Wake Up! Let's Talk about 'Inception' – Here's My Interpretation
In order to perform inception you need imagination...
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?
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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.
The TOTEM is not his, is his wifes!
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
i do believe that the whole movie was doms dream and everyone was a subconsious projection . however i believe at the end scene when he finally saw his kids he had woken up . reason being is dom left his kids doing that exact same thing and using the time rule in the movie since he was in limbo he was down there for what could have been centuries but in actual time he wasonly gone for maybe 10 minutes . i think he started a dream and lost himself in it causing him not to wake up and dealing with his guilt finally set him free and that was his " kick " to wake up .
They never said someone else's totem couldn't work for you. He explained that you can't let someone else hold your totem because only you should "know" it/how it is balanced, that way nobody else can mess with you in the dream.
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.
i do agree the whole movie was cobbs dream . i just wonder at what point did he wake up if he ever did and at what point did he fall asleep . also if he did infact sleep again how or why did he get lost ? i also wonder if mal actually did wake up by falling of the building and cobb thot he killed her which means that cobb never woke . but if thats the case when did he see his children for the last time if he had been asleep for so long ? also he revealed he planted the idea in mals head that her reality wasnt real so they killed themselves in limbo to wake . so that means they had to wake or they never did wake and mal never killed herself . if thats the case where did he get the idea that she did ? im puzzled . but i am leaning more towards that the train did wake them both like falling off the building woke ariadne . and i do believe mal killed herself because she wasnt satified with her reality . i do believe he may have used the dream device to dream about mal and be with her since he was so guilty that he killed her and missed her so much . i also think the kids were the last thing he saw before he did sleep and that last chance he didnt take to call on them was infact mal calling them as she did when he confronted her in limbo . which makes me think his last memory of them was a memory from before mal died and it wasnt his last time he saw them either but that was the only memory he had left . i think he went to limbo and couldnt get hisself out . so he or his dad ( i think his dad because his dad happend to be there when he came home and just said go see your kids and walked off casually )came up with the idea to try inception on him in which planting the idea that he needed to see his children . and all of the characters are projections which all help him go deep in hisself to finally let g of his wife and the guilt he had . as for the scene with saito i think he connected with hisself on a deeper level in which set him free being his " kick " to reality . but i also still think he was dreaming up until he spun the top and when his children finally turned around . i also think his children was his totem all along . when he saw thier faces is when he knew he was finally in reality .
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.
The conclusion of the owner of the blog that Dom wakes up in reality in the end but dreams of seeing his children is quite unclear.My question 1.Where was he dreaming? 2.Did he really get rid of his guilty subconscious? Mal(Dom's guilty subconscious) repeatedly asks dom to still be with her,if dom was completely guilt ridden then mal should cease to exist but she still does exist.
How many levels Dom had to go down with Mal to actually live to become elders and wake up as youth? We see him only waking up ONE level with the train. He is dreaming the whole movie
My take on the movie was that it was not about a dream at all, but is full of metaphors depicting one man's struggle with madness (schizophrenia)caused by the guilt of his wife's suicide.
The levels/elevator were the different levels of his insanity – note that the Basement held Mal (also means "bad" in Latin) who continued to seduce him towards staying at that level with her. The other levels which he traveled in and out of held pieces of his remembered reality, and people – therapists, orderlies, nurses – who were part of his everyday life in the mental hospital (remember the line – "need to blow up the hospital")- where he was confined until his release (the Flight).
Some of the characters – Fischer and his father – were Dom's struggle to justify his relationship with his own father who had taken over his children and home after Dom was committed to the mental hospital. His father was real, and at one point tells Dom to come back to reality. The kids were real, but in Dom's madness, remained the same age as when his wife died.
At the end of the movie when Dom and Mal are in the Basement, Dom finally lets his wife die, and lets go of the guilt that has seduced him into madness. At that point, the "kicks" happen at all levels meaning that finally Dom has regained touch with reality (wakes up)so that he can go home and return to the real world and become mentally healthy.
Well this is just the whole point of the movie. To leave people decide for them self, dream or reality. In this movie there is no right answer because they have not presented enough information to conclude for our self.
Only thing i can conclude is that this is very good movie, although i like clear ends.
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.
My interpretation is that when Cob wakes up on the plane, at this point he is in reality. All of the other scenarios where part of a huge elaborate dream in which he worked through his real guilt associated with his wife's suicide. Whatever responsibility he really did have is actually inconsequential.
The Fischer plot was just Cob's subconscious working through someone else's similar anguish in order to tackle his own. This inception was for Cob, he created it and implanted it simultaneously. He didn't want to be an old man, alone, filled with regret and waiting to die. He knew that if he could never move beyond Mal's suicide, that this would be exactly how his life would have ended.
Many people want to rely on the totem as some kind of objective evidence that Cob was awake during these scenes, but we have to realize that the concept of the totem was created, created by Cob in his dream, no more real than that, and has no meaning outside of Cob's dream. Whether it actually falls or not in the final scene is perhaps a clever little mind game by the author, but does not sway my interpretation of the movie.
At the end of the movie, all of the passengers that sat on the plane where looking at Cob for no other reason than a symbolic one to let us viewer's know that Cob was actually the creator of his own dream. Many times in the dream, the supposed architect was stared at by projections. Using the movie's logic, one couldn't premeditate a dream because according to Cob, a dream is simultaneously created and perceived at the same time. Either this is a movie flaw, or the whole plot of the movie is impossible, and therefore most definately a dream. The only reason I sway from the interpretation of the movie as a total dream is that would be pointless. I believe his dream was to be therapeutic, and that he was working through so many things in order to come home and face his kids guilt free. He believed that he took their mother from them, his own quilt had sent him away on some insane mission until he could work through that quilt and regret.
It is unclear where the inception came from, was it from an outside force, something someone had uttered to him, or something he came up with on his own? However, his belief in inception, and his philosophical bent on reality perhaps had influenced his wife's suicide, but to what extent is unclear. Many people experience extreme quilt with a loss of loved one, and it is not always warranted.
"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.
The top falls, as all tops do, without an input of energy to keep it spinning. The top represents the BALANCE between sanity and insanity, showing that in order to stay upright, Dom will have to put energy into staying hooked in to reality.
hey david ..
i wnt to know wat if the top stops spinning
wat does dat indicate..
can u plzz tel me
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.
That is an excellent interpretation. It's, by far, the only comment I felt so compelled to reply to.
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
Good question! I think maybe it was just to help us THINK it MAY have been a dream. But I have decided it was NOT. Among other things, because "grandpa" talks to him.
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?
i personally thot the plane scene was a dream because i think the whole movie was doms dream and the other characters where projections . and if that theory is true in reality none of those people exsisted so they shouldnt have been on the plane or in the airport . i think dom may be in reality when he saw his kids faces but if thats true wheres the kick ? so my only other geuss is he is still dreaming but he was come to terms with his dream or reality and can live there in peace with both his dream and reality . which is why his kids turn around and they look to be wearing the same clothing and in the exact same position he remembers them being in .
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
best picture: the black swan
best director: christopher nolan
best actor: jesse eisenberg (the social network)
best supporting actress: i cant tell yet
best screenplay: christopher nolan
best score: inception
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.
Right on! Dom finally CHOSE to come back to reality from his state of madness. If you have ever read descriptions of, or known someone with schizophrenia, this movie will make perfect sense: the levels, balancing (the top)reality with created worlds and characters, the seduction to give up and stay insane, the fight to pull yourself out of it.
I would love to hear a psychiatrist's take on the movie!
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 agree with Cool, and I think the director meant cutting it there as just an artistic time to cut it, because you DO see it toppling. And the way spinning tops work mean once it starts toppling a little it can't fix itself and start spinning again. It does fall over, otherwise it wouldn't be a happy ending now would it?
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.
Peter – That was my interpretation exactly. This movie is full of metaphors similar to how a schizophrenic's mind is a maze of visions and characters. Perfect explanation!
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.
That's exactly what I thought (and said) as soon as the movie was over. "He's going to let us make up our own minds!" And then, "AND there could be a sequel!" :)
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.
ITA about The Matrix. It certaily had some similarites. Almost like a cross between it and Shutter Island. Inception just "kicked it up a notch". ;)
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.
Similar to another recent post, how could the whole thing be Cobb's dream when we see some things that he could not have seen? I'm thinking in particular of the father-son deathbed scene between Fischer senior and junior (which seemed to be an homage/allusion to Kubrick's 2001:A Space Odyssey). Since Cobb was on a lower level at the time and couldn't see that scene take place, it can't have been just a part of his dream or a part of an inception meant to convince him of anything, right? Why would Miles create this scene as part of an inception if Cobb were never to see it?????
I took a different approach to the ending. I like your interpretation as well though, and I think the awesomeness of this movie is in its many layers.
I think at the end, that he is in fact in reality. The kids being generally the same age can be explained by the fact that Dom may not have been gone that long in reality, but as far as dream-time is concerned, he was gone for nearly a lifetime, which explains his strong emotional desire to get back to them.
