1) The scene where Dom sees the infinite reflections of himself between the two mirrors.
2) The idea that Mal is Dom's projection.
The infinite reflections I think is a huge clue that Dom is stuck in an endless sequence of dreams within dreams. He's unable to escape the dreamworld because instead of kicking himself out of a dream, he kicks himself back and forth between dreams endlessly. He's stuck because he does not know how to wake up anymore.
This idea is reinforced by the appearance of Mal in his dreams. I don't believe she is a manifestation of his guilt at all. Rather, Mal is simply like any other projection – Dom's subconscious protective mechanism. What does Mal do throughout the movie? She appears with the sole purpose of trying to break his dreams. It's Dom's subconscious trying to protect Dom and rescue him from his predicament because at a sub level, Dom knows he is stuck in an endless dream loop. His desire to return home is actually his desire to escape the dream. Remember, projections exist to protect you, "like white blood cells."
So when Mal dies in the end, I don't think he's burying his guilt at all. Rather, I think Mal's death represents Dom giving up on the idea that he is stuck in a dream. He accepts his fate with Mal's death and no longer struggles to wake up. By reaching this resolution, he is able to "return home" in his dream, blissfully unaware and no longer caring his is dreaming.
The movie is a recursive loop, with every step bouncing back and forth between Dom's different dream states.
Someone wrote in another article that how we interpret the ending says much about who we are.
I agree with you, Brad. I think Dom is dreaming at the end, because he CAN dream now… because that is what I WANT to believe about him. I WANT to believe that this is a movie about redemption – about making peace with his past. That is what is so cool about the movie… we can each twist the ending to fit what we want – and we can all end up satisfied with the plot (or unsatisfied, if that is your sadistic preference… haha!).
As to when he is dreaming… again, this is personal interpretation. Did he have his own Cathartic experience in limbo? Saito making the phone call on the plane acknowledges this, only for him to then fall back asleep, exhausted but content, as the plane was landing. Is this much later in time – dreaming back to the moment he finally came home? After all, we tend to have dreams that tap into deep seated emotions. Perhaps we are seeing an echo of how he had often imagined his homecoming… no grandma? no problem – sounds like he didn't really have a good relationship with her anyways and wouldn't want her spoiling his dream – and why Michael Caine was present at the end… the kids just how he left them, the opportunity to see their faces this time… the "Idealic" ending for him.
This is just how I have decided to view it.
This is just really fun to toy with… props to Nolan for keeping it open to interpretation.
alot of you say that he was dreaming through the whole movie and I thought of that myself and even believed it until I thought to myself, If the whole thing was a dream then during the times he was supposibly in reality how come Mel never showed up during those times?
Great piece,
Perfect deconstruction of the movie. A couple of other points would be when Michael Caine says "come back to reality", although that could just be nolan trying to throw you off and add questions and suspense. Another question I assume Caine is Mols dad and not Cobbs?
If that is true, both Caine and Mols are both telling him to come back to reality and the entire movie is a dream. And who knows but Caine being the professor that started all of this technology, maybe he was a morph the whole time and he is playing Saito to try to push Cobb back to reality.
The best movies invoke the hardest questions and answers. I will watch this movie time and time again, and will still get something out of it.
thanks
k.
Oh man, I don't even want to consider anyone else being a forger like Hardy, that would melt my brain!
He could be on to something. Miles does carry himself in a Saito-esque fashion throughout the film, and the actors do have uncannily similar physiognomies. Also Saito doesn't seem like the desperate type fearful of competiton, especially from Fischer Jr (who we are told will become an unstoppable tycoon)- and his reasons for hiring Cobb are never fully explained. What research was conducted which showed Fischer would gain monopoly?
When you look at the ambiguity of both characters beside each other…scary stuff. And Miles has plenty of motive for helping Cobb, as well as the means (Ariadne, intimate knowledge of the technology).
Most importantly – note how Cobb asks Saito for an extra seat on the plane so Ariadne can join them. Saito makes no objection whatsoever – almost as if he expected the request. You'd think for such a well-planned job a last-minute change like that would at least be up for discussion.
And do Saito and Ariadne ever interact on-screen?
Curious and curiouser…
I forgot to add, Oscar predictions
Best picture: inception
Best director: Christopher Nolan
Best actor: Leo Dicaprio(shutter island)
best supporting actress:(marion Cotliard)
best screenplay(original)christopher Nolan
best score, etc, etc,
loved the movie. not so sure about screenplay, though: the Academy hasn't been letting poor structures slide recently, and this was poorly structured. Mind you, I wouldn't change a thing. I just think the academy won't see it the same way
Yay, someone else caught those weird lines! Although I very much doubt he could be Saito as 1) the airport scene at the end, if real, would mean Saito would have to dump all his luggage really quick, run to the arrivals crowd and pretend to pick him up! Also people being Forgers just adds an unruly dimension that I don't think the film gives enough evidence for.
Great artcle, Brad! I literally just returned from my local movie theater now, right after seeing "Inception". I loved it, an A+ all the way. Strangely enough, your interpretation of things was the same exact interpretation I had while leaving the theater. It feels good to know I'm not the only person in the world crazy enough to think all this out (:
I agree with Sean and Brad. It probably was a dream at the end, but i still think he will see his kids again in "reality". I dont think Nolan meant for us to think the whole movie was a dream, because that would just have too many layers and instability. The acting in this movie was superb by everyone, not a single weak link in the cast, and an all around excellent movie.
Why would the final scene be a dream if Cobb has successfully returned to reality anyway? Wouldn't he be able to see his kids regardless at this point, assuming that Saito did indeed honor their agreement?
Yes, and he will. The same way you can dream of going to a baseball game the night before actually going.
But there are only 10 minutes in between Dom waking up on the plane and it arriving–it just seems like too small a window for him to fall asleep and begin dreaming.
It's clearly deliberate that we aren't shown how Dom gets to his home, even though we see Michael Caine pick him up at the airport.
Vatch, unless the part where he wakes up on the plane is actually a dream. Thus, time runs slower in the dream world and that 10 minutes is like 10 hours, or something like that. I can't remember the math. Or perhaps this new dream is the stop he has to make to get out of limbo, so as to not go crazy? I am moving to agree with the idea that the end shows he can dream again.
I think Brad's interpretation is a little too much of a stretch. I choose to take the path of least resistance on this one and say it was not a dream. Come on, we all saw (or did we only hear?) the totem starting to fall when the screen went black!
Whether or not the totem falls at the end doesn't matter the way I look at it. I'd say that's an even simpler path… Or not. :)
The fact the screen goes to black instead of either showing it keep on spinning or falling down is of course not an accident.
In one way it doesn't matter, but it is done deliberately. The question is not whether it falls doen, but how would you feel about either way, and what does it say about the rest of the film.
To simply say it was not a dream, would make the last shot not necessary. Some things are at least hinted at. The question is: what are those? Therefore I think Brad's vision is too liberal (so to say), and RaiderMatt's one too easy. Not that they can't be right, though.
The explanations about it all being a dream (also Mal's explanation near the end), the Caine hints, and even Brad's own number 4 reason above give me the idea his reality is already a dreamworld. Whether different characters are part of his subconcious: I have to see the film again, but some arguments here sound quite lgitimate.
Maybe Mol shows up in Dom's dreams because she has woken up after killing her self. Perhaps Dom has been stuck in this dream world that Mol, her dad, saito, whoever have been trying to wake up via inception. Inception being that he is in limbo and he himself needs to die in order wake up?
One little tidbit that feels important in the movie but I can't figure out why. When they meet the chemist and he shows all the people sharing dreams. "The guy says dreams are their reality, these people come here to wake up!" this was said twice in the movie and sounds important, I just cant figure out why.
NICE pickup. Perhaps it refers to his (Dom's) own need to wake up from limbo ("Die to live"). Maybe dying in limbo at the end of the movie is his way to wake up from the limbo he is already in from his experience with Mol. Maybe Mol is the shadow of her after she left Limbo – maybe his description to Adriane of what happened to Mol actually happened to HIM. Maybe Adriene (and the others) are all his own subconscious trying to wake him from Limbo.
SO FUN to think about…
Inception was an amazing movie and Chris Nolan has truly opened up doors for bringing back originality. I can honestly say that at first I felt he was in reality due the progression of the movie. Also, when he spun the totem it wobbled heavily but to still see it spinning after about a minute…..I was definitely convinced that he was dreaming and the crowded theater seemed to agree with me with all the crys of surprise (as dramatic as that sounds).
I picked up on all the hints you did, with a few others. Leap of Faith. That was a line used by several people, Mal, Saito at the very least. It's odd for two peple to use the same line when they didn't hear each other say it. Second, the city shown in the helicopter is a hodgepodgee of architecture, inclduing the eiffel tower and a other European and Asian high rises.
Actually the city you see from the helicopter is Tokyo. It was clever of Nolan to use that shot because it looks a little like Paris. Click here for an example of what I'm talking about… that's Tokyo. You can click here for another shot that closely resembles the one in the film.
Brad I just wanna thank you for this spoiler article…I think it was needed after a movie like inception. It was a truly exhausting yet rewarding movie experience.
I think the top spinning at the end clearly reveals not only that Nolan wants the audience to be confused (the top could spin forever but looks as if it might fall at the cut) but also that Dobb may feel the same way, that the seed has been planted in him that his reality might not be real, just as he did to Mal. He'll be suspicious of his seemingly happy ending, just as we are.
My big question about this movie was the totems. Like you said Brad, why does Cobb get to uses Mal's when each person is supposed to use their own? That tends to tell me that it was a dream. That, and we never see Cobb's original totem.
Also, if you are in a dream, can't your mind make it's own rules about the totem? Why couldn't to totem fall over in a dream?
Interesting that you can construct something as a totem in reality and always have it in your dream!
He stole Mol's totem from her in limbo – she locked it away in order to forget whether she was in a dream world or not – so maybe the very fact that he has it is a sign that he never left the dream world.
Maybe the whole movie was a dream – invading dreams sounds kinda crazy… haha!
Cobb picks up the totem from the hotel suite – before Mal commits suicide.
And I think the reason why totems are forbidden to be shared is coz someone else may mess up with you in your dreams. Totem is the only test that you can rely on. So as Mal is dead (as per the simplest interpretation), I see no reason why Cobb can't use the same totem.
Oh boy, I just read a concept that Miles (Caine) planned the entire thing….this isn't mine, and got it from a discussion from InContention. Brad, you can remove this if you want since it's not my idea, but figured it would be good for discussion.
"Alright. There is no fourth level of dreams. All the characters pretty much admit that getting to a third level is almost impossible. So that should be ruled out.
It isn’t just Fischer’s dream. It’s Cobb’s too. Fischer and Saito’s industrial espionage plot is the MacGuffin here. Nice to look at, doesn’t really matter.
Let’s ask ourselves, why would Michael Caine show up for a two scener? Because he has everything to do with the plot. Who does he handpick for the assignment? Ariadne. Could it be that she has more to do in this than design the dreams? And her role as dream architect would allow her access to a lot of places others couldn’t go.