Also, I think the ending is meant to be ambiguous, and viewers have to decide if they accept or reject reality. Although, I think the meaning of the spinning totem at the end is very clear. The movie is constructed in a circular fashion, just like the totem. It ends where it begins and begins where it ends. I believe the totem does fall at the end because it is a signal for the audience to 'wake up.'
Also, the movie itself works as a dream for the audience. In the movie, it states that you never know how you got to a certain place in a dream. The beginning of the movie is exactly that experience for the audience, meaning, that at the beginning of the movie, we are thrown into this story without any background.
While I think the ensuing discussions about the 'meaning' of this movie are definitely interesting, I think those discussions are mirrors of the mazes and paradoxes Nolan creates in his movie. We can either circle around and around on whether Dom woke up or not, or we can decide that it doesn't matter, and go on living our lives. We can end the circular, endless cycle of debating reality, and instead live a life of direction and purpose (forming a linear line instead of a circular).
Just a couple of thoughts, glad to hear anyone else's thoughts. Bottom line, amazing movie, amazing achievement.
Good commentary! I like your thinking. It makes sense to me that Nolan wants the audience to share an experience parallel to Cobb's, including the dead ends and circular logic of the dream world. Perhaps Nolan even goes so far as to lead us into paradox via the end credits by showing two sets of actors for the children at different ages. I wouldn't be surprised if in spite of the credits the shot of the kids at the end uses the same actors as used in the shots of the kids throughout the film. Got to see this again soon!!!
There really isn't much of a point in just the ending being the dream, as stated by Brad. If the ending makes us question what came before, then what the ending really represents is that Cobb has been dreaming everything up.
The heist, the dream machine, the levels… it's all Cobb's psychoanalytical dream to help him get over the death (or perhaps leaving) of his wife. That pain is so deep that perhaps that alone was his reason for not confronting his children and living his own life. He blames himself for all of the events.
He is using this dream as a way of implanting an idea in his head… that he is not responsible for what happened and that it is time to move on. This implantation is not science fiction, like the supposed heist subplot. This is Cobb doing it, in reality, on his own. Everything is structured in a way to help him get over this issue.
He admits those things with Ariadne at the beach, when she first enters his dreams to see what he is hiding. Cobb tells her that these are memories and that they are kept here to be reworked.
By the end it becomes clear that the totems don't matter… it's entirely insignificant if the the thing topples because Cobb has been dreaming up everything the whole time.
And if we are to take anything away from the ending… his reality will come true for him if he wakes up feeling he's gotten over his hurdle.
I loved that this movie was open to interpritation at the end. That's the fun of it. My main question, however, is when Eams says "You mustn't be afraid to dream of something bigger my darling" and pulls out that huge gun to shoot at the transformer. If it was indeed possible to manipulate the dream in such a way why did the other characters not do this? Why didn't they create a bullet proof van instead of the shitty one they rode in? Or minipulate anything else in the film (besides the architect minipulating) That bothered me.
There are certainly some points in which the dream possibly could have been manipulated more, but you need to understand, the most important part of both extraction and inception is this: the dreamer cannot be aware that they are dreaming. They cannot manipulate the dream into whatever they want because they risk the dreamer realizing that they are asleep. Therefore, they can't do anything too crazy. Also, it appears that there are many rules to dreaming. Just like we seem to sometimes have our dreams out of our own control, so do the characters. It also appears to be a special skill that Eames has required to manipulate the dream the way he does. It is not as easy as it may appear to be. That is why they needed a special person to manipulate it the way he did.
I'm a sucker for happy endings or, at least, a final resolution even if it is sad. To me the ending is a reality: Dom is finally happy and I am happy. I wouldn't be watching the movie again because I don't want to start questioning my judgment about anything that happened in the movie.
Excellent movie and performances from everyone.
Here's a stupid question I have that continues to eat away at me. I've only seen it once so I'm sure this was pointed out at some point:
Why does Cobb's subconscious need to enter the dream world every time he enters? Wouldn't it be better for him to simply eneter the dream the way Ariadne and Eames do without their subconscious affecting it?
As we saw in the film, it is possible to simply enter a dream without your subconscious existing there, as Ariadne and other characters did many times in other dreams. However, whenever Dom enters a dream his subconscious and Mal are always there. There are also other times in which characters allow their subconscious to enter a dream. Why do they do that? Is it necessary for inception, extraction, or to transport to other levels of the dream? Is it supposed to be beneficial even though it only causes pain to Cobb? Does Cobb simply want his subconscious to enter just because he truly does want to see Mal? Like I said, I think this was pointed out but I can't remember. Can someone enlighten me?
I think it's just supposed to be that no one has much control of his or her subconsciousness (sub = below; conscious = first order thought, what we're aware of thinking). And it can control us. Since Cobb's guilt is so powerful, he finds it influencing his dreams regularly. The other characters aren't grappling with anything so powerful as Cobb's guilt, so we don't see many examples of their subconsciousness at play.
I think Dom is dreaming at the end. He killed Mal. Caine's character knew this and wanted to perform an inception on Dom so that he could live in a dream with his children. Fischer's inception was real, as it benefitted Saito. Saito needed someone to perform the inception after Dom failed in the beginning of the movie. I think Saito went to Michael Caine to enlist his help, but Caine only complied under the premise that he could use the inception as a distraction on Dom in order to perform his own inception changing Dom's perception on how his wife died. Caine also picked Ariadne as the Architect who was "smarter than Dom". I believe she had previous training with Caine, which is why she "picked it up faster than anyone else has". Also she didn't ask Dom if he killed his wife, because she already knew the answer to the question. The hotel room was destroyed in Dom's memories, hinting at a struggle. But Mal jumped from a window across the street later when he was recalling it. Hinting that an inception had been successful, possibly when Ariadne went to the basement of Dom's memories earlier in the movie. So I believe that when Dom left the airport with Caine, the rest of the team remained behind. The team could have then kicked back to reality leaving Dom to stay in his dream, and live happily with his children.
The part that threw me off a bit was when Cobb is telling how he performed inception on his wife (Mal) and it shows the scene where he goes into her safe and spins the top. Was his spinning/touching of her token of any importance? Or is it only significant in that he knew she locked away her only way to distinguish between dream and reality?
It was Cobb's totem all along. Mal stole it from Cobb.
Although the movie is intended to simultaneously support opposing interpretations, it was the surreal strangeness, fear, and violence of the Mombasa chase that drove me to reflect that the whole thing works well if it is all a dream, although that had not been my initial reaction. When I left the theater, the first thing I asked my son was, “The Mombasa chase scene was a dream, right?. He replied, “No. He was assembling his team then. It that was a dream, then the whole thing was a dream.” I thought, “How can that be?”
Depending on the interpretation, different scenes have different importance. Interpreted as reality, the Mombasa chase seems to have no function. It was brought about by Cobb’s former boss, whose prior mention was only just sufficient to set up the chase scene, and who is never mentioned again. Rather, the function of that chase would seem to be to help prod the unimaginative, such as myself, to realize that the whole movie can work as a dream.
I also agree with several other commenters that the customs scene was extraordinarily dreamlike, as was the homecoming. Although I would prefer to think that his wife is alive in the awake world while he remains in dream limbo, I will have to see the movie again to appraise more possibilities. The trashed apartment scene was certainly disturbing, with untoward implications.
I'm completely willing to accept that this movie has no definitive answer and trying to decipher a direct meaning is like trying to interpret song lyrics. I'm also willing to accept that Nolan probably doesn't even have a direct answer. However, of all the questions and ambiguity and interpretations that may or may not have been intended, three major questions stand out to me that I haven't been able to find answers to, that maybe someone reading through this can answer…
1) How did Dom and Mal fall into limbo in the first place? I remember Dom explaining the story of them being there, but does he mention how they fell into it? They're just lying on their living room floor for some reason when they wake up.
2) There are some major, major, major religious allegories here. Do those tie into anything or are they best ignored like the many inconsistencies of the dream/non-dream state?
3) What the hell was the deal with the first architect? Why was he tortured into revealing where Dom and Arthur were and then given to the corporation that they failed, who will then kill him (and why is this corporation going to kill them exactly, wouldn't it want them to try again)? Why weren't Dom or Arthur given over after they refuse to help? Wouldn't they need the architect if they're going to go into someone's mind? I know for the sake of plot all this had to happen, but really it seemed rather harsh/confusing. Or was Saite so unimpressed with him because he got the rug fibers wrong that the dude needed to die? The whole deal with him just seemed very off.
It does not describe how Dom and Mal entered limbo in the first place, only that they'd been experimenting with dreaming within a dream. Dom states that he pushed Mal to go further an deeper.
As for their first architect, Saito says that he tried to cut a deal as Dom and Arthur were preparing to flee Tokyo. Saito presumably is disgusted by his lack of honor so he takes the information about Dom's whereabouts and, once he finds him, turns the traitor over to the architect.
Remember that in the film, Saito is aware of the attempted inception. He's had training to avoid dream theft but he allows Dom to try as an "audition". Also, it's implied that one can have a shared dream without an architect. The purpose of the architect is to create a place that can be inhabited by the mark's subconscious. Good architects are able to structure these locations such that they provide a labyrinth in which to evade the mark's projections. So Dom and Arthur are buddies… while architects are somewhat disposable.
*turns the traitor over to the Cobol Corporation.
Ah, okay. I missed the line about the first architect cutting a deal. That makes more sense, and makes Saito seem less cutthroat. Thanks for clearing that up.
Still don't understand how they initially got into limbo though. But I suppose that is intentional.
There's just way too much going on here to fit into 2 and half hours. Almost seems like this would have made a great 10-episode TV show.
dom and mal kept dreaming within dreams…he explains this that they were studying dreams within dreams and he kept on wanting 2 go deeper and further…and eventually they wound up on the shore of their subconscious ….which we then find out was infact limbo.
Question – why was Mal on the opposite window ledge (i.e. how did she get there) when supposedly she was in the room with Cobb for the anniversary night? Was that a clue to us/Cobb that since she was on the wrong ledge that we/he should had realized that was a dream (like when the carpet was wrong with Saito?)
I kind of just assumed that it was a suite that had facing windows between two rooms haha
No, she had every intention of killing herself that night. Remember, she had 3 separate doctors declare her 'sane' ect, to ensure Dom would come with her. I assumed she booked a hotel room across the street so she could carry out her plan.
My 2 cents
1.The important thing is that the children look back. If you remember Cobb specifically tells Adriane this that he didn't call his children when he was leaving the country because he was afraid that he would then have a memory of them to live with and may not feel like going back that strongly.
2.That children do appear aged. Check the cast and crew section on imdb page of Inception, there are two sets of children mentioned with different ages. This is a point in favor of the fact that it was reality. Had it been a dream, the children wouldn't have aged as then cobb would have been reconstructed them from his previous memory.
3.Cobb tells his children while talking on the phone that he is sending some gifts through their grandfather. So he was expected to be in US.
4.That 'He has to protect his investment' also makes sense. Refer to the interview that i have posted of Dileep Rao. He has also explained this.
5.AFter his first meeting with Saito, he spins the top and it falls. So thats reality. And how could have Saito disrupted the spinning of the top. He just called out cobb to talk to him. And accidentally the top fell then as Cobb is startled. Plus if its a dream, Saito would have been a projection of Cobb's mind which would mean Cobb himself was instrumental in doing that.
6.Since Mal is dead, i don't think why can't Cobb adopt her totem. It had deep emotional connection and reminded him that he was stuck in limbo once for years.
7.Adriane's only job was to construct the mazes for each level and explain it to the dreamer. She was not even supposed to be on the plane and sharing that dream. Its only when she sees Cobb struggling with his sub-conscious(read Mal) that she volunteers to be a part of it or she insists that Cobb lets Arthur see what she had seen. It is then, that Cobb says get us another seat in the plane.
Here is my theory…
Dom is dreaming the entire movie. Dom desperately wants to go home and find his way out. But he can't. Regardless of whatever you believe about totems, a top doesn't spin forever in the real world.
It is stated by the other agents — which I believe are all just representations of various portions of Dom's own subconscious, since he is in fact dreaming the entire time — that Dom is the only one that has actually been in limbo. The implication by later scenes is that Dom's wife Mol was also in limbo, but I don't believe any of the other agents actually say that… only Dom talks about Mol also being in limbo.
Dom clearly believes that Mol was in limbo with him, but how did Dom and Mol enter limbo? That is the real question! One can only go into limbo when one dies in a dream but the body is physically prevented from waking; either by sedative or, presumably, physical impairment such as an accident or coma. My key, and very reaching, theory is that Dom was in an accident of some sort in the real world that prevents him from waking for the entire duration of the movie. The whole movie is about Dom's struggle to re-awaken and come out of limbo.
Saito clearly represents Miles *desire* to be able to "go home". However, Dom can't get home without satisfying Saito's demands. What is it that Saito demands? Saito demands an inception, a core change in belief that seems spontaneous to the one thinking it. The thinker can't know that their thoughts have been manipulated in any way, or else it all unfolds and no real change occurs. Essentially all of Dom's subconscious agents believe this inception is impossible and say so, but at some level Dom knows it is possible… although unlikely.
Saito also takes away one of Dom's agents, his "architect". The person who creates Dom's dream-world for him, since Dom himself cannot, or will not, consciously function as his own architect anymore. This fact is a restatement that Dom is in limbo. He no longer controls his own dreams, he requires another "person" to do this for him. The "architect" is simply an uncontrolled element of Dom's deepest psyche.
Dom turns to Miles, his father, to recommend a new architect in his "top-level," most rational dream state. Miles recommends Ariadne to Dom as the new architect. Miles states that Ariadne is an even more skilled architect than Dom ever was, and by implication a more skilled dream agent. Ariadne is the one planting the Inception. She is the one that explores Dom's deepest subconscious levels. She is the one present at the final pivotal moment where Dom makes the decision to leave his wife, Mol, behind. She made it look like it was Dom's idea, but really it was an inception planted by Ariadne at the behest of Miles.
Ariadne represents the real change: The Way Home. In Greek mythology, Ariadne was the one that helped Theseus defend himself by giving him a sword, and helped him find his way out of the Minotaur's labyrinth by giving him a ball of red fleece which she had spun. Ariadne is showing Dom the way home. She is his ball of thread, in the labyrinth of his own mind.
Dom tells Miles that being a dream agent and essentially an outlaw of sorts was all that Dom could ever do with the skills Miles had taught Dom. But what are these skills of which Dom speaks? Are they really the ability to do joint-dreaming? Along with the very dream-gimmicky suitcase of wires? Or is it simply the mental manipulation of one's thoughts and emotions, or the thoughts and emotions of others? Perhaps Miles is simply a skilled psychiatrist that raised a son who is very cognizant of his own emotions and subconscious thoughts, even when presented with wrestling his own thoughts and dreams in an imposed limbo.
Fischer as the target of an inception is really just Dom's subconscious reacting to an external influence, and it trying to warn Dom about his own father / son relationship. His subconscious is trying to tell him that it is his father, Miles, that is attempting an inception. In my own — admittedly highly subjective — theory, this external influence isn't a real joint-dreaming session. Such joint-dreaming sessions are part of Dom's dream-world fantasy. Rather the external influence is simply Miles trying to reach Dom in the physical world via physical contact and reassuring communication. Miles is desperately trying to reach through to Dom. Dom's subconscious never portrays Miles in any negative light, simply as a helpful person. Miles even says "come back to reality" directly to Dom, at one point, as I recall.
But why is Dom's subconscious presenting Miles as the one behind the inception, through the fiction of Fischer? Especially if Miles is simply speaking reassuring words to a son, who has undergone an accident leaving him in mental limbo? It is because a part of Dom doesn't want to come out his limbo. This part of him is Mol, and is *because* of Mol.
It is stated several times that a successful inception is dependent upon a core relationship and the deepest emotion. Dom's relationship with his wife is rooted in grief. Ostensibly grief at her commiting suicide, but that was just a dream level away from their — or really his — own limbo. How did they ever get out of limbo? As I believe, they didn't; or, more precisely, he didn't. Dom is still in limbo the entire movie. Dom's grief regarding Mol is that at his core, he knows that she is gone, that they can't grow old together as he promised, and that he has to let her go. In my hypothesis, Mol died in the accident that left Dom in a coma. Dom has to accept that in order to regain consciousness or else his deepest psyche would happily prefer to stay in limbo forever with Mol. Miles' reassuring words require an inception in Dom… The Inception to let go of Mol, and of all the grief, and finally come home.
But Dom doesn't come home yet. He is still under some impairment that keeps him in the dream. But he has accepted the idea of letting go of Mol, of Miles as a caretaker and helper for him and his children, and of the possibility of finally coming home and seeing his real children; for which he couldn't even previously let himself picture their faces, as to do so would put his grief and desire to see them in direct conflict with his grief and desire to continue to see Mol.
That was REALLY deep, Alec!
There are a couple of things that i still find confusing.
1) i don't believe that there can be a "kick" at the limbo level. the limbo level is the deepest they go. a "kick" as defined in the movie, happens at the level above the dream level. (in reality if you are dreaming 1 level deep, in level 1 if you are dreaming 2 levels deep.)
2) i don't like the term "ride the kick." I know it was used in the movie. But for discussion purposes i think it is better to think of it as 2 events that happen at the same time. A kick in the 2nd deepest level bring you into the 2nd deepest level from the most deep level of dreaming, and another kick at the next higher level brings you to that level. So if a person is dreaming 3 levels deep, a kick at level 2 would bring him to level 2 and a simultaneous kick at level 1 would bring him to level 1. But they are still 2 independent events, that just happen at the same time so the person perceives it as going from level 3 to level 1 ("riding the kick" as that term is used in the movie).
3) dying is not a kick. it is the way to go up a level, assuming that you are not under sedation in the next higher level.
4) leaping in the deepest level of the dream is not a kick (see #1 and #3).
5) so how do fisher and the architect wake up? The same way Cobb and Mal woke up from limbo? They kill themselves in limbo and are not under heavy sedation at the next highest level OR is it the kick of the platform falling in the snow level? either one of those events would wake them up. So I think this needs to be considered in the article above.