Theory: Caine hires Ariadne not just as an architect, but as a spy. Her mission, to plant an inception on Cobb while he plants one on Fischer. Should’ve been called “Double Inception.”
Cobb is in the same level as Fischer and can be incepted upon (if you will) at the same time. The idea for Cobb is to let Mal go. Caine wants him to “come back to reality” so he can see his kids. The safe for Cobb isn’t locked up, it’s in the dialogue etween him and Mal on the ledge. This dialogue is repeated almost word for word between Cobb and Saito in the final scene. Cobb realizes he’s dreaming, realizes the idea’s origin and is kicked back to reality on the airplane. The reason why none of his team talks to him at the airport, but seem to be watching over him, is that they were all in on it, and they were successful. He’s free of Mal. He can finally see his kids faces (proving it’s no dream).
Nolan loves to toy with his audiences. Mal says earlier that dreams always leave a little doubt to them, making the dreamer question reality. This is what Nolan does to the audience when he cuts from the top spinning before it falls. He leaves us with that doubt. Have we been dreaming for 2h30m? Nolan doesn’t let us off."
Really a new way to look at it.
Then what would be the point of Cobb not being able to return to his kids in the U.S.? Him being wanted for the murder of his wife in the U.S. would have no relevance. How would all of this be set up? If Cobb isn't in reality, where is he? And how would Caine engineer such an event with Cobb still dreaming? What exactly is the inception? Inception has to be presented as an idea which blossoms solely from one's mind; hence the example given, "If I tell you, 'Don't think about elephants,' what are you thinking about?" The fact he is being told to come back to reality removes the possibility of inception. Does this make sense?
Its obvious the whole point of the movie is to make us question what's real, and what's not. The fact that so many nuances can be picked out of every scene to argue one way or the other is genius. Nolan did this on purpose, and so we over-think and over-analyze, when the explanation is quite simple. He is awake at the end, Caine planted the architect with the intent of her helping Cobb overcome his guilt, although the ploy to plant inception on Fischer was indeed real, and the only way for Cobb to gain his freedom and return to his kids. Awake at the end.
In the movie Dom tells Ariadne that the idea of using a Totem was Mal's. So even though Dom uses Mal's totem, for him its as good as new after Mal dies. After the real owner of it has died, Dom is free to experiment and even find the properties of Mal's totem. Hence, for me the totem actually works for Dom as well.
Then how was Cobbs able to return back home with his family if it was all a setup with Miles?
its a dream anything goes. Whos taking care of the kids? (at the end)
I'm talking about the simple fact that he was wanted by the police. The asian guy was also a part of Miles plan?
If Miles ran it, everybody, including the Asian, was a part of the plan.
My other problem with Red's theory is Cobbs went to Miles not the other way around.
Part of inception is to make the implant subtle so the dreamer does suspect anything. If Miles went to Cobb then that would be seem suspicious and would trigger Cobb to question things. So Miles then creates the plot that the origional architech ratted them out making Cobb needing to look for a new architech. Where would Cobb go to find a new architech? That is right, his dad Miles. The whole movie wasn't called inception for Fischer, it was called inception for Cobb to get him back to reality.
i think Michael Caine is wearing the same clothes at the end of the movie , unless he likes dressing in the same attire. i think Never ending dream . Its like the staircase that never ends.
Well he is a professor
He looked bit old to me in the final scene..anyone else noticed?
That is so true. haha! this movie will be dissected time and again.
Ok, so here's a question. And I may be completely wrong, but did anyone else think that the passport stamp that Cobb received in the airport at the end of the movie, looked a lot like half of the two arrow circle that Cobb explained to Ariadne near the beginning of the movie. I'm probably completely wrong, because after 2 1/2 hours my mind was all used up, and I was probably just grasping at straws, but what does everyone else think?
I thought it looked empty like to show that he hadn't actually been anywhere.
After reading your reply and looking online at some passport stamps, I realize that you have a great point. I haven't done a lot of traveling and I am not entirely familiar with passport stamps, but now that I think about it, it sure does look like an empty one. Either way, it is a very interesting point!
What I don't understand is if Cobb is a US citizen like he says he is (and he got the "welcome back sir" from the customs officer) why was his passport stamped?
Thought that US citizens need only to show their passports and fill up a customs declaration form.
Tyler, GREAT OBSERVATION! I noticed this as well. It most definitley was the same symbol that Cobb drew to explain the concept of inception.
Jake,
US citizens have their passports stamped upon re-entry to the country.
wow great point!
Here is another idea to discuss. Cobb is from a dream.
This has just been my theory, but I didn't know there was already a WMG for this movie so why not put it down here? Anyways, here goes: Cobb, Leonardo Dicaprio's character, is from a dream and accidentally broke out. It could explain why he seems to know Mal, who's a "Shade" and they have children together, even though it's obvious she lives in dreams. I can't think of how else I should expand on this, but it would be really weird if this turned out to be true in the movie.
Its funny that once the movie ended and the credits started to roll up, I actually stayed til they were done and was hoping to see an extra piece of something right after them… maybe like the totem actually falling… I could not get the thoughts out of my head and started thinking back at every single scene in the movie and seeing what made more sense to me.. Out of all the reason that you gave, the only one that I actually thought of was the one when Dom spins his totem and is interrupted by Saito leaving no real answer to whether he was still dreaming or not. The points you make are quite valid, though at moment I was hoping that is was all reality, but then again I thought that they never actually show how he kicks back from level four and three, though we do know he kicks back from 3 ( with the explosion on the elevator), and level two ( with the drowning inside the van).. I will be off this weekend so I hope to catch it again and see if anything else comes to mind… One thing you mentioned in the article though caused some questions, when you said that both Dom and Saito were in limbo but Dom had not aged.. What was ur reasoning for that again??? P.S. great article by the way!
Dom does not age in limbo because he knows it's not reality. Saito doesn't. He thinks it's real and therefore, believes he should be aging.
And the totem toppling over wouldn't mean anything. Again, in a dream, we can imagine anything. So if I'm in a dream, I can imagine a top spinning forever or I can imagine it toppling over. If it toppled over, it could just be Dom's mind telling it topple over so he can go on believing he is in reality.
The reason why Saito had aged and Cobb hadn't was because Saito had been in the limbo longer than Cobb. Seconds or minutes in real time translate to years in limbo.
I think the main point of the movie is that it is like the never-ending staircase. It can be looked at from many different perspectives and they all seem to go somewhere but it never has an end.
This is exactly like the totem that keeps turning around and around.
I just think the whole thing was a dream he had one day. And he'll wake up and Mal and his kids will all be there, happy and alive. Simple, I know, but I like simple.
I also find the idea that Miles planned the whole thing makes sense. The Fischer plot seemed insignificant and somewhat James Bond-ish as if it was made up. The movie is about Dom and Mal. Therefore the Fischer plot could have easily been a back-drop for Miles' plan to help Dom.
They didn't clear his plot also :( why the hell in first level they were attacked.
they were attacked in the first level because fischer had had training to protect his subconscious against extractors.
GREAT POST.
I thought the entire movie was a dream. Micheal Caine's reality line and Mal telling him how crazy it was he was being chased by international organizations were attempts to snap him back to reality.
Whatever the answer, great movie.
The one complaint I have with this movie is the fact Leo just did Shutter Island. I understand they are two separate films, however it makes the mind f*ck even worse.
shutter island was nowhere near as big a mind fuck as this or as good of a movie in any respect
I think it's worth noting that Ariadne used some of the same techniques on Dom that he was trying to use on Saito at the start of the film. She sees his dreams and memories, she gets him to tell her all about Mal. She also planted the ideas about forgiving himself and whatnot. I think she plays a much bigger role in this. After all, Michael Caine does say she's the best he has.
Overall great article. I love the insight that the movie itself is an attempt at Inception, much like The Prestige acted as a three step magic trick. Christopher Nolan is just a maniacal genius.
She could be Dom's daughter and he just doesn't realize it. After all Micheal Caine/Miles said you need to get back to reality.
Wow. that is AWESOME to think about!!! :)
Of course, she would have to go from blond to black hair. ;)
i feel like the idea of MIles plannin the whole thing is kinda ridiculous. NOlan really never gives you any legitimate clues to believe this at any point of the movie. Also i doubt he would have ended the movie with the totem nearly falling if it didnt matter, or if it wasnt what the entire film hinged upon. Also people seem to believe he couldnt see the kids faces in these dreams until he let go of Mal, however idk why this makes sense, i assumed once he saw there faces at the end that kind of wrapped it up.
Honestly, this movie was thought provoking but all together im not gonna give it an A+ or even an A for that matter. I dislike the holes in the film and how Nolan purposely leaves you guessing by way of these holes rather than changes in storyline. When leo first spins that totem at the end its not spun hard enough to stay up for very long, however about a minute later its spinning perfectly again(this clearly mean dream), then almost falls before the credits roll(this clearly means reality). I understand the tactic but just another big hole that needs filling. And a question I have is why gordon levitt was in no gravity zone in level 3 when the truck is falling and then in level 4 theres gravity again. This confuses me.
I'd give it an A and like your comments and others people who complain abotut this movie seem to base it more off the fact that they don't understand it. I think that is what makes this movie great.
Level 3 is zero gravity because level 2 is free fall,however level 4 doesn't have zero gravity because level three is not free fall but zero gravity..its a simple concept of physics.
haha simple physics? so free fall means zero gravity in ur next dream… but zero gravity means gravity in ur next dream? Somethings off
yea youre mistaken, level 1 (city)has the dreamers in free fall causing level 2 (hotel or whatever) to be zero gravity, where level 3 (snow base) and level 4 (limbo) are fine.. this is the only hole i could find in the movie.
The effects of what is going on in the above level fade the lower down you go. So the freefall in level 1 can be felt in level 2 but not lower. This is similar to Saito feeling his injury less and less further down he goes.
Could be as simple as something like Cobb was depressed after his wife's suicide, and so lived abroad for a while, but then was persuaded to come home and be with his kids. On the flight, he fell asleep, and the whole film is his dream- all of characters who were the "partners in the scheme" were just other passengers on the plane.
Great article. This is my interpretation. When he is in the fourth level with Mal and she starts to call for the kids, he knows he has the ability to see their faces even though it is a dream. He deliberately looks away, because he knows that if he sees their faces he will want to stay. At this point he is coming to terms with his guilt and wants to get back to reality. Rather, he wants to get back to what he perceives to be reality, which is back on the plane. However, the plane represents the true first-level dream. We never see the actual reality, in which Mal is alive and Miles is helping to get Cobb to come back to reality. Ariadne was hand-picked by Miles. She is not real, exemplified by her symbolic name (in Greek mythology Ariadne helped Theseus escape the labyrinth).
Crazy thought I will entertain while I watch it again tomorrow… What if Ariadne isn't just symbolic, but a Forger? She could be Mal, helping Cobb resolve his guilt and arrange his own kick out?