6) the article says that Cobb goes into limbo when he dies in the van. However in the movie it seems he went into limbo at the same time as the Architect, which would be before Seito dies and goes into limbo. We have to assume that is limbo, because that is where fisher is, and Fisher dies in the dream. (that is how Mal "kidnapped" him) – another term "kidnapped" that, although used in the movie, i think is counterproductive for discussion. She killed him in the dream.
Other than that, very nice discussion article.
also, why doesn't arthur wake up when the van starts falling? that would be a kick for him.
Excellent article Brad……….. & I totally agree with you regarding the ending. According to my opinion the Nolan only left for us in the end to decide either it was a Dream or Reality.
If we dig more deeper in the Story more Assumptions will arrive, even some are comparing it to the SHUTTER ISLAND as the whole Plot is to cure COBB from mental illness which I absolutely deny.
Also I would like to say that In the End even COBB did not care about Totem & moved on to see his children which means at last he find his guilt is gone & he find his happiness…
I think chris nolan intends to place the notion (inception) in his audience's minds that we need to be aware of our own self-delusions and constructs that prevent us from analyzing the motives behind our actions and effectively changing the course of our lives. Aren't we all caught in the circular maze of our own minds…actions…experiences? Doesn't it seem like the very same characters keep showing up in our lives, even though they look different and come from different backgrounds? The spriral maze that is mind can give you vertigo…
I've gone back and watched the movie a 2nd time. I believe Dom's totem is his wedding ring, he wears it in dreams, and does not have it on during reality. Now you would think this would be an easy way for the viewer to tell whether the end scene was reality, but Dom so cleverly disguises his left hand in every scene which is shot after waking up on the plane. It all comes down to how you perceive the last scene. If you believe the audible sound of the top toppling, then the entire move is real. If not the movie is busted wide open for interpretation, and there's no Correct answer as to what the movie is or isn't.
As I posted earlier in this forum, I believe the last scene is a dream, created by Dom from memory. He even mentions that creating dreams from memory is the easiest way to lose sight of what's reality. Back to the ring, When he recalls his memories of the night in the hotel he's wearing the ring. So the question becomes, did he wear his ring in reality prior to Mol dying, or did he ever wear his wedding ring in reality at all. If he only wore his wedding ring during dreams all along, then Mol jumping from the balcony was a dream. Which I believe is the inception, placed into him at some point by Ariadne. I've explained my Double Inception theory in a previous post yesterday. I'm satisfied with this theory, and will more than likely remain with it; unless there are further revelations regarding the movie. Sweet Dreams!
Everyone who seems to be a little bit confused after watching Inception for the first time , I recommend to check this Chart :
http://www.beyondhollywood.com/confused-by-inception-heres-a-diagram-of-the-5-levels-of-inception/
The way the last scene portrays it, you have to go out and say it is a dream. Problem is though that, IF he has been dreaming almost the whole time, then there are some things that don't make sense.
IN ALL THE DREAMS, THE PROJECTIONS DON'T SPEAK TO ANYONE. They just kind of do their own thing. So to say that the Page girl, and all the henchmen and everyone is projection wouldn't make sense in the Long Run as to why they can talk to each other and change things and do whatever when the rest of the time all we see is projections doing whatever other than ATTACKING the thing that is changing and affecting the dream.
Now, I was talking about this in another site, which I think is an interesting and nice way to look at it in that, you could just say, as I think it was stated in the article as, "WHO CARES!?" Because LEO made peace with the whole WIFE THING and now, however he is doing it, is with his kids.
I say it has to be him home since it shows everyone including FISHER at the airport, and since the whole objective was to plant the idea, it wouldn't make sense that LEO would wake all the way up and his projection is still there and he was planting an idea into his own mind. His wife wasn't a projection and he planted an idea in there, so THE PERSON in which you are planting an idea, IT SEEMS LIKE, has to actually exist.
But regardless, the movie was really good and to listen to a theatre full of people watch this movie and at the last scene litterally holder their breathe and start quietly shouting at the top "FALL, FALL, FALL!" Then the movie was worth it and it worked out well.
NOLAN IS AN AWESOME DIRECTOR, I idelize that. Wanna make fun movies like this someday.
Dream or Reality!? THAT IS THE QUESTION.
To start with, a big Thanks to Nolan who had come up with this novel idea or may be some one incepted into his mind.But nevertheless the movie is Awesome and i was awestuck while watching it. In my opinion the whole movie is shown to be Cobb's dream and his entire team that he created was his'projections' and Saito as his own subconcious friend who helped him everywhere.Cobb never came out of the LIMBO and he never planted anything in Fishers mind but his own.While in LIMBO he wanted to see his children faces again but couldnot see it because of the guilt that he had while involving Mel in this.Actually its the Cobb's Totem that Mal has put in the safe locker.So while in LIMBO he created a plan through his subconcious friend Saito to plant an idea in his own mind to free himself of the guilt through 4 level dreaming.In the end when he is able to convince himself,he went to see his kids and was able to meet them.Also the totem was shown to be revolving and not fall down making it clear that its the DREAM.
The entire film is the Escher drawing of the stairs committed to celluloid. Once you get to the top of the stairs, you either start at the bottom again, or realize the entire thing was a dream and discover the paradox.
BTW- How many different versions of the two kids in the yard do we actually see? I know there's the one where he leaves after Mal dies… isn't there another where Mal is alive and calls them to dinner? There's so much parallel structure in this that if you don't watch it multiple times, it all begins to bleed together (rather like a dream, methinks).
Also: has anyone attempted to take all the flashback sequences and put them in some chronological order?
Cobb-Was a victim of inception the whole movie. The token seemed a peculiar item to choose. one more routed to Saito (another projection)
If Saito was the true patron trying to extract from the "Heir" he would carry a consistent age to Cobb throughout. Symbolizing he is older or younger… My guess is that Cobb was already a dying old man when met with the proposition. And someone wanted to extract information from Cobb the real heir.Robert and Maurice Fischer are Cobb's security to defend the relationship he and his father had. And Miles is a more compassionate projection of his father getting him involved in the business of inception…
Cobb went through at least three dreams. The first he felt he was in control, the second he surrendered to Saito to give the true client the information he needs. I feel like Miles was a true projection of Cobb's father physically, as Ariadne is a projection of Cobb's daughter, which he wouldn't know for being induced into the sleep the better part of his life. It would explain her immediate connection
to the concept; And her ability to have Cobb's strengths and none of his weaknesses. Along with his general interest in mind.
The line that gave meaning to the ending for me-
Arthur-"How do you make a kick without gravity?" The top only toppled when Cobb "believed" it was reality.
The top did not topple, presenting Cobb's ending it was a projection so, the person running the dream stealing in my opinion was…
Arthur. He was the only person other than Ariadne, who would carry similar qualities to Cobb(Token). In the beginning Arthur probed Cobb's weakness, and the only other person educated on the crew concerning Mal was Arthur.
I guessed Ariadne's role as Miles preludes that Cobb wouldn't know his children if he saw them; Thus the constant projection of them as children. Where their faces were only shown when he induced permanently in the end. While the real projection is essentially foreign to him. He dreams of not missing a moment, and get's what he asked for, but under false pretenses. Which is of no difference to him.
Conveniently finding someone who is a better architect than him within the dream… Arthur uses Cobb's weakness against him, an already known projection(MAL),The Token(Initial Inception), The Occupation of Inception, while being in complete control of everyone's dream states.He uses steadily disclosed information to gain control. Thus the premise of feeling he needs to steal the token; It was implanted by Arthur, not Mal. What better way to breach security than to act as the object closest? The moment Saito probed the opportunity(Through Arthur's Inception) he was able to determine the next phase of the dream.
Themes: Discontent with work, Discontent with dream, Haunting emotions, hiding disturbing emotions, using emotion against your adversary. The power of imagining/dreaming a path, The power in stealing an idea or concept. trickery, theivery
Another belief.. on side note. This is better than any reel for Joseph Gordan Levitt to be The Riddler in the next Batman… and may give consideration to Ellen Page down the line as a Harley Quinn, once they find a way around the Joker obstruction.
I just saw the movie and I don't know if this was mentioned or not due to the fact that I haven't read the comments.
The thing that throws that Cobbs is in reality to me is that he never seen his kids face (at least the audience hasn't) therefore there's no way that he knows
1. If they aged or not
2. We the audience never got to see them therefore WE wouldn't know if they aged or not.
3.If i'm not mistaken, we don't hear the kids talk in the end therefore we don't know their voices as when Cobbs received the phone call.
I need to see the movie again as it was left extremely open when the Totem was spinning and we don't know if it stayed or fell. This was a huge cliffhanger and I loved it! I took a lot of your thoughts into consideration but I still can't make up my mind! ARGHHH smart summer blockbusters!
Can somebody please explain me how Cobb's wife (Mal) dies and actually when does she die. I am not able to grasp this. Some of my friends argue that she dies in reality, some argue, that she died with that train thing, some argue, argue that she died in higher levels of dream.. there are just too many interpretations. could someone explain me the scenes as well.. m confused..
death by train- limbo, an attempt to get back to reality
death in hotel suite- from dom's point of view, therefor the point of view of the movie- she is dellusional, and doesn't believe she's in reality, therefore kills herself to wake up.
All in all i can conclude two points from the movie that nolan wanted to show
1) we can never differentiate reality and dream in real life
2) if a person wants to live unreal life or is happy in dream state then there is no problem(same as what the character cyber did in matrix….or more appropriately what we may be doing in real life)
Great post. One thing though, Saito aged so much more in limbo because he died 5 minutes before Cobb decided to go to Limbo… and 5 minutes in level 3 would be like 40 years in level 4 (or level 5 if you know what I mean)
I am in the 'Mol is still alive' camp
Mol is in reality with the kids and Cobb is lost. Miles sets up a team to do an inception on Cobb so that he can make the decision to wake up under his own influence to do so. The characters in the movie represent the archetypal representations of the subconscious.
Remember when Cobb and Mol in limbo together, and they have a train that attempts to wake them up? When he's explaining how they got there, he says they had to 'dream within a dream' to get there, so the train – wouldn't that have only kicked them up one level and not to reality? By jumping off the building she kicked herself back up another level – perhaps to a level where she and miles can assemble the team to do inception on cobb so he can decide to kick himself back to up a level where he can remember he's still dreaming and eventually return to reality by waking up.
I also think his totem's behaviour isn't clear cut since it wasn't his… I think because it was Mol's originally he can project whether or not he feels he is dreaming or not, and as such the totem projection either falls or stays up.
I think i'm just rambling now! I just saw the movie today and wanted to get my thoughts down. Possibly best movie I've seen in 20 years.
okay, I've read this "Mal is actually alive" theory about a gazillion times and it's all fine and dandy but… Wouldn't he know? I mean, he does know all the rules, wouldn't he know that death in limbo doesn't kick you back to reality, only to a previous level?
Also… Everything was a dream except for the last scene. The top wobbles. The whole point of incepting Fischer was a rouse, to plant an inception in Cobb's head that he DID grow old with Mal, therefore relieving him of his guilt. Michael Caine paid Saito (and team) to plant the inception in Cobb's head (the the quick flash of them being old together was the inception) And now Cobb can finally go home and see his kids. If that last scene is a dream as well, it just shows that maybe there is no real reality. Who knows, maybe this is all a dream. I'm going to bed.
The circular drawing with arrows split by the line drawn by Cobb to explain the concept to Ariadne grabbed my attention as I grabbed my girlfriends arm and pointed at the screen, saying "tattoo!!!".
I've searched the internet for a while, assuming I must be crazy or lucky, to see if anyone else had seen what I thought I had. In the airport, in customs, the stamp in the passport seemed instantly recognizable as that same drawing. That drawing should have no business in any reality except for one in which it was used as an explanation.
Upon reading all of the amazing comments above (you bastards blew my mind and have me all confused now, thanks!)… I think that the airport MUST have been a dream. A sly nod of acceptance, perhaps, that although Cobb knows that he is dreaming, he finally feels comfortable allowing himself to be the architect of his own dreams again.
I also think that the entire movie existed on dream level 0.5, mostly due to Miles insistence that Cobb come back to reality. Miles also introduced Cobb to Ariadne, who both constructed the maze and created the escape. I love the idea that Ariadne and possibly even Fisher Jr. are both really Cobb's children, kept alive in a dream but only remembered as faceless never aging kids playing in the grass.
Seeing Ariadne create her totem (the white queen), I was worried that this would be the 50th movie to end with the line "Checkmate". Thankfully, that didn't happen, but I never remember her needing to check her reality, or use the totem. Was it just symbolic of the most nimble piece on the chessboard, manipulating the pawns and chasing the king until he was forced into stalemate, to lie down on the train tracks? What if Ariadne is actually Mal?
Think about the conversation between Mal and Ariadne, and then imagine either of them being a projection, a forgery, or a dreamer. My current favorite idea is that Cobb and Mal grew old together in real life, and then dreamed their way to limbo to life as young lovers, together. So if Ariadne (forged or not) was a potentially younger version of Mal confronting a subconscious projection of Mal as seen by a dreamer, she would certainly act as the antibodies to flush the paradox out.
Also, I like the idea that most of the assembled team including Saito were constructs of Cobb's mind, an inception placed by Miles to free up his own guilt for what he has done with his creation. Saito in a way acts as Cobb's totem, with their shared repetition of old men with regrets, waiting to die alone.
I certainly have to go back and check out the wedding ring totem theory, as well as to get a closer look at the Fisher picture (I thought there was something off about it but I didn't fully catch it). I haven't seen anyone touch on this yet either, but do you think the numbers that unlock Fisher Jr's "basement" are symbolic or representative of something? It can't be coincidence that in Nolan's first movie, "Following", there is a character named Cobb who breaks into homes and states that "everyone has a box", a collection of personal mementos, that he shakes up just to let their owner know they are no longer sacred and unseen.
In Mumbassa, what did he say? That those people came to wake up, because their dream had become their reality? Who are you to judge? That seems very telling (if remembered properly, anyway).
This is getting long. Agh. In the scene where Mal jumps, it really did look more like a mirrored reflection of the same room behind her. In much the same way Ariadne created the mirrored endless reflections, what if that was an early signal from Ariadne to Cobb that he was still dreaming (and not just dreaming in the sense of teaching her how to be the architect). The parallels between Cobb's personal elevator and the zero gravity elevator seem to also mirror that possibility.
Okay! Have at me!
You and I agree on:
1.Miles, Ariadne as projections.
a. I go a step further believing Ariadne is his daughter, as Miles probes Cobb wouldn't know his daughter if he saw her. I believe this info is probed from him.In the first sequence. She also has all of Cobb's gifts with none of the baggage.
2. The team was all a projection, except one working inside the team…
a.My guess is Arthur/He carried a totem and knew of Mal. He also was in control of every inducement, and waking.He was the only one taking advantage of the paradox as well. An architectural design of continuity. Keep Cobb confused.Wondering what is true? As he is entering the dream states.
b.The moment Cobb took the job, he went to another dream state,
c.Saito; a pawn probed enough information to find an extraction strategy. Including his children from the beach. He aged to Cobb's real age. Saito is an image from Cobb's life, A man who has been rivaling business with.
d.I believe Robert and Maurice Fischer are security projections of Cobb and his father's real relationships. Their true relationship is revealed, Cobb is already a dying old man when met by Saito, and they were trying to extract info from him the whole film, while only really promising him limbo. Why else would Saito question inceptions possibilities and initiate inception? The dream tricks him into believing he is the master of this practice, when really he is the victim… The true Paradox…
wat u told sir, corresponds to my views…wat i thot was that (after multiple trials of formulation nd interpretation) nolan actually doesnt want to show the top spinning on or stopping…in fact he tries to show both…as u told, the fischer inception went succesful nd he can return home wid the help of saito after he wakes up…nd again he cud ultimately chnge that particular floor of his "prison of memories" where he tries to see his children's faces one more tym but cannot…(he always said that the memories that he had accumulated in that elevator thing where those he wanted to change)…in the last part he can actually see their faces, suggesting he cud change that floor…actually these are the things that the director tries to suggest, i think by the dual state of the totem…but in the cinema itself, in the last part, he shows that he is dreaming…because by all the things that are shown frm the part of the plane, correspond to a dream…nd as u said, he can dream once more widout the dream machine, all by himself, is also true…but one thing that u said, that the dream starts from after the plane, i dont think that happened…i think it started frm the point he woke up in the plane…the cause of this is – (wat i think) – after saito dyin in the 3rd level nd goin into the limbo nd then cobb following him by dyin in the first level, they are in saito's portion of the limbo…for that they must be shared dreaming, that means they shud hav that drug thing injected into them continuously…otherwise u cannot be shared dreaming, rght???but after shooting each other when they wake up in the plane, it is shown that nothing is plugged into saito's or cobb's hands nd no drug is being injected…so how did they share the limbo , i.e. how did they perform the shared dreaming??? so i think the plane part is also included into the last dream you told…as they die in the limbo by killing each other, by that time i think the sedative hasn't fully weared off (or it mayb sumthing else), nd supposing that, cobb went on to dream all by himself (which he can ultimately perform after so many years)…nd he's dreaming that they woke up nd saito has fixed the immigration for him, nd he cud go home, nd see his children's faces after so long a tym…!!!