(I don't think she would have left him behind in limbo if this were true, it was just an interesting idea…)
Here is a trippy thought…
…and maybe i am completely off my rocker. But, does everyone remember the part where he is talking Ariadne at the Cafe in his dream and he is explaining the dream state and he draws the two arrows in a form of rotation. Could Nolan be alluding to the fact that this reality is the ultimate shared dream which we are collectively "creating" when we are all asleep and "perceiving" when we are awake. And since our subconscious minds are creating this dream while sleeping, our conscious mind is unable to detect that it is a dream while we are experiencing it during our waking hours?
Any thoughts…
Having seen Inception I could say it's one of better film in 2010. However I found it less than original if we talked about originality. Sure it was good script, good actor, but somehow I found this film was "not for repeat viewing" (for most audience).
It reminds me of Matrix and some other movie a bit. For me, this movie was good but we'll see either will it win most audience or will it crushed by common audience. My prediction is this film will accepted by dual opinion. Some will love it and some will hate it.
About the plot, my personal opinion also agree with Brad that Dom Cobb was dreaming at the last scene.
Regards from Indonesia
I am in total agreement on all your points. I noticed the same quirks and came to similar conclusions. Couple of questions… When Mol and Dom are on the ledges, how did she get to the opposite ledge? Was it just me, or was the room behind her and exact mirror of the room Dom was in? If that was "reality", how would those things be possible?
I also like the idea that a "double inception" occurred. I don't think that Ariadne's totem being a White Queen was random. It would make sense that she accepted the shared dreaming and manipulated Dom at Miles' behest. I think her totem is a symbol of her power in this movie.
As for the last bit of the movie being a dream, I agree. The kids were in the same position and clothes. Their voices did change during the earlier phone conversation Dom had, indicating the time stream is fluctuating.
What if we start the whole story one level deep? And Mol is alive in the upper level, the fall from the building being the thing that actually woke her up? She can't go back in to get Dom, so she has her father come up with this plan?
Or, what if, in Limbo with Saito, he (Saito) shoots himself first… and Dom decides to stay in Limbo?
I've only seen it once so far. I'll be going back for more.
I just saw it for the first time myself, and I cannot wait to see it again. I understand why some people may not like it. But the mere fact that even people who do not like it feel compelled to comment speaks to the artistry of the film. For the second viewing I am looking to not only build evidence for my interpretation but also to poke holes in it. I believe Nolan deliberately left the film open for interpretation, but he certainly had his own vision of what is real and what is a dream.
Oh! I didn't catch your earlier post, Joe. You beat me to that idea… I made the mistake of considering the symbolism of just the White Queen–as a chess piece and her place in Lewis Carroll's world and thought maybe the little girl being named Philippa might also have something to do with a nod to Philippa Gregory's novel "The White Queen" (which I haven't read). Can't believe I forgot to look up Ariadne! Nice.
I, for one, loved the movie. I am generally not a DiCaprio fan but Nolan has a special place in my heart, so I gave it a go. Everyone's performance was stellar. Like Memento, this one will haunt me for years. I agree; a thousand interpretations will be constructed and deconstructed. Well played. Nolan's virus will infect us all.
About it being the opposite ledge – At first I just thought she'd gotten a room across the alley or in another wing of the hotel for practical reasons, so that he wouldn't be able to stop her from jumping. But then I read something about the hotel room appearing to be "across" from his room because it was actually a folded reality, similar to the way Ariadne folded Paris into a closed cube shape in her first foray into dream architecture.
So, the next time I watched it, I looked for evidence to confirm or deny that theory. If you see it again, look at the window frame – Dom and Mal are actually in mirror image windows. The plaster between the bricks and some marks on the trim are identical, but reversed. So it didn't support the folded theory (which would imply that room was from another room facing the same way, somewhere down the hall) but it is similar to what Ariadne did with the mirrors – except Dom is facing Mal instead of facing himself.
I don't know what that means, but it's definitely another trippy little detail to consider!
Brad I haven't seen it yet (I'll write in here after I do tomorrow) I didn't read what you wrote her after I saw you write spoilers but I wanted to remind you all how Nolan directs and ends his films. All of his end suddenly and remember final words in Prestige "you don't want to figure it out. You want to be fooled" and the line "are you watching closely?". I know completely different films but something I wanted to throw out there and see what you or anyone thinks of that similarity ? I know far fetched but still wanted to ask.
Just came back from the movie. WOW! I thought some of the dialogue wasn't all that great, but overall it gave me a little of the feeling that I felt the first time I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey. I have to admit I originally felt it was all a dream after the credits rolled, but after reading Brad's great interpretation of the ending, I am going to have to watch it again sooner than I had planned.
Why would he be dreaming about the airport and the kids though? The plane is about to land. He's actually going to see them in a short while. There is no need to dream about it.
Yeah, but you are implying that we can always choose what we dream.
No. I'm saying that the ending is far too dramatic for it to be a dream that only happens after they completed their mission to pull an inception on Fischer. It's totally unnecessary.
Here's what I figured:
At one point in the movie Mal tells Dom that he doesn't believe in one reality anymore. So basically, dreams are as much a reality to him as reality is. So with the top spinning at the end (and looking like it wants to topple, and the sound cue suggesting it might have toppled, but us not being able to say for sure!), I think what's being said is that it doesn't matter whether or not this is a dream: this is the reality Dom has chosen. He has chosen to leave Mal behind and have a life with his kids. And in the end it's about his choice, not about which reality he's living in.
Because think about it: the dreams are reality, too, aren't they? You get to them from reality, you build them like you build anything else, and they have rules, too–just different ones. Why are they even called dreams? They affect the characters just as much as "reality" does. Go deep enough, and you can spend years in a dream. You can have a life in a dream. Why is it NOT reality?
Which is precisely why I could see roughly where the film was going before the final scene because this is idea about 'choosing' where to exist is very similar to the ending of Shutter Island and that film was in my head a lot during the watching of Inception.
I think the film was solid and well made, but I think it's another example of a well-done and constructed reality mind-fuck where the central question of 'what was really going on' will never be answered and has about a gazillion different answers.
As we've already seen! And a lot of them are tasty propositions to say the least.
But, in it's bare bones it's not as original as some proclaim it to be. It's another run around themes and ideas expressed in other films to varying degrees over the last few decades.
It's a very good film, but it's not anything totally new.
Bingo! I've been pouring over all the theories for this film, but you've expressed what I also take to be the very message Nolan is trying to convey, the idea he is trying to plant in us: "reality" is the sum of where we choose to put our energies, reality is simply the target of our commitment. What is real, what is a dream? That question can't be answered and ultimately doesn't matter.
The reason that issue is so mind-boggling in this movie is because Nolan's "dreams" are in fact realities: full-featured, vivid, remembered, and most importantly: *inter-subjective*, that is, *shared* experiences with others. It's when our personal experiences don't mesh with others (aren't shared) that we conclude they must not be real. Nolan's dreams are what we typically mean when we say something is "real."
And since the dreams are as real as the waking states, Cobb can feel the same tug of concerns from each: the well-being of his loved ones in each of those realities. Where should he put his energies? Nolan says in classic Kierkegaardian fashion, "Just choose. Take a leap of faith."
Exactly! I think this is certainly the most interesting interpretation of the film, and (for what it's worth) part of what Nolan intended. And the cool thing is that it's consistent with many of the other interpretations being literally true too, since each dream-world is as real as the others.
Now this comment is totally on the ball. Absolutely and categorically. It's all about CHOICE.
Here you are :
Every forger needs an imagination
Inception – has to be a sequence of dreams after you are convinced of it yourself. having been taken to that point in the dream.
The Inception in the movie is on The Mark – Fischer ..
Before watching it – you always wonder – Couldnt he(DOM) have dreamt this whole city himself – But then he is struggling as shown in the first scene itself, that Mal is there in everything. He keeps going levels up in shared dreaming and the point man- Arthur gets you to higher levels. When he is confronted accidently in his dream space by Ariadne, who guides him to work on it and not risk everything, he admits the first inception(on Mal). Thru each level Mal presence gets them in danger and level 3 his urge to get over it is visible when he apologises for leading the team to the ice scenes and loses the Mark (fischer)there. From there on, its a journey into his subconscious with Ariadne, because he is realising that since Fischer along with Saito who he originally lost is also in limbo along with Mal(which is portayed that Mal Kidnapped the Mark). he needs to reconcile his original inception which he tried on his wife and whom he lost after she fell and his high guilt that he has murdered her. He surrenders his guilt, and Ariadne leaves with Fischer and now he is returning so the original inception is planted on the Mark. While he reconciles his struggling situation, he is again confronted by Mal and he forges the situation and she stabs him, and Ariadne shoots Mal, and DOM, since he loves Mal, even asks why Ariadne did it, insisting on protecting her. This way he reconciles his dream by train scene, where after growing old, which is actually where he left her in the first inception(which is where he lost her in limbo) he plants the idea and now Ariadne is kicking back levels, who along with Fischer who also kicks backs levels(after his inception in the dying father scene) and the forger too. The end scene is the end of his struggles, when he reconciles Saito and they end up on the plane. By this time, you agree that dream within dreams are possible. I would ask you to back to the trailer, where Nolan showed you that your mind is the scene of the crime, hence proved. But in reality, there wasn't any crime, he had implanted the inception finally and successfully to Mal with Ariadne's help.
the other part of the original trailer, and the question everyone is asking is was it real or dream? again this is the whole crux of the movie. and who is debating it, and if you havent realised it or havent acknowledged it, the Inception is now in your mind, if its real or dream, that is where the movie closes and if you ask me, that is the actual inception Nolan performed on all of us, thru this movie.
What I have written above in reply to the first comments of Brad also implies the same, that we were in Dom CObb's subconscious and he this time, instead of extracting, placed the memory in you. INCEPTION … So are you asking yourself now, is it real or is it all a dream, can u feel yourself.. or was this too much for you .. you can reply @
Now you are wondering how is that possible. Did you watch him kick back all the levels, where was DOM Lost, he actually was in the Limbo, trying to work his way back and dint really return, he is still in Limbo. Micheal Caine plays the essential part, but i really dont think he has anything limited here. and the other guys play it to perfection, including the hotel lobby scenes and Yusuf as well. the car accidents, the increase in time in each level, the plot really plays out to perfection..
Most of you will walk out of the movie, in the limbo –
1. If he actually returned to reality to his family.
2. Did he actually save Mal.
3. Did the totem fall off or did it go on spinning.
4. Inception is real. the real Forger is Christopher Nolan and he has successfully done it on the theatre audience ..
5. There were critical roles unexplained etc, it cant be, they might have been the same kids, where is grandma, what is Michael Caine doing,
6. who were the projections and how did they start attacking, was this all planned??
If you are number 4 , you really are with me in Nolan's INCEPTION.
A Salute to the master.
The one unanswered question remains from the scene of the anniversary room.. Why does Marian Cotillard ask Ellen Page, what are you doing here??? Mal is COBB memory's projection remember????
I'm currently in the "Mal was right" camp, though I've not managed to explain all lose ends to my satisfaction. Still, here's my current thought process:
The reason we don't see Cobb's kicks back from limbo to the plane is the previous dreams have already collapsed. There are no other intermediate dream steps… just the plane and limbo.
That means we're never told in the film that a dreamer will kick straight from limbo to waking if there are dream levels in between. That leaves open the possibility that when Cobb and Mal kick back to their youthful selves after having spent "about 50 years" in limbo, they may still be in a higher-level dream.