nd anoder thing…if they all wake up at the same tym in the plane then fischer will see the dream machine nd he'll alwys suspect tht sum tampering had been goin on in his mind…wat i think is, when they were waiting at the shore to be woken up by the sedative wearing off, one of them (mayb arthur, the point man) is sedated less so that he can go back to the plane earlier nd remove the dream machine plugged into their hands…thus the shared dreaming is stopped nd everyone is on their own, waitin for the sedative to wear off, nd then they will wake up…before he has removed the machine from their hands, cobb had brought saito back frm the limbo, and after tht when the machine was removed, nd every1 was on their own waiting for the sedative to wear off – then is the tym when cobb started dreaming the part shown frm the plane…u can also think that it was not arthur who came back earlier, but the waitress in the plane itself (who was on their side) had been taught to do so (i think this wud be more like it)…one more evidence that the plane part was his dream is that, the waitress told only 20 mins left to land…how can 20 mins be left in a 10 hr long flight considering the time in the dream level exponentially slowers down…
after all discussions, this is a thinking man's masterpiece open to interpretations by every1, so ne1 thinking sumthng else, is off course obvious nd encouraged…its just like a puzzle wid many solutions or an n-th order eqn wid many soutions…u choose wat solution u like to choose…i chose this thory after quite some brain labour nd ultimately happy wid that…bt still i'm waitin for nolan himself to say his version or interpretation…:P :D
Just a thought…Another clue about how much time has passed for cobb is what we are shown in the scenes with mal and the kids. Mal is from another time…looks like 1940s era hairdo, clothes, and decor in the hotel room. Also, as cobb shows ariadne the places they lived from their past, they are all "out of time" with the modern era (much older). The scenes of his home with the kids are purposely yellowed to show the passage of time…the light is very golden, the dark wood paneling of the house and its decor also looks like something from the 1940s. Both times, the things on the kitchen table are supposed to evoke memories of a long-ago childhood…wooden rolling pin, pie-making ingredients, and watercolor paints for the kids. Even Mal's totem, the spinning top, is reminiscent of a toy from the early 20th century, perhaps a token from a game such as monopoly. The feeling is very much one of "going home", the way one can only go to a long-ago home in memories and dreams. These things are in stark contrast to the rest of the movies.
There are some other time clues, but they are more subtle. The whole snowy mountain fortress scene feels like it's out of a james bond movie from the 1960s or 1970s…it was weird how I felt like I was suddenly watching a movie from that time. I think nolan did that on purpose, using a contemporary iconic movie image to suggest time. The same kind of thing happened with the scenes of saito in his native country (japan?)…the classic image of him sitting on the floor in his tatami room made me thing of japan before world war II. I think nolan used these images as clues to the audience about cobb's time issues….
When Fischer wakes up in the plane wouldn't he realize or recognize that the people in first class were the people invading his dream?
I've been reading this for about an hour, and I got about 2% of the way through all these posts, so I'm just going to throw this out there to see what comes back. I'm not sure if it has already been addressed or not…
What is the meaning of the scene where Cobb tells Mal that they DID grow old together (they are shown holding hands as seniors)? And where does this fit into the story?
Didn't they kill themselves on the train tracks when they were younger? Does he keep living different lives in Limbo?
I can't remember the timing exactly but it just seemed odd to me that they were young the whole movie except for that one scene. (and Cobb was also old in the photo apparently, which I didn't notice, any link between that old Cobb looking guy and the senior citizen Cobb?)
PLEASE REPLY TO THIS ONE SO IT WILL ALERT MY EMAIL!!!
I've been reading this for about an hour, and I got about 2% of the way through all these posts, so I'm just going to throw this out there to see what comes back. I'm not sure if it has already been addressed or not…
What is the meaning of the scene where Cobb tells Mal that they DID grow old together (they are shown holding hands as seniors)? And where does this fit into the story?
Didn't they kill themselves on the train tracks when they were younger? Does he keep living different lives in Limbo?
I can't remember the timing exactly but it just seemed odd to me that they were young the whole movie except for that one scene. (and Cobb was also old in the photo apparently, which I didn't notice, any link between that old Cobb looking guy and the senior citizen Cobb?)
I believe that the whole plot to plant an inception in Fischer's mind was really a rouse to plant an inception in Cobb's mind. And that inception was the idea that he DID grow old with his wife, therefore he would believe that he fulfilled the promise to his wife, thus allowing him to get over his guilt and go home to see his kids. I think everything was a dream up until that last scene. Michael Caine's character hired this team to help plant this idea in his head. And that's why it was a quick flash of the old couple walking down the street, coinciding with Cobb finally getting over the guilt of killing his wife.
I agree with this for the most part, but the question now is – who planted the idea that they did grow old together? Can you recall a scene or conversation?
How did he come to that conclusion?
I do not agree with those that say that Ariadne is a projection – I think she is a real person working from dream level 1, (as well as Arthur), someone who joined his original dream where he got lost in the first place, and planted by his father, Miles. My reason for saying this is the scene where Ariadne sees Cobb in a dream state (his nightly ritual) and goes and plugs herself in.
In answering my own question – perhaps these one-on-one sessions where Cobb is on his own is when they actually start to plant the inception? Perhaps it was Araidne that planted the idea when she visited Cobb's memories.
I also don't think he was in reality at the end – I think waking up in the plane returned him to his first dream state – but now he realises he's dreaming. This airport customs symbolizes to me the break down of the barrier holding him back from waking up (his wife dying and the guilt associated).
I think the final scene is of him dreaming naturally, perhaps days, months, or years later, dreaming of the day he came home to see his kids for the first time after the whole ordeal.
I think that Cobb never woke up and that the ending is him stuck in limbo at a new level.
When Saito offers Cobb the chance to go back home if he takes the job (reality) Cobb goes to Paris to see Miles and asks for a new architect. Miles then suggests Ariadne and as we see later in their first shared dreams she learns the game really fast. Maybe too fast.
I think Miles has trained Ariadne and when Cobb comes he asks her help to get Cobb "back to reality". Get over the guilt and accept that he needs to stop trying to fix everything and get back home.
That is why Ariadne is so interested in Cobb's mental status, his subconscious, joins his dream and goes to the B level in the elevator, to understand how Cobb's mind is working and help him. She guides him throughout the film and tries to help him let him shake of the guilt, to let go, and he does.
So while the whole business of planting the inception in Fischer's mind does happen, Ariadne is also in a way planting an inception in Cobb's mind, that he did grow old with Mal, he did fulfill his promise and can now let the guilt go.
In the end, everyone wakes up, has fulfilled their mission with Saito and when Cobb wakes up in the plane, perhaps he has fallen into another level, a level where everything goes the way he hoped. Saito makes one phone call 10 minutes before landing and all is good and Miles is at the airport to pick him up, kids look the same and grandma is not there, this all is a dream. It's just too good to be true, way to easy and way to unlike Nolan with such a happy ending. Cobb is now in limbo where he will spend the rest of his life there and grow old, but without anger and guilt and be happy. In reality he never wakes up.
I will need to see the film one more time beacuse as always with Nolan's films each viewing is a different experience, and then I might change what I believe. But for now this is how I see the ending of this fantastic film.
So I pretty much agree with you Brad, that it is not reality, but I disagree with the real dream idea. I think it is a deeper level, but as with all great art, it is always open to different interpretations so that the viewer can make it his own experience.
Can someone clear this up for me? I'm not sure if I was seeing things, but near the end after the van hits the water Fischer is talking with the forger on the riverbank. However, I saw the forger still disguised as Browning, but when the scene cuts back the forger is no longer disguised and looks like himself, but Fischer doesn't appear to be surprised. If this is true it would seem Fischer would be in on the whole plan and thus it was all about planting an inception in Cobb…or maybe I am crazy??
We see the forger, because we see the conclusion of the inception. To Fischer, however, the forger is still one of his projections, so he still sees and is therefore talking to, his projection of Browning.
It's not even a cut scene – the camera rotates around Fischer. When Browning is in front of Fischer, it's Browning, but then the person disappears behind Fischer's head and when the camera comes around a little more, we see it's actually Eames. It's a little similar to the scene in the elevator where in the reflections, we see that the person Saito is facing is both the blond woman and Eames.
Very tricky stuff.
The only problem with the arguement that he is dreaming, is why wouldn't mel do somthing to wake him up? during the movie sudden jolts in reality woke people up. they had a name for it that i cant remember. Also he would be older if he was dreaming, time goes much faster in a dream, yes. But he was roughly the same age he fell asleep, and if he was dreaming long enough to grow old, when they got hit by the train he wouldve aged more.
Because Dom is in Limbo time is passing much more slowly for him. Maybe only minutes have passed for Mal and she just hasn't had the time to wake him up yet?
When Dom and Mal were in Limbo and he planted the idea that they had to kill themselves to "wake up" from the dream…they woke up and were lying on the floor of their living room but neither of them was connected to a dream machine. If they were really away wouldn't they have been connected to the machine?
I'm beginning to think that Mal was right when she jumped off of the building and Dom stayed behind in Limbo where he's been the entire time.
If you reach a certain level of conciousness, is it possible to control your totem? You can control so many other aspects of the dream world…why not the totem?
If Dom was deep enough in Limbo isn't it possible that when Mal jumped off of the building she really just kicked herself up to another level of their dream and that once she finds her way back to reality only minutes would have passed since she left Dom which is why she hasn't had a chance to wake him yet?
Hmmmm…there are just too many possibilities.
I cant figure out something. When Cobb is explaining how he grew old with Mal in limbo, why are they young when they kill themselves on the train tracks in limbo? AND, if you kill yourself in a dream level, do you not just sink further into that dream? Why does killing yourself in limbo wake you up, whilst on all other levels it sends you deeper?
Maybe Dom never left his house at all…that's why the children look the same. From the moment he sees them run off in the backyard…he's dreaming and when he wakes…he's really right back where he started.
One interpretation me and my friends were debating I find to be very interesting. Since you cant share totems, as stated, what was Cobbs actual totem (Since the spool thing was his wifes)? I believe it to be the faces of his kids. When he sees the the faces, he finally knows that he is no longer dreaming.
I dont know if this is true, but its one way to look at it.
i think the entire movie was Cobb's self-inception; planting the idea that he is dreaming. The end could be thought of as a failure of the inception because he is still dreaming but believes it is reality. The viewer is left to wonder if that's actually a bad thing because at least he is happy.
I also think its interesting that the entire process of dream sharing using some mysterious compound is not well explained, which suggests that it is merely a tool in Cobb's dream and not actually possible in reality.
just an added thought; maybe when the guy who employed Cobb said the job would send him 'home' he meant mentally rather than physically, as in the job would get Cobb out of his dream state.
I don't know if this was mentioned already. When Cobb and Saito wake up on the plane, I don't recall them still being hooked up to the machine. Additionally, with everyone else already awake, if they were still hooked up it would have probably tipped off Fisher to what really happened.
If they were no longer attached to the machine, then how did they share limbo and both wake up at the same time from the kick?
I keep mulling over this. If they were still hooked up, Fisher would have noticed after having woken up first. If they weren't, how did they share limbo? This leads me to believe that Cobb is dreaming.
I totally agree. Cobb just wakes up without any wires attached to him and neither was anybody else. I think Cobb was dreaming Saito made the call. From the point Cobb awoke from the plane the rest of the movie has to be a dream.
It is essentially impossible for all time dreaming theory to exist, which is that Cobb was in fact dreaming the entire thing after he went down to the basement of Yusef's shop and tested out the sedative. This is not possible. From what we know about dreams, all the people that populate your dreams that are not connected to you through the dream machine are merely projections of your sub-conscious. Well, since these people are merely projections of Cobb's subconsious and they are not real people it would be impossible for him to enter his team-mates dreams through the dream machine, because they are not real people, they are just projections of his sub-conscious! Therefore that theory should not even be considered.
Paradox ahah
yes, I'm half pt half brit, lived in Lisbon my whole life
I know I'm late, but I just saw the movie… Brad, I think you are wrong in one thing only, because everything else was spot on.
The message is that reality is relative and what we believe is fantasy is only fantasy because we compare it to the reality we have chosen to believe. The whole plot and story occurred inside what Dom considered his reality and thus he considered everything beyond that (the dreams) to be fantasy. There is no room for doubt because in a dream, you could go DOWN a level, but not UP. You could only go UP if you kill yourself (in other words, if you ACCEPT you are in a dream).
Dom never doubted his reality and thus never attempted the idea of killing himself. However, at the end, we found out that the WHOLE movie, from frame 1 to the final one, was a complete and total dream. None of what happened matters in the outside world, but it doesn't change that it happened. It DID happen, in this dimension, but not outside. Therefore, Nolan wants us to challenge our perception of reality. The plot & story was as real as the setting that was established. Whatever happened in the real word doesn't matter, because its not part of this story.
"You never remember the beginning of a dream." You always seem to start in the middle… just like the movie. We started in the middle of the story, because the story was all fake. This was just as fake as the daddy dilemma Fisher was experiencing. It was a story within a dream that was compelling, but unreal. In the real world, something else is happening. But it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter, because its not the realm of this film.
Excellent work by Nolan. Challenged my brain. Loved it. Never has a movie done this to me before.
Didn't see this before (thanks to the 30 pages or so of comments)–I concur! The fact that the whole thing was, in a sense, a dream doesn't render the story meaningless, because the dream-worlds were just as real as the one that Dom ultimately wakes up in. Might I also add: given this, the totem doesn't tell you whether you're in reality or not. If Dom's top falls over, it just expresses his desire to stay in the particular reality he's currently inhabiting.
I think this is where the inception begins. I think the 'totem' is the beginning of it all – Mal plants it, Cobb adapts it and everyone goes along with the idea – Arthur, Ariadne…etc.
In two occasions in the film, Cobb explains how he came across his totem – I don't think this would be done if there wasn't a reason. He explains that she is hiding something, deep, locked away. We see Mal take the dredle and lock it in a safe… Cobb never understands why she does this, but we know that he's adopted it as a test. I agree that now he can project the outcome of the totem if he is in fact always in a dream, and perhaps the team used this to their advantage. There are multiple occasions where members of the team thwart Cobb from seeing the outcome of the dredle test.
I've only seen the movie once and can't wait to see it again next week and test some of the ideas that are being posted here.
I really like this interpretation.
I feel like this applies to the real world as well. You can go "DOWN" into a dream e.g. when you fall asleep and dream.
As dreams represent a fragment of one's memory, we can faller lower the deeper we fall into our unconscious. However, to move "UP" would require you to kill yourself.
I think it's exciting to think about because it really rocks the core of mankind's interpretation/definition of life. What if our life is but a dream? Along these lines, it's important to note that we remember the present but forget the past, eventually events become memories. Just as history is written by the victor, such are our memories manipulated as time passes, similar to the fragments that our dreams are composed of.
Not only did Nolan create a breath-taking new interpretation of dreams, but for all the philosophers out there – a new definition of life as we know it.
THE WHOLE FILM CANNOT BE A DREAM..because if it was then the initially the world in which Cobb and his wife used to stay was the real world..and if that be the case they wouldnt have WOKEN up after the train hit them in the REAL WORLD>>
Untrue. If the whole movie is a dream, the level 4 continues to be a dream. Its just level 5, instead of 4. I hope you get that.
Yes it can be all a dream. Killing yourself in limbo doesn't take you all the way up. Just up one level. Unless I missed something.
If that is the case then it follows that the level in which Mal kills herself is actually the first dream level and Mal is alive and well and awake in reality, while Cobb is sure he's not dreaming, but really is still in the first dream state.
I think it was clear that killing yourself in limbo takes you back to the dream level where you died and got sent to limbo.
hahah I don't think its clear at all actually. I guess you're the resident expert?
You don't only get to limbo by killing yourself in a dream – only if you kill yourself in a sedated dream within a dream. Or, If you allow yourself to too many dream iterations, you can find (lose) yourself in (to) Limbo.
So what happens when you intentionally reach limbo like Mal and Cobb did? Where do you return to if you kill yourself?
You misunderstood what limbo was. When people died in dreams, they woke up. However, when the sedation IN THE REAL world was far too strong (which was needed to handle dreams within dreams) then they would be sent to limbo upon death instead.
Cobb and Mal didn't go to limbo intentionally, they were studying dreams within dreams and upon death they arrived In limbo.
They decided to stay there (by choice, not by obligation) and lived like gods for yeaars. Eventually, Cobb wanted to leave so he convinced Mal the world wasn't real and they both killed themselves. All this is fact.
My opinion starts here: What I understand is that when Cobb and Mal killed themselves, they woke up in Dream Level 1 (because the sedation hadn't worn off). Mal killed herself to go back to reality while Cobb stayed in dream level 1. He hasn't woken up yet (he's probably in a coma or something).
so you are basically agreeing with my interpretation (if you've actually read it)
I did however miss that they died within their dream experimentations; I did not get this at all from the movie – I understood it as they were pushing the limits intentionally (through experimentation) and hence went too far.
I think that Saito and Cobb wake up on the real limbo and not the one created by Cobb (the one Ariadne and Fischer were in). When they see each other they start to remember they were dreaming and they realize they're on limbo so they kill themselves and return to reality with the others. We're never told how much time has passed since Mal died or Cobb last saw his children and you must remember that a dream can last decades but just minutes or hours in reality so maybe in dreams it has passed a long time but in reality not so much. So after all, I think the ending is real.
My take on this is that if you're still talking about whether Dom is dreaming or awake at the end of the film, you haven't truly accepted the film's metaphysics. No one of the worlds portrayed is any more real than the others, and there's no "all the way up". Nolan's point, I think, is that (at least in the universe of this film), reality consists of nothing but a hierarchy of dreams, each of which is as real as the one we are living in now AND is a projection of someone's subconscious at a "higher" level.
Brilliant. I love this take. Its the only other one I'd accept.
There's a quote in the movie about how the architect of the dreams, designs the setting, or the structure, but subject's subconscious fills it in. That's what this movie is! It's a structure to a story and your mind works to fill it in with a logical plot but nothing makes sense and you are caught in a labyrinth type of mind puzzle. There's no out, every explanation can be debunked by another's interpretation, the movie is what you make it, it's an inception, a planted idea.
here's my question probably only Nolan can answer: if Fischer was trained in subconscious defense by an extractor why was he not trained to know when he is dreaming? that to me seems like the most valuable weapon against subconscious manipulation. It was easy for Saito in the beginning. It wouldn't have been hard for Fischer to figure out he was dreaming at the end when all he would have to do is realize that his dad isn't really in some weird remote facility in the mountains only accessible by snow mobile.
LOL yeah, that's sort of a plot hole I guess… They wanted badly to make him slightly experienced in defending himself so they could add the dangerous projections for action sequence fill-in, sort of neglecting the inherent plot hole in him being so gullible at the same time.
He wasn't really trained to defend his subconcscious. Cobbs fooled him into believing that he had been, so that he would gain his trust.