And if that's so, Mal's leap from the anniversary hotel room balcony would not kill her, but instead kick her up to yet another higher level.
Cobb – a master dreamer – tells us in the film that he and Mal had been experimenting with multi-level dreaming and that he pushed her to keep going farther and deeper. We're never told how many levels they stacked before reaching limbo, but I see this as reason to dismiss the idea that there can be three levels at most. Cobb and Mal, being very close (think of Mal's questioning of Ariadne about being a lover… a half of a whole), may have had very stable dreams together that allow for deeper layering than was possible with the complex espionage levels seen in the movie.
While living in limbo, Mal had locked away her totem in the architected version of her childhood home, hiding from the truth that limbo was not reality. But Cobb breaks in, learns her secret and decides to perform inception on her. He implants the idea that to escape she has to make the leap of faith (as Saito later does) and die.
I presume Cobb at this point doesn't have a totem of his own because a) we're told totems were Mal's idea, b) Cobb may have only discovered this idea when breaking into her safe while in limbo, and c) we never see him with anything other than the top during flashbacks.
His inception starts the process of Mal kicking upward. The first move up (death by freight train) brings both she and Cobb back to a previous dream. But Mal, still "consumed" and "defined" by the infectious idea continues to seek escape through additional kicks. Cobb, having no established frame of reference, accepts the current level as his reality.
This would have been fine had Mal stayed. But by jumping from the balcony, she jumps while also creating an alternate version of herself, Cobb's projection, who is obsessed with moving the other direction. This "shade" is consumed with moving back to limbo and bringing Cobb there as well. The shade is the version of Mal that Cobb has so "let go" in order to get over his guilt.
The primary theme of the film is that one can choose what to accept as reality. Throughout the movie we see a haggard, frenzied Cobb spinning the top, using its fall to confirm his presence in top-level reality. But it's not his totem and if he is still dreaming, we cannot trust its accuracy.
Whether it falls or not in the end is far more interesting to the audience than the Cobb. He's accepted his position, chosen his reality, and decided to walk away from the still-spinning top.
Whether it falls or not is immaterial. This dream is his reality. And Mal, having been infected with the idea that she must continue to kill herself over and over, will do so until she kills the reality version of herself (thus explaining why she wouldn't simply go back into the dream after her husband after waking).
wow.
I just wanted to interpret the climax as real and put it in a safe and forget about the film. But then when I recollect the details of every scene, they make me re-interpret the movie again and again and every time I end up at the beginning (like the staircase paradox).
The way to end this is to share a dream with Nolan's subconsciousness and open his safe or perhaps do the 'Inception' and make him say whatever we want him to.
Yep, the whole idea is to put the viewer into that paradox of going round and round. Call it Nolan's Inception of his own to the audience, but he's constructed a world where it's our own imprint we put on it.
Like The Prestige's own 'trick' ending at it's conclusion Nolan is playing with the audience letting us all create our own mazes of 'what's real' and what isn't in the film.
I think the question of whether it is all real or a dream isn't the point. And therefore, whether the totem falls or not doesn't matter.
I believe the point is 'what do we decide' it is. Choose one, believe it and then continue on.
Question: Was there someone at the airport holding a sign with the name "fischer" on it when Cobb arrived? I think I remember seeing it as Cobb approached Caine, but am not certain? If so, this would indicate that he was dreaming as Fischer was dead– right?
yes, there was a sign board with his name. but who said Fischer was dead?
He was seen there at airport also collecting his bags.
My theory is that based on the ending, you can't possibly know if anything was real or a dream. Literally any scene of the movie could possibly take place in Dom's subconscious (my personal theory is that many of the characters, if not all of them, are projections of Dom's mind, even his team).
I couldnt agree more, particularly Saito's got to be a projection of Cobbs mind. Given they share cryptic language with each other throughout the whole movie as if Saito knew about the leap of faith Cobb and Mal took when placing there heads on a train track. Either way Nolan puts a great spin on what a Heist movie can be about!!!
I can't believe that so many people think it was a dream at the end. I think Nolan only done the cliffhanger ending so that the people who did not fully understand the movie's plot (a lot I'm assuming) would still get a 'WOW' at the ending; similar to the many people who did not comprehend the ending of Shutter Island.
When we are taught the basics of writing stories, be it at school or university, a general rule is to never end with "and he woke up and the full thing was a dream". Nolan did the tough task of breaking that rule in a sense and creating a movie that was highly entertaining. I personally think that Inception is one of the greatest movies of the last ten years, with the only flaw being the last five seconds; I thought this was really cheesy and above a director like Nolan. Although as I said, I think this was done for the 'general' audience, as you can't expect to recoup $300 million+ with a movie plot that's beyond most people. Just ask David Lynch.
see, this is what makes nolan films so wonderful. He builds your suspense during the anticipation of the film alone and once it releases,i imagine he sits back and smirks while watching the whole movie loving community try to decode and interpret every possible meaning or conclusion. Obviously,he has a clear understanding of what he put into this movie but for me, I don't personally want to decide for sure if he was dreaming or in reality. This is my favorite movie of the summer because ever since I saw it I've not been able to come to a conclusion. I've been thinking nonstop. And what's the fun of a movie that makes you think if you stop thinking about it?
The fact that the top wobbles at the end means its reality. Also Dicaprio only had his wedding ring on in the dream and at the end of the movie it's missing from his finger.
But, that's the whole thing. It didn't topple that much. I could've went back to spinning. You never know.
I am not sure if anyone remembers the hotel bar scene with leo's character and cillian murphy's character……when leo told him that the subconscience people around them would be able to tell and "LOOK AT" the PERSON THAT IS DREAMING…..DO YOU REMEMEBER…..thus the airport last scene was a DREAM, because EVERYONE was looking at Leonardo dicaprio, because they could tell he was the one dreaming…..and then movie ends with the top and christopher nolan leaves it up to you to decide, which the guy before was right, the whole movie was the inception, but also I think leo decided to pull an inception on himself and that was all to plant the idea in his head to get back to his children and it didnt matter if the the whole thing was real or not, but wether or no HE believed it enough to ACEPT that it was reality, or he was jut lost in the final level of limbo…….any thoughts…but I really think the aiport scene was the key….when everyone was staring at him…..it meant that all those characters where thought up in leo's head and they were in his subconscience and realizing who was the one dreaming the whole time!!!!!
Please tell me if I'm off completely thanks
No, no this was also my interpretation and it's a completely valid one because of the scene you have reference in order to validate your hypothesis. He wanted to get back to his family but also remain in the dream so he used the guilt of his wife dying to create an inception on himself and by planting that thought it set off the chain of events within the movie. Which would also allow for the plot holes because it is a dream. I also have another hypothesis although it's quite farfetched, I like to challenge myself by thinking about it and trying to validate it. I was thinking that maybe the Mal in the basement level of his mind when ariadne and him were there is the real Mal trying to get him back….I'll have to rewatch that scene again but it's a great movie that is open to a lot of different interpretations so who's to say who is right. a lot of you guy's interpretations have been opening my eyes to new possibilities on the meaning.
that makes me think also. All of his dreams where suppose to be memories so how did Mel do something differnt in the basement and on the upper level? The kids always did the same thing but mel didnt.
I believe the last scene is a dream. I have had time to think about this. When Cobb wakes up, he nor anybody else on the plane deattaches themselves from the dream machine. I believe everybody is still on the plane from the middle of the movie dreaming. Cobb dreams Saito is making the call. I never see or do not see Cobb's wedding ring in the last scene. I have to believe he is dreaming. I think you are right on track.
I'm not going to go too far into the movie right now, because I'd like to see it at least once more before I come up with my official interpretation. However, I just have a little thought that I'd like to propose and I don't know if it's been brought up yet because I didn't exactly want to read through all 97 comments.
It seems to me that throughout the whole movie, Christopher Nolan is not only trying to make us question what is reality and what is just a dream in context of the film, but also, it is to raise questions about our actual lives. Could it be possible that our real lives take place within our dreams, and this "reality" is actually just an escape? This seems to be the thought that Mal contemplates, resulting in her suicide. Nolan may be trying to get us to see the same thing as Mal. Therefore, the final frame becomes a bit more understandable. Whether or not the ending is a dream or reality is practically irrelevant to me. I do think it is a dream, yes. But the fact that the top wobbles in the last frame shows to me the parallel between the real world and the dream world. It shows that perhaps our perception of reality is actually quite shaky.
Also, excellent read, Brad.
How come when Fischer woke up, he didn't recongize that the people around him were all a dream? I think he was in on it. Or that Miles did really plan a double-inception.
After all, Dom did say that Miles was the one who taught him to manipulate minds. Miles also tought architecture. Maybe HE was the true master of inception? I do agree with the idea that Ellen Page's character was specially chosen, somehow. And that Mol was right in killing herself to go BACK to reality.
I also believe there is some connection between Fischer's relationship with his father, and Miles and Dom's relationship.
Ultimately, I believe that Mol and Miles were trying to get him back home, and to release everything and wake up from his dream. THAT is what Mol's totem was able to fall at the end.
But again, I am not sure with my conclusion. There are MANY scenes left in the film that are needed to be pieced together.
DOES ANYBODY CARE TO HELP ME OUT?
Clarification:
*How come when Fischer woke up, he didn't recongize that the people around him were in his dream?
Likely because people almost always forget dreams, often right away. The rest of the characters all do this stuff for a living, basically, but he has a bit of security training and thats it. He probably has no recollection at all, except for the 'incepted' thought of breaking up the company.
Devils advocate but if dom and mal were so far in his subconscious it would take multiple kicks to get them out so they get hit by the train and then she jumps off the window so maybe he is really still stuck in the dream that is not what ii believe but ii have seen the movie twice maybe one more time but the point of the movie is to show who are we to say what is reality there are to many plausible conclusions for there just to be one right answer
Brad, this is quite possibly the most interesting piece you've ever written on this site. I definitely think that it was a dream in the end for the sole reason that the top was still spinning. We're told half-way through that the top was still spinning in Mal's limbo world. So it would only make sense that Dom is still in a dream as well. But this all makes me wonder: was Dom set up by Saito and was it really all an elaborate plot to use Dom's talents? Either way you look at it, the ending is really confusing, but I still really liked it. Great movie. A+
i saw the movie and as i do with all movies tried to watch for details. i spent about 90 minutes discussing theories with my friends afterwords. our results were identical. the only thing i hate about movies like this is the time spent debating the ending and plot take us away from the true meaning of the movie, and for me the conflict of wealth and family that i felt was an undertone of the movie really was enlightening to me.
To idk: I am glad you have brought this up.
After my post last night I began thinking about the moment when Fischer must have woken up and seen all of the people sitting on the plane around him. Surely he would have immediately recognized them and known they had performed an inception on him. Thus it could not have been real. Saito, Ariadne, and the others are not real. Ariadne's name is what convinces me that she is not real (in Greek mythology Ariadne helps Theseus escape the labyrinth).
I agree that Mal was right and she does return to reality, while Dom remains behind. I think the "fourth-level" (actually fifth-level) confrontation with Mal is the moment when he finally comes to terms with his guilt. This is the real inception, planted by Ariadne, who has been constructed by Miles. Dom then returns to the first-level dream world which we see at the end of the movie.
The point is that Dom no longer has his guilt to interfere with him. He will ultimately realize that he is still in a dream, and finally be able to return to reality. Anyway, I have not had a chance to see it for a second time yet, I am interested to see how all of these theories will hold up after a second viewing.
A very well-constructed movie, with excellent acting. The open-ended nature of the spinning top leaves us all to interpret our dream (ie the 2 hours and 30 min of our lives we spent in the movie – for me 5 now).
After reading multiple posts on several different sites, and reconstructing my own interpretations, here is what I think….
When Cobb spoke on the phone to his children, Phillipa spoke and sounded significantly older and more mature than the girl pictured at the end of the movie. Therefore, the end of the movie was in fact dream….the dream started at the dream shack when the old man says "people come here to wake up"….Cobb tested the serum and woke up, went to the bathroom and tried the top to see if he was in reality or dream – but Saito was there to interupt him. So from that point forward is level one of the dream. level two is the abduction of Fischer in the rain….level three is the hotel scene….level four is the snow scene….and level 5 is the scene with Mol and Ariadne.
In level 5 Cobb actually accepts his guilt and moves forward, but he never returns back to reality, he returns to level one. In level one, he doesn't care about the result of spinning the top because he has confronted his subconscious projection of Mol and his guilt….therefore he walks away from the top and goes to his children. Inception 2 is when he returns to the table to find out that he is actually in level one…..he will then kill himself and wake up back in reality – the dream shack with the chemist and Saito.
best alternate interpretation ….
When Cobb woke up in the dream shack, and Saito interupted his spinning of the top, maybe it would have toppled. Therefore that was reality level. When Cobb arrived home, it was reality and the inception job was real and saito made the phone call to clear cobb's name. the entire movie cobb said the way to determine if you are dreaming or not was to think of how you got somewhere….Cobb got to his home after being picked up at the airport by his father (or father in law) after a 10 hour flight to LA – therefore he was indeed in reality at that point.
Bottom-line, the 2 major twists that only Nolan knows the truth are the 2 spins that we don't know the outcome – once in the bathroom when Saito interrupted the spin and second at the end.
Great posts on here….thanks for a cool thread
I posted my thought before seeing yours. :) but Totally agreed.
their mission is to free Cobb from his guilt when they heavily sedated him in the basement with the chemist. Saito keeps repeating the "leap of faith" statement to engrave into Cobb's mind, possibly followed Cobb's Father's instruction. it is just like a hypnosis. From what I see Saito does NOT need to risk his life to incept Fischer mind's, he purposefully went to limbo so that Cobb will go and find him. Saito then repeatedly saying that phrase to incept Cobb's who knows how many layers of subconscious mind. They both woke up to level 1…
mission accomplished
The kids seen throughout the movie and the ones seen in the ending are DEFINITELY two different aged kids. Philipa looks significantly older and James' hair is definitely longer.
The children at the end of the movie are older and are played by two different actors: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1375666/fullcredits#cast
Note Phillipa (3 years) and Phillipa (5 years), also James (20 months) and James (2 years) The girl that he spoke with on the phone could easily have been a five year old girl.
They wouldn't have aged at all if he was in a dream. So the end is reality…he sees his children outside and at first they look the same, but when they turn they are older…he has only been away from them for a year and 4 months (judging by the ages they are credited as)
5 minutes is an hour and so on up to ten years. The whole thing was for Doms benefit Mol hired the others to pull Dom out of the dream it had to look like a job to him or his mind would not accept it. When she jumped she woke up the dream with his kids at the end was the safe being opend and hiom excepting the idea the top falls and Dom awakes.
Excellent article!
Another interpretation is that the film is about insanity and coping with trauma and bereavement. Dom is actually a patient in a mental hospital who has had a mental breakdown following a real life trauma, such as the sudden death of his wife by suicide or in a car accident. He is now living in a delusional drug induced nightmare fantasy world, which he has created to protect himself from the reality of the death of his wife.
Miles is his psychologist helping him to confront his nightmare to the point where at the end of the film he is still in a fantasy world but has come to terms with the death of his wife and is ready to come off the drugs and return to the real world.
Wow i suck at spell check don't I? What i was trying to say is Dom's world has been a dream all along, as soon as his wife got out she went about wakeing him. When the top falls it's the final kick .
big j: I agree that it was a dream all along. That is the general framework into which I will try to fit the details when I see the movie again. My initial interpretation was that Ariadne, Saito, and the others are constructs designed to get Dom to accept the inception that is being planted by Miles and Mal. The idea that Saito, Ariadne and the others were instead hired by Mal and Miles does seem to make more sense.
The first time I saw the film, I didn't quite like the ending much. I didn't really understand the necessity of that kind of an ending. But the second time I saw it reconsidered and here is how I now see the ending:
I think the ending will certainly invite multiple theories to what happens after the screen cuts to black but I think the theorizing is the point of the film.
What was the main theme of this film? Determining what is real and what is not real. That's the issue the main character, Dom Cobb, goes through in this film. At the end of this film, the audience goes through exactly what Cobb was forced to go through in the film.
Film is an art form, art is meant to invoke emotion and feeling. At the end of this film, when the screen cuts to black, think to yourself what you went through when the film ended. You wondered if what you saw was real or not. You thought to yourself, was that last scene real or a dream. I believe that is exactly the feelings Nolan wanted you to feel with this ending.
Whether it was real or not real is besides the point, the point was to make yourself ask the question. The end of a film, book, or television episode usually will summarize the main theme of the episode, film or book, and I believe that is why this ending was included. The feeling you felt at the end condensed the main theme of the film perfectly.
Dom repeatedly warns that if you go limbo, you will return to reality insane because of the experience. If Dom spent "50 years" with Mal in limbo how could he not be insane. I saw no explanation why he would be an exception to his warning about the results of being in limbo. Leads me to believe Dom was insane and the entire movie was an experience of his insanity after being in limbo with Mal.
Rob i feel that Dom beleives that based on the fact that Mal was not all that together after there first escape from the dream (limbo) so he has decided insanity is the end result, even he has Mal following him around which makes him question his own sanity.
Rob, I have been thinking the exact same thing. There were earlier posts relating to Dom's possible insanity. Dom's warning that people who return from limbo are insane supports your theory.
Dang Brad you really got me thinkin now im gonna go see it again and at 9.50 a showing they should consider cutting you in on profits your gonna bring in alot of repeat buisness with this post LOL thanks it was a good one!
The whole movie is about Cobb father hired all those people, or at least Ariadne, to help Cobb to free from his guilt. Especially Ariadne never seemed surprised or scared of the idea that what they are doing is legal when Cobb told her. She quickly accepted the job because Cobb father was the one hired her. So does all other people. The only thing that Ariadne cares is to free Cobb, not doing some spy work or interested in stealing or putting anything into others people's mind but Cobb's. Cobb is the subject, they are putting inception onto him, not Fischer. Ariadne's mission is to make Cobb confessed of what he did to Mal.
And Brad is right that Cobb never confirmed he was in the dream or not up to the point he was heavily sedated with the special chemical in the basement. From that point on I believe their mission has started. at the end we never saw that they were using the dreaming machine when Cobb woke up on the plane. if they went to limbo and they were "unplugged", they would never be able to come back, but because Cobb and Saito were already in the dream, they could woke up from deeper level without using the machine.
At the end they were smiling because they have finally fixed Cobb…
The last scene is only for the audience to keep speculating if the whole movie was real or not. Yes, half of it is real and half of is not.
I think it was real. I was actually looking very closely at the top at the end, and it was slightly wobbling. In the dreams, it was perfectly smooth.
I would like to think that the outside shell of the movie represents reality. That is there really were the mind thieves and Leo's character is tormented. That Adriana plants the seed (inception) that if he confesses his sin (inception into Mal's mind that ultimately led to her death) and has it out with Mal's shade in the dream world, he will be finally free of guilt and her torment in his dreams. I would like to think that Dom lives happily ever after with his name cleared and with his kids. However, the kids are always the same age and in the same clothes at every level of dream and in the end. An explanation is needed for that before I can accept the end as real. Then (and no one has brought this up) how did Dom meet with Miles (granpop)? Dom wasn't allowed in the U.S. He was wanted for murder and would not have been allowed to me Miles in the U.S.? Was his meeting with Miles part of a dream sequence? Why was the airport scene in slow motion? I am not too worried about Fischer not reacting to the people on the plane because in the first level they wore masks. The only one he got a good look at was Dom and that was in level 2 where Dom masqueraded as the dream security guard. The look Fischer gave Dom in the airport could be the total reaction of someone recognizing someone from a dream within a dream who he had seen before in the seat behind him before he fell asleep. Whether the token fell or not at the end doesn't bother me as much as the meeting with Miles and the kids appearing the same at the end as they appeared in every dream. I don't think Dom is in limbo because by the films own logic if you die in a dream you wake up and Dom drowned in the van in level 1.
I think Dom first met Miles in France, not the U.S. because he mentioned French extradition laws being difficult, and the scenes with Adriana's character were initially in Paris. I think Fischer may not have recognized the others when he woke up because he had been dreaming and sometimes you dream of the last people with whom you have interacted, so I might have thought he just had a strange dream about those in the cabin around him.
Makes sense.
For what it's worth, there are two sets of children cast as Dom's kids– in the casting, the second set is listed as being two years older than the first. Yet, as has been pointed out, the children seen at the end seem to be the younger kids.
I think the Browning character may be an allusion to Robert Browning and his poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came." That poem details Roland's journey to the dark tower, but ends abruptly once he arrives, and the reader never knows what he found there.
I also found it odd that the University in Paris was home to a British Professor and an American student, but not a single Frenchman that we ever see. I'll have to wait for the DVD to freeze the image on the chalkboard and see if there are any clues there.
It was also interesting to me that the dialogue between the old-man version of Saito and Dom paralleled to clearly the one that had taken place between Mal and Dom, making me wonder if the plan had been to implant that whole thing into Dom in the first place.
Also, I don't know if someone said this yet, but in Latin the word Mal means "bad" or "evil."
someone in other site had mentioned the names theories. I also noticed that when I was watching the movie. the names of most of the characters are not normal. some people had suggest those are greek gods or some one from greek mythology…
may be this movie itself is an inception to implant our mind…
good vs evil, real vs dream, an so on…
I've been reading all of these comments and yet, still this movie boggles the heck out of my mind…
in my opinion, what Nolan is actually trying to deliver is the thought of Descartes' question whether our life is a real reality or just a dream. Descartes once said, if our lives in this earth is real, there is no absolute real explanation why it is so. and there is also not enough convincing explanation that it is just a dream.
the complication of whether the ending is a dream or reality, both sides have argumentations to falsify one another. that makes it not possible to justify a final answer of whether it is a dream or reality.
I have studied religion and philosophy for awhile.
Yes, there were people suggested that we are just all in God's dream sharing the same conscious, once we died, we go back to the reality (heaven).
On the other hand, if we are not sharing then every other people we met are the projections of our mind. but this seems to be impossible. so it is ruled out.
The whole thing is that the world we are living in is REAL in terms of God's rule (he is the architect of his own dream, just like Ariadne) so when he decided to intercept through Jesus, he could alter "reality" easily, since this is his dream. walking on the water, resurrection, fly to the sky?? It's just a piece of cake to him, he could do "virtually" anything he wants. We are all projection of himself (God created human with his own image) However, in his own dream, He had created us in a way we could all have our own minds and dreams and free will per se. But in reality our dreams are also part of HIS.
Oops… I am not trying to spread the gospel here… just an opinion…
why must it be impossible and ruled out?
just like in the movie, cobb said that the people who are walking in his dream are his subconscious, he can't control them. just like us here in what u called the REAL world. you are for me, may be my subconscious, and vice versa. but there is no ultimate guarantee to prove who is the real right one. either you or me…
and if you study philosophy, there is this big debate between idealism and empiricism, about which is true, because if one is, than the other isn't, and vice versa. and i think, by injecting religion sense in such a discourse, makes religion the worst spoiler of all..
has anyone mentioned that when cobb goes through customs, the stamp is the symbol is the one he draws for ellen page.
the two opposite direction arrows with a line through the middle.
the reason why this might be significant is because it might be a TINY little clue as if indeed we are in a dream.
Did anyone else notice that?
I noticed that the second time, I had to watch it again. One thing I'm confused on about though, before they're mission Saito and Dom are talking about if Saito dies, he'll forget the agreement while waiting in limbo, they mention something similar to "Filled with 'revenge' waiting to die…" but at the end of the movie they say "Regret" ?????????
I loved Brad Brevet's interpretation. The idea that the final scene is Cobb's real dream is poetic. It doesn't matter when he dreams it. It's fun to play with the idea of the entire movie being a maze or a never-ending staircase, but I agree with the comment that it cheapens the film. The movie is a masterpiece with the characters awakening into reality. It does remind me of Sutter Island, which I also loved. However, in that film, I thought he truly was insane and that his mind couldn't cope with reality. After reading all of these comments, it sounds like I need to see the Provisio (sp?). One question I still have is about Mol. Is it just the token that she locked away? I thought Cobb made several references to something bad that Mol had suppressed or locked away. I need to see the movie again but any thought?
Just saw it, so my brain's a bit frazzled. Forgive me, then, for not elaborating on this theory: Mal is alive and is trying to get Dom out.
I believe Mal is alive as well. In Cobb's mind he thought she was killing herself, but in reality she was kicked back into the real world.
No matter what Mal cant be alive. If your wondering why its because when the idea that killing herself to get to the real world was planted in her head, she will kill herself in every dream level AND when she actually is in the real world until she is dead.
First of all, a great article and intriguing discussion.
Salute to Nolan..never seen something like this!
So many possibilites. each seems possible, yet fails to convince!
As someone said, you will just have to stick with one theory and move on..
One of many things that I kept wondering about throughout the movie is – the names of lead characters.
Dom, Mal, Ariadne, Eames etc. Apart from Arthur, these don't seem very "common", if you know what I mean.
Any thoughts?
Dom is Latin for God
Mal is Latin for Bad (Malicious etc.)
Ariadne was a character from Greek Mythology who helped Theseus out of the Minotaur's maze.
Eames is the only one i can't figure out. Possibly just a last name.
Phew..Thanks Dillon!
So, one theory that says Mal was trying to help Dom come out of the dream would translate to Bad / Evil helping God?
Lol..this keeps getting complicated!
"I think the biggest question here is whether or not you believe the movie ended with Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) dreaming or in reality?"
ANSWER: If the movie turns out to be a hit, then the ending is a dream ending (therefore there will be sequel, in which the the team will have to extract Cobb, then Nolan can properly flesh these other characters out properly, in the current movie they were just there).
If the movie turns out to be mediocre or even flops (which it won't), then ending implies the Cobb was back in his real world and there is no reason for sequel.
Nolan is a genius!
I've seen this movie 3 times now from working in a theater, and here's one of my theories.
The scene when the team is at Yusef's lab (the chemist), Dom asks to try out the sedative and "see what he's got." It then shows a short dream sequence of his memories of Mal, then abruptly waking up.
It then shows him in the bathroom, washing his face. He pulls out the top and starts to spin it, but drops it on the floor. As he's picking it up, he's interrupted by Saito, and never gets a chance to spin it again.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it never once throughout the entire movie shows his top spin and fall again, showing he's back in reality.
My theory is that the entire rest of the movie is a dream he's still in from the chemist's lab.
Which would actually be a similar turn of events as in Total Recall.
In that film when he (Arnold) first enters the dream technology and then comes 'out of it', but then we don't really know he did come out of it at all and the rest of the movie where he saves Mars may be a simulation. Or maybe not.
Structurally, and in it's multiple ways of reading it Inception is very much connected to films like Total Recall, The Prestige, The Shining, Shutter Island, 2001: A Space Odyssey, even older films like Blade Runner and The Innocents and many more than I can remember right now.
It will be discussed and debated for years as to what it all means, what was really happening and for as long as Nolan never confirms which it really is then there's going to be even more of it!!!
Doesn't he spin it again with Ariadne when Mal first kills her?
Can't recall offhand – but if we don't see the results of the spin in the shack when Cobb is interupted can we trust the results of any subsequent spins?
mabe. but if thats the case Mal would have shown up atleast once during the so called dream or reality.
Okay, great discussion. I have three theories, some of which people have already stated.
I am assuming that the top is still spinning at the end. It seems to be spinning for much too long to be real. If that's the case:
1) We are still one step away from reality. So, whose dream are we actually in? The answer is that, ultimately, we don't know. The real-real-real-real-real world is never shown.
2) So, we have to guess who is trying to achieve what? Whose dream would this fulfill? It's either Michael Caine's, who wants his grandchildren to be reunited with their father. Or Cobb, who is trying to figure out some way to get home to his children. Someone's subconscious has to figure out a way to do that.
3) The whole thing is the dream of the audience. As they say, you never remember how a dream begins. So, do we remember how the dream begins? No, we are tossed into the middle of it. And you really have to think hard, "How did this begin?" And we are the ones who would like a happy ending. We want to see Cobb get reunited with his kids.
A couple of other thoughts:
Numbers keep reappearing in the movie. License plates. On sides of buildings. Hotel rooms. But they keep appearing in different order. Is that the key to this? I'd have to see it again to figure it out.
This is, in the end, like Nolan's Memento. You leave scratching your head and trying to figure it out. It's a riddle inside of a mystery inside of an enigma.
But is it a great movie? Absolutely. If for no other reason that so many people are so involved in it that they would go a site and read all of these theories. Most movies are brain-dead and aimed at 16 year-olds, who buy most of the tickets for an opening weekend. Unfortunately, Hollywood cares most about the opening weekend grosses.
That's what has skewed – and, in my mind – ruined so much of the movie business.
I personally believe he did wake up in reality at the end, but the director wants to keep us guessing, obviously.
Yes, it was all a very happy ending, but there are clues as to showing that he was in fact re-united with his kids at the end. A lot of people think he was still dreaming, simply because his kids had not aged at all. Yes, Nolan seems to have tried planting that seed into our mind by using the same footage at first (kids playing with their faces away from the camera).
But now the big clue – each of his two kids were played by two different actors, and more importantly, of two DIFFERENT AGES:
Claire Geare – Phillipa (3 years)
Magnus Nolan – James (20 months)
Taylor Geare – Phillipa (5 years)
Johnathan Geare – James (3 years)
If I remember the final scene correctly, Cobb comes home and looks out into the garden. We see the familiar footage of his children playing in the garden. This, I think, is a memory of how he saw his children last – nostalgia maybe -, but covering over a real vision of his kids in the "now". Similar to the way they show a vision of a younger person in some movies when it's actually decades later and the person has aged – and they cut to the "now" a bit later.
Just shortly before his daughter turns around and runs to him, there was a cut, and the kids were then a bit older than the memory. This is the reality. The fact that the girls were played by two similar looking sisters can make the viewer believe it was the same child, but there must be a reason those very small two roles was played by several actors of different ages.
When Moll is at the beach with the kids–those are the younger two. The kids at the end are the same kids whose backs Dom keeps seeing.
The kind of stuff that happens with long plane rides…the kicks are the subconscious hurry to complete the dream before the plane lands.
Dom Cobb dreams it up all, an effect of reading too much of sci-fi and then getting onto a plane, a glass of champagne helps :)
when he lands and goes thru immigration, he is still in a daze, but the officer seems unfazed..a clue that the man just woke up after a long dream.
the guilt about his wife looks real, the grandpa picking him up at the airport, the kids not showing any surprise when he arrives, the totem tilting ever so slightly to suggest that it would eventually stop :)
I know this is a spoiler, the folks at home don't want me to oversimplify it, so that they can justify the spend..which I think is justified..excellent movie
Thanks for the well-written piece!
The end is a dream and I'll tell you why:
remember the test to a dream? Ask yourself this question- 'how did you get there?' How did Dom and Grandpa get home from the airport? If the scene jumped from the airport to home, it's a dream. If there was a car scene that showed the transfer, then it's real. I don't remember if there were scenes btw the airport and the house.
much of the movie was told through similar cuts between scenes (think of the training scenes). Nolan doesn't do much to establish time or place to differentiate scenes, which just spreads the dreamlike quality throughout the film.
Basic filmmaking: in order to show that someone has come into a room, you don't have to show them opening the door.
This just leads to the meta quality of the film: film as dream, dream as film. We are suspended in time. 2.5 hours to watch a film that spans several weeks, months and years. The greatest part of the film experience for me was the final scene. The entire audience is watching the top and expecting it to fall or not. The screen goes to black and there is a collective groan as we are all kicked back to reality. The film is the first dream, making it 5 levels dreams within dreams.
More importantly, how did he get from being with Saito in limbo to being on the plane – that's the bit we don't see (or from his limbo to Saito's limbo come to think of it). The deeper we go, the less sense Nolan makes of physical space (and erm…subconscious space).
There aren't any scenes that link them. He just 'gets there' – and your point is one that I bore in mind as well while reading a lot of the messages.
It's another possible clue to it being a dream.
Although I still don't believe it matters whether it is or it isn't. Nolan wants every viewer to make up their own mind and go from there.
Great article and some great comments. Mine will be much shorter (as I have a hangover =D), but I'm with those who think Mal was right. I think Cobb's "reality" is still a dream state. I think Mal created the idea of the totems in one of their dream states and all the totem falling means is Dom is back to the level where Mal created it. I also think the song chosen to signal it's time for their kick on the "first" level is a very important clue since the English translation of the title is "I Do Not Regret Anything."
Why is Fischer able to just wake up and walk around (into the vault with his father) in level 3 after he's been shot by Mal? Shouldn't he wake in level 2? Or does being kicked allow you a second life?
Love the uncertainty at the end. In my opinion it is a great movie. Just hope they don't destroy the first positive impression on the German sub. Otherwise this could be a huge success in Europe or at least in Germany as well.
All the child images were the same kids it was the kids on the phone that were older, he heres them in the back ground while sleeping and unknowingly awaiting Mal to awaken him his mind interprets it as phone calls. As Kabir stated the customs symbol was the same one Dom described proving he was still dreaming it was the point where his mind accedpted it was ready for the final kick out of the dream.
Can anyone remind me what that symbol meant? People keep mentioning it's similarity to the passport stamp, but I cannot for the life of me remember what exactly he was describing. I only saw it last night, my memory is appalling…
One of my friends pointed out that 'Perchance to Dream', an episode from 'Batman: The Animated Series' might have been Christopher Nolan's source of inspiration for 'Inception'.
Here is the link, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perchance_to_Dream_(Batman:_The_Animated_Series)
One other thing that was interesting the scene where Dom is running from the shooters, he runs down that narrow alley but as he nears the end he starts getting stuck and has to fight his way through yet the alley has not gotten any narrower I have had dreams where this has happend or if your running from something the harder you try to run the slower you seem to go this implys to me that we are in Doms head if it were some one elses dream he would not have run into that problem. Right?
Yes, very true – in reality would there ever be two buildings built with a triangular-shaped gap between them that narrows to 10 or 12 inches? It seems dream-like, not like reality.
Also, when he goes into the coffee shop during that chase scene, and the waiter makes such a fuss, that didn't seem to have an explanation. I suppose there's some cultural reason why the guy might have been yelling at him (he didn't belong in there, it was actually a private party) but to me it seemed kind of like a dream where you just can't find a safe place to be.
Hey Arun they did the same thing in Supernatural some mischevious critter had Dean in one o them dream thingys you should check it out.
The whole thing was a dream (minus the flashbacks). An Inception performed on Dom and planned by Miles.
Miles as Dom's father or father in law realized the extent of Dom's torment and guilt.
He created this initial dream level for Dom. An entire world.
Eames and Arthur both knew Dom and were willing to help, Ariadne did it for Miles, as she was his best student, and were all 3 real people. Yusuf was hired to be the chemist because they realized they weren't going down 3 levels as Dom believes, but 4, not including limbo. Saito and Fischer were projections of Dom's subconscious.
In the end, Dom kills Saito, wiping away his projection of Saito and thus his projected "Saito Limbo" whirling Dom back to his own constructed world. The world Miles made him.
So the whole point was for MILES team to go in and perform Inception on Dom, allowing Dom a full life with his children, and for Dom to accept it as his reality, thus Miles diverting Dom's attention from the top as it spun and the top wavering as Dom accepts his world.
This is COMPLETELY off topic in a sense but, if Mr. Nolan can tease our heads with this movie and he decides to do "Batman 3". If he does and decides to use "The Riddler", imagine what kind of riddles he'll throw at us. Hmm, just something to think about.
I think that the totem FALLS at the end because it is wobbling.
HOWEVER, ITDOES NOT MATTER BECAUSE IF WE ARE ASSUMING IT IS A DREAM THEN DOM CREATES THE PHYSICS OF IT. since he thinks its the real world he would make the totem fall anyways……
Hi all!
First of all, I apologize if my question has already being posted. I have not gone throught all the answers.
My question is for the people who suggests that the final scene is a dream:
if the scene in which Dom and Saito waking up in the plane takes place in the real world, and the inception plot has been succesfull, Saito fullfils his promise with Dom and clears his profile. So what is the point for Dom in dreaming with his children? He is now a free man again and can reunite with his family again.
By they way, congratulations for the post. I just saw the movie yestarday and I think it was great. It remained me to another of Nolan´s movies: Memento.
Greetings from a Spanish guy living in the States!
I stuck around to watch the credits, and I saw that the 2 children are NOT the same, they are 2 separate sets of actors with 2 different ages. See it again and check it out. So, despite deceiving appearances, the children have aged, and are actually 2 different people. Nolan would not have cast 2 separate kids to play the same role unless he meant to. This kind of blows the "dream" theory. Anyone else notice this??
@Brad Brevet: It's been only 52 hours since you posted this article and its already gotten 174 posts – Is That A Record?
I just wanna say how cool it is that a film this year has finally been able to spark this much interest. In my humble opinion it's by far the best film of 2010, so far. Also, considering that the field for Best Picture has been expanded to include 10 films, I can't imagine a single scenario in which this film doesn't bag the nomination that should have gone to The Dark Knight back in 2008.
Kudos to Chris Nolan for crafting such an amazing, awe-inspiring, mind-trip, the likes of which I haven't seen since The Matrix was released in 1999.
Agreed! I think this movie will win best screenwriting hands-down. Can't think of a more thought-provoking movie in recent memory.
I believe Cobb was stuck in limbo the entire movie. When he explained his situation with Mal to Ellen Page's character, he said that they had been experimenting with a dream within a dream. But in his retelling of the events, when they laid down on the tracks, they only came out of one level. So, did they not come back into another dream, the first level, the dream where Mal killed herself to get out? Cobb is in limbo, but the children are, perhaps, him returning to reality, a sense of things normalizing… going home again.
I don't have any "wrapping it all up in one neat bow" theories, but a couple of observations:
1. Funny how Marion Cotillard played Edith Piaf in "La Vie En Rose" (for which she won the Oscar), and then the song that "kicks" them out of dreams is the famous Edith Piaf "Je ne regrette rien," which mean "I regret nothing," an echo of the line both Seito and Cobb repeat throughout the film: "a man full of regrets." Perhaps the choice of that song is intended as a subconscious hint that what Cobb thinks is reality is indeed a dream, and Mal is somehow trying to get through to him from the outside…
2. When Fisher wakes up on the plane: OK some of you have argued that he just assumes all the characters around him in first class were in his dream because they were there before he fell asleep. However, Cobb, as "Mr. Charles", tells him it is an "extraction" and then he sees Cobb's team in the hotel room before he goes to sleep. If he wakes up on the plane and thinks "it was all a dream" wouldn't he at least be a little suspicious of them or paranoid, considering that in the dream he was warned it was about an extraction. He seems too complacent, and though he reacts strangely to Cobb in the airport, as if he recognized someone from a dream, he doesn't seem perturbed enough when he wakes up on the plane. Maybe he forgot his dream? Or maybe it's all a dream to begin with…
3. Are we sure the stamp on the passport is the same symbol Cobb draws for Ariadne at the Paris Cafe? Has someone verified this. I didn't really notice it in the film.
4. If it is all a dream, I don't think it only started at the chemist's sleep dungeon… It seems like even before that so many things were dream-like – as Mal tried to tell him – the people following him, the alley way he can't fit through, his meeting with Michael Cane (appearing alone in a classroom, noone around). Also Nolan pusposefully confuses us: while it's really Tokyo depicted in the aerial shot of the city in the beginning – the reference to Paris – and Mal – is already there in the fake Eiffel Tower. Ariadne – who in Greek mythology helps Theseus escape the labrynth – is too good to be true. She accepts his premises too easily, and is too willing to help him and be his guide in the end. She seems like a projection or a plant of some kind… The city of the first dream sequence with Seito (when the rebells are burning down the streets) is mysteriously similar to Mumbai, where he goes later to meet the forager and the chemist. Also the opening Seito extraction occurs on a TRAIN, the same reoccuring archetypal symbol in Cobb's subconsious, which appears repeatedly throughout the film.
5. If going into limbo means you emerge with your brain scrambled, and if Cobb was in limbo for 50 years with Mal, then there is no way he ever came out with his mind intact, since he would have had his brain scrambled. By the same logic, Seito could not have emerged sane either, but he is totally normal when he wakes up; if he had really woken, having spent 50 years in limbo himself, according to what is implied by his depiction as an old man at the end, then he would have a been either brain dead or a raving lunatic when he wakes up on the plane. It seems like it's just another fantasy dream of Cobb's.
6. I definitely felt like the film itself was an inception on my own psyche, which is Nolan's ultimate statement, since it's true that cinema is a waking dream of sorts. But I felt like with each layer the characters went down, I went down with them in my own psyche, which is the beauty of the experience of the film.
I only think that your brain gets scrambled in limbo if you lose sight of your goal… Like near the ending right before Ariadne jumps off of the balcony to kick back to the snowy level, she tells Cobb not to lose track or something like that.
what if the WHOLE movie was a dream?
PS: Also – what about the fact that in the first extraction sequence of Saito on the train in Japan, in addition to Arthur and Cobb and the failed architect who Saito eventually axes in the helicopter, a Japanese kid of about 14 is a member of their team – he is the one who monitors them as they sleep, playing the same role as the stewardess on the plane – the observer of the dreamers who kicks them out with music or a tip at the end of the dream. These characters, though playing a vital role, are not fleshed out as key figures, though they seem important. Who are they and what is their involvement? Or are they just figments of Cobb's imagination?
First off, the fact that we are even having this discussion is incredible. It lets me know that this movie will surely be debated and disputed for years to come, and i'm 100% sure this will go down as an absolute classic. Also, with everyone talking about this i bet it will have incredibly strong word of mouth and therefore do great at the box office. finally, as for my interpretation, i have to say that mine was different at first. i took dom leaving the plane and arriving back at his house as absolute reality, and the fact that the top was spinning was simply just a metaphor that his dream had come true. obviously, i have now reconsidered this a million times but still can't nail down exactly what happened, but that's the whole point. not even chris nolan knows whether or not this movie was a dream or real. he wants to question reality itself. there's no reason to keep debating what happened because we'll never truly know just like we'll never know what reality truly is. still, i can't wait to continue to debate about this film just i can discuss this masterpiece. i cant wait to see it again!
Christopher Nolan is God.
I think we have a tendency to add unnecessary complexity to the movie by interpreting the whole thing as a dream, a massive plot by Miles or whoever to guide Cobb to resolve his guilt. However, I think Nolan played this more straightforward. Think about it, if Cobb was being incepted, it would have required another level of dreaming, violating his expert undertstanding of the extraction process.
The con is real, maybe Miles had his architect student key in on Cobb's problems and help him, but that was an aside to the main plot thread of completing the mission and getting home to the kids. Can't wait to see it again, as I'm sure I'll be able to spot the differences in the kids and iron out the only wrinkle of doubt I had that the last scene was real. And dammit, that totem was about to fall!
Miles plotted the inception on Dom to get him OUT of his dream. He was the best at what he did; that's why he was so deep in the complexities of his dream, it took something HUGE (like a plot planned by Miles) to get him out.
Some quick questions:
1) If one simply wakes up from limbo by dying (cobb/mal with train and cobb/saito with gun) then why didn't they just kill themselves right when they entered limbo?
2) Cobb said his totem while in dreams is always spinning but when mal is shown putting the totem in the safe while they were in limbo it is clearly laying on its side?
Great movie, just leaves too many loose ends
to answer your second question, the totem had stopped spinning because she had chose limbo to be her reality. REMEMBER: the totem spins only if you are dreaming. She wanted to believe that limbo was her reality, so she purposely made it stop spinning, and accepted her reality.
Basically, the totem has everything to do with deciding what's real and what's not.
As for the first question, I'm not really sure. Maybe it's because limbo provides you with infinite ideas and time and space that it wouldn't occur to you to kill yourself? Idk, but that's a good question.
The reason that Saito didn't kill himself when he first entered limbo was because he was sedated and could not wake up even if he tried. Cobb has to come back to retrieve him to let him know it is possible to return because enough time has passed and they finally were getting the kick from that first level.
In relation to 1) – I wondered if it was something to do with having to believe that dying would wake you up..? So your subconscious does the work, makes the kick happen. Which is why Cobb had to plant that idea so firmly in Mal's mind that it remained with her when she got out of limbo. Following that thought, maybe at the end he could get Saito out with that same idea…but didn't believe in it enough himself…?
Having said that, the sedation point is a good call…just not sure how Cobb would know the right time to match with the kick (he admits his math is shakey).
Miles is the true master of inception, and all of the people in Cobb's dream (Ficsher, Ariadne, Arthur, Eeves, Saito, ect.) were in on a plan that was meant to plant an idea into Cobb to get him to come back home. Cobb's "reality" is really a whole world created by Miles.
I know it's hard to comprehend, but ULTIMATELY, Miles planted the idea in Cobb's head that his children were without a father, and that the only way to get back home was through Saito. Miles just wanted to get Cobb out of the dream world, and he finally woke up on the plane to L.A.
Cobb never really went anywhere. But he just got so lost in his dream that he chose to accept it as his reality.
When you think of it this way, it explains all of the loopholes in the story.
Oh, wanted to add one more comment. I think the interrupted spin of the totem in the bathroom was not a sign that Cobb was in a dream, but just part of the ratcheting up of events. Cobb tried to calm or ground himself but was not allowed.
In the end, he left the totem behind. He didn't need a trinket to ground him anymore as his kids became his true anchor to reality. In the dream world, he can't see their faces. In reality, he can. Kind of poetic.
Just my two cents. A lot of interesting interpretations here.
Clear, tidy and lucid article. Well done, Brad Brevet!
A couple of thoughts…
Occam's Razor: lacking anything else, the simplest explanation is the best. Nolan gives us a lot to chew on, but not enough to be persuaded that the whole movie is a dream. That was Shutter Island, DiCaprio's LAST movie.
Pet peeve: A "kick" is someone or something OUTSIDE the dream waking someone who is dreaming. There's no kick out of limbo, and getting killed in a dream is not a kick.
Ariadne: cool to note that in Greek mythology, Ariadne is the "Mistress of the Labyrinth", the woman who leads Theseus out of the maze with the Minotaur.
Great article! Like some of the others in this thread, I thought I was the only one who noticed these little things in the movie.
Another thing I noticed (I don't know if someone has already mentioned this), there may be a possibility that Cobb is still dreaming at the end because didn't he mention that the first person he did inception to was Mal? Therefore he had to go through 3 stages (like they did for Mr. Fischer) right? When Cobb and Mal "kicked" themselves out of their dream, they would have 1 more stage to go through right?
It was just an observation and someone correct me if I'm wrong :) Also, I noticed that many are saying that Cobb and Mal were in limbo, did I miss this? How did they get in limbo in the first place? (I think once that part is explained, then it would explain how they were back in reality right away instead of going through 1 more stage)
we the audience see many things cobb does not, things that exist outside of cobb's experience…here are two significant reminders of that:
#Levitt stealing a kiss from ariadne
#Ariadne telling Levitt, "I think he'll be fine."
Theseus could not kill the Minotaur without Ariadne's guidance, just as Cobb could not kill his regret for Mal (or Mal herself for that matter) without Ariadne's guidance.
Ariadne led Theseus through the Labyrinth and just as Ariadne led Cobb through his subconscious.
If you get the chance, watch Michael Caine in the movie "The Magus". He plays a man who has destroyed his lover's life. Then leaves the country for a Greek Island to teach English as a second language and escape his self-loathing and guilt. While there he stumbles upon a compound where 'The Magus' played by Anthony Quinn manipulates Caine's reality and forces him to confront his subconscious. Actually the novel is sublime, the movie not so, however the meta-vibe is interesting.
okay, so a friend of mine just explained the whole Cobb and Mal limbo to me.
But another thing I noticed, Cobb mentions that they (Mal and him) grew old together in limbo, but in the scene with the train, they weren't old yet. Was that scene in limbo or another dream???
Aaaah! I need to see this movie again!
Btw, despite my observations, I agree with the article and believe he was in reality at the end (or he did reach reality and this was his first dream on his own)
Yusef explains quite a bit here: http://tinyurl.com/26pp6v3
The above interview is absolutely outstanding!
Here's an excerpt:
"I don't think the 'It's all a dream' theory makes much sense to me… The problem for me is that you're using negative evidence to support a story that isn't there. I don't know what to say about a character who only exists before and after the movie. You're talking about a character who isn't onscreen. And I mean on one hand, it's awesome that this movie can sustain that kind of discussion. It shows you just how well-thought-through and comprehensive it is, but I mean I don't know where that kind of speculation ends. It's like people who are convinced 9/11 is an inside job. It's a mental heuristic failure to think that one or two minor details explain absolutely everything. I mean, kids wear the same clothes all the time."
BRILLIANT!!
Here's a quick thought. The scene where Cobb opens the safe to reveal "Mal's" top, and then spins it, how do we know that is in fact Mal's top? What if Cobb did perform inception, but on himself? This would mean that Mal's was right in jumping off the building in order to wake up.
Also, there is a flashback to a very old looking Cobb and Mal, right around the time when he says "We spent 50 years together." Could it be possible that they spent 50 years together in reality, and that they decided to enter a dream state in order to stay together forever?
Just throwing some ideas out there, don't be too harsh on me if ("when" most likely) you find holes in my logic, haha.
Inception is very similar to " skepticism" studied by students of philosophy. this concept as described by Carneades,one of the believers of skepticism, is "Nothing can be known, not even this"..Descartes wrote in his famous book "Meditations" about skepticism.. Nolan ,i feel, is also stressing on that point.. we have no real way to distinguish between reality and dream..Nolan also talks about the "paradox":"Nothing can be known ,not even this" ( skepticism i mentioned above)i.e. if someone proclaims that everything is unreal…then everything includes this statement also… so their lies an inherent paradox. we have many possible interpretations of inception…my ideas about inception concurr with many given above :
1)Cobb in reality is in infinite sleep(say coma). The movie is the inception of an idea in his subconscious by which he thinks he could wake up his conscious.The idea comes from his desires to meet his wife/children whom he cannot communicate to as he is in infinite sleep. This idea spreads like a virus in his subconscious(as mentioned in the movie) i.e He conjures all the characters from his memory(both consciously and subconsciously grasped). After being so deeply involved in his dream world, one part of his subconscious(MAL) starts believing that this itself is the real world but other part(cobb himself) knows that it isn't. I also doubt that the point shown in memento is also highlighted here by nolan. How is a person in coma(infinite sleep) is supposed to pass time. Only thing he can do is think and create ideas(i.e inception) and let them develop like viruses. Also it is shown that he had already been into a limbo which i would relate to the coma situation. Every time the inception of the idea occurs he is encountered by the logical paradox and when he thinks he has woke up he realizes the opposite. I know this one may cause indigestion in your conscious but just b'coz nolan happened to make memento i can't deny this one
2)For me if 1 is not the case then, Mal is Cobb's totem for sure. It is the only way he could differentiate between his subconscious and conscious.Enough explanations for this are already given in above replies so i wouldnot explore this one.
3)
Ok, I'll try not to spam the shit out of this post, but here are a few not so profound questions/statements.
a) As part of my blog entry: Mal works as Cobb's antibodies. She prevents him from stealing Saito's ideas. She stabs Ariadne for breaking the rules. She shoots Fischer so Cobb won't do an inception on him like he did hers.
b) Why was there nobody supervising Mal and Cobb while they were dreaming together?
Because they were both still dreaming.
Another thought to consider: What if Saito is Mal, come back to free Cobb within the context of this heist. He uses Cobb and Mal's shared language ("Take a leap of faith") and insists on following Cobb into the dream. In limbo at the end, Cobb and Saito share a dialogue ("We have grown old together, but would like to be young again") that seems more appropriate for dialogue between Cobb and Mal. Perhaps the confrontation with Mal (as Saito and the projection of Cobb's subconscious) will lead Cobb back to reality, after he first dreams one more time (or returns to a higher layer with his kids for one last time). By spinning the top he indicates his willingness to accept that his reality is subverted, and if he returns to find it spinning he will kill himself to kick up to Mal's level.
I deeply suspect if you asked Chris Nolan whether its a dream or not he'd laugh…. there ISNT a right or wrong answer, the duration of the spin and the defining wobble at the end of the movie is done in such a way as to make both possibilities an outcome.From which, depending on your instant view, you can trace back evidence through the movie.
Indeed, the question is asked in the movie whether you know you're dreaming or not.
Nolan makes it for the audience to decide themselves, to make the movie what they choose it to be, which is what many directors try to do these days, although I dont subsribe to that way of thinking myself. If not done right, it can annoy rather than spark debate. I 'think' Inception gets the mix just about right.
However, for those who think the WHOLE MOVIE is a dream… surely any writer/director worth their salt would not conclude a movie with such a b-rate Dallas-esq idea.
Nice read. And a possible interpretation. Good analysis and vividly described. I had a similar discussion with my friend. Though not in depth but which touches few points stated above. It seems to converge at points whereas tangential to other views.
Link : http://karthickhariharan.blogspot.com/2010/07/discussion-on-inception.html
My summary is "There is just a fine line that divides dream and reality and the line is rarely obvious..To define a line and take a stand is left to you. But, This world may not be real. Neither the other one you believe it would be. That is the inception that the director does to his audience. Leap of faith is needed but it doesn't matter. !! "
I have raised few doubts in psychology at the end but I would not call them technical flaws because we can always assume that the instrument helps them circumvent the impossibility of being conscious and directed and achieving an objective while dreaming. Because, dreaming is projection of subconscious on to the conscious and here they dream in a shared space and consciously realize the job they got to do and act on subconscious of other person which is the vice versa of what human mind is capable of….. I convince that the funky machine does that trick…But still not sure…
In my opinion, Inception can be done only when the Experts are in real space and the subject is taken into his sub conscious space. Then by sending directives [Like Stop drinking, Start your own company] from the conscious mind of the experts to the now open subconscious of the subject, inception can be achieved.
Any suggestions to clarify my doubt?
Thanks
Karthick
There is an idea in Jung about representations of other people in your dreams. That each person you encounter is in fact an aspect of you. So the team Cobb establishes to go on this mission would all represent different parts of him. Adrianne is an arcitecht and her totem is the white queen who famously instructs Alice to believe in impossible things. She acts a guide or the friend. But he knows she'll come back after dreaming. She is exteremly and frankly unprofessionally agressive about delving into his subconscious. Also the only "memory" we see from her is one he shares. He is also an architect and Michael Caine's student, she also tries to show him the plans of the labryinth. Which he refuses to look at. His test for Adrienne is also interesting. She draws linear mazes and he immediately solves them, but once the maze is circular. He quickly gives up trying to solve it.