No, in level one they are atacked like hell by Fischer's brutal military defence.
Cobb to Arthur "We were not prepared for this! You were supposed to find out everything about him"
You make an interesting point but there is a couple problems with what you have said. If you remember, when Fischer talks with his father in the hospital, he does know that he is dreaming. He has already chosen to climb deeper into the dream levels in order to enter the subconscious of his godfather. Actually, the only time when Fischer doesn't know that he is dreaming is the first level. At that point, there is no too many indescribable or especially strange things going on that Fischer notices. by the time he gets to the second level, Cobb tells Fischer that he is dreaming, which obviously shows that Fischer has had some training with that. Actually, Nolan makes it extremely apparent that Fischer has had training with recognizing when he is dreaming.
Adam thinks the whole movie is Mal's dream. AJ thinks the movie ends in reality. I thought the movie ends in a dream of Cobb's but now I'm not sure. These are the things I'm looking at;
1. When Mal jumped was that really her waking up like she thought it would. If that's true then Cobb is still in a dream.
2. If Cobb is in a dream whose dream is it? If it was a shared dream with Mal, then Cobb would be the architect and the dreamer. If he now thought this dream was his reality and was treating it as such wouldn't Mal have been able to wake him up in reality?
3. If the whole movie were Mal's dream, then the whole team would have had to be put in there by Mal. If they were Cobb's projections, then it would have been his dream and we're back to Mal waking him up in reality. If Mal had put them there, then Cobb wouldn't have known Eames Mombassa.
4. Any of the location changes in the percieved reality carried through a sequence. If it were a dream then they wouldn't have been able to remember how they got there. They would have shown up. They went Cobb and Arthur went to Mombassa to get Eames. Eames took them to Yusuf. They got on the plane to go to the US. There was no" Hey we're here where we need to be for continuity". The continuity was real.
5. All the team members were woken up sequentially from each layer except Cobb and Saito. From the fourth layer of Cobb and Mal's limbo to the third layer hospital to the second layer hotel elevator to the first layer van. If Cobb stayed in limbo to find Saito and that was the opening, when were Cobb and Saito revived in the hospital and the van. They both woke up on the plane. Saito remembered to make the call before they landed. He wasn't then, actually in limbo long enough to become an old man. Whose dream was that from, Cobb? Mal? Saito?
6. The whole totem thing. This is where I get confused. The top was Mal's. It became Cobb's. There were two times where you saw the top fall, Once in the safe and earlier. I can't remember where though. I know when I saw it I thought why didn't they show how it fell. I think it might have been when Saito spun it in the opening. Adam says it was Mal's. That it's significance was it didn't fall in Mal's dreams. That's why at the end when it was still spinning on the dining table it showed that it was Mal's dream.
7. I say if it were Mal's dream then she wouldn't have died the way she did when Leo said he had to let her go. If it were Mal's dream then she wouldn't have continued to show up just to thwart Cobb and not bring him back up a layer. When he showed Ariadne the hotel room and the basement, Mal wouldn't have stayed behind. I'm convinced this wasn't Mal's dream. I'm trying to figure out if it was Cobb's dream or reality at the end.
These are just some things to think about. I know it's kinda geeky but hey, we all got to much time on our hands anyway as evidenced by the time we spend on fb.
We're commenting on an INception interpretation article. I think its obvious we've got the time.
The kicks woke up Cobb through every single layer up to level 1. Because Arthur had drowned Cobb in level 1, when Cobb woke up through the kicks, he went back to limbo. And because Saito and Cobb were both dead in every dream level, dying in limbo would take them to reality; this is at least what I understood.
The totem… well, I'm pissed that it wobbled towards the end. That makes no sense.
Actually I believe the "die to move up a level or wake up" rule probably applies to all levels except limbo to a certain extent, because limbo isn't really a level, it's not like: dream-lvl 1, dream within a dream-lvl 2, level 3 and then limbo.
Limbo is that fragmented copy of a copy of a copy confusing place in the very last remnants of your subconsciousness for when you die in one of the levels and are confused about being dead or alive, being real or not real etcetera: it is called limbo for a reason….you're stuck!
So on one hand I do imagine it should be pretty hard to just bounce out of limbo and actually not enter a veggie forever style coma. Which I believe is what in fact happened, Dom dies by drowning on level 1, Saito dies because of his wound to the chest, both are in limbo, probably try to exit but are just to lost and confused, not to mention senile (Saito), and, distraught Dom just fills in the horrible limbo with the vision of the happy ending he's been craving so badly: hence the never ending spinning totem at the end.
On level 3, after Robert Fischer is revived by Eames, does Eames play (forge) his dying dad in order to plant the idea of his dad's love for him in Robert's subconscious? Otherwise, how does inception really occur? Wouldn't Eames also have had to plant the pinwheel in his dad's safe to convince Robert that his dad cared for him?
BROWNING!!!!!!!!…..I feel like Browning has not gotten enough discussion. Here's my view on Browning. Let me know if anyone else saw Browning in this light.
In my mind there are 3 Browning's in the movie:
1st Browning=He is the real-life Browning. The one who wants to make sure the company will stay intact because it will certainly mean more power for him. We see this Browning in just 1 scene and we can't be certain if it is a dream scene a real-life scene. It is the scene where he comes out of his office and enters the room where Fischer and his dad are. He asks Fischer to sign some papers about the will.
2nd Browning=This is the Browning on Level 1 which is really Eames. This Browning/Eames is used to plant the initial idea in Fischer's head.
3rd Browning=This is the Browning on Level 2. This is Fischer's sub-conscious Browning. This is the Browning that Saito passes in the hotel lobby and thinks is Eames. This Browning is actually a good-guy at the begginning of the Level 2. Since he is the sub-conscious Browning of Fischer's mind, he is on Fischer's side because Fischer trusts him in real life. But, when Cobb reveals to Fischer that this Browning actually set-up the kidnapping on Level 1 (which wasn't really set-up by Browning but was set-up by the whole team) it forces Fischer to turn agaisnt this Browning. So, Cobb then uses this to force Fischer to go down to Level 3 to find what Browning is hiding from Fischer.
And here is one question I have. If Fischer learns that Browning is untrustworthy on Level 2 then why does he still act friendly to him when he returns back to Level 1??? Remember, he confides to Browning that he has decided to destroy the company after they get out of the van that was underwater. Shouldn't he have remembered what took place in Level 2 in which it was revealed that Browning was acting selfishly by trying to hind the information in the safe???
Well…..I hope that wasn't too confusing
Dave
it is strange that dom was the ONLY character haunted by his past, with anything in his subconscious that could endanger the mission. the only reason it isn't unbelievable is because the rest of the characters are pretty paper thin–lending credence to the idea that they are not real people, but aspects of his personality… i think.
great, great comments on here. thanks to all for sharing your ideas!
Interesting point about Cobb being the only one being haunted. It makes you wonder about what else could have been placed in the movie. What if Nolan would have added in each characters' secrets from deep within their subconscious? It could have raised the emotional stakes even more. Still, it makes sense that Cobb was the only one this haunted because of the nature of what had happened with his wife. That doesn't happen with most people. Also, if Nolan would have added in more from other people's subconscious it could have gotten even more complicated. It was probablt the right decision to just focus on Cobb.
After a second viewing, I noticed that the children only appear in Cobb's mind and only once in the 'real' world when Mal is saying, "These aren't our children…Wouldn't I know???"
I had to wonder if Cobb and Mal only had children during their 50 years together in Limbo, and that is why she is willing to leave them to Kick up to reality and Cobb is not…he can give up the wife, but not the imaginary children…
Also, on second viewing…Arthur explicitly states that the totems let you know "If you are in your own dream or someone else's…"
Not whether it is reality or not…
I've only seen the film once so far, but that's what I thought also (that your totem was intended to let you know whether you were in your own dream or someone elses). For me, the question is not whether Dom is awake or dreaming when he is reunited with his children at the end of the movie. The question is whether he is in his own dream or someone else’s.
I was a little confused about the whole “dream thief” concept, but my understanding is that for each dream there are three defined roles. There is a "dreamer" who controls the dream like the director of a movie. There is an “architect” who creates the landscape upon which the dream is acted out and there is a “subconscious” which populates the dream with actors.
Normally when you dream, you serve all three roles. You act as dreamer and architect, manipulating your own subconscious to create your own reality (dream state). In the case of this film, the thieves do not insert themselves into the victims dream. Rather, the victims subconscious is hijacked into someone else's dream (one of the dream thieves) to be manipulated (ideas extracted or planted). So for me, the perplexing thing at the end of the film is not determining what is real and what is not real. The question is, who’s reality is it?
You're right. I think people are misinterpreting what the totem actually does. It simply lets you realize whether or not you are in YOUR OWN dream. If you are in someone else's dream, the totem loses its ability to be manipulated by you because you cannot control the physics of that dream. The totem would actually be controlled by the dreamer if you were in someone else's dream. That is why it is important that no one else can know the weight and density of your totem because otherwise they could manipulate it. With that said, that really has no bearing on the end of the film. If it is indeed Cobb's own dream, the top would continue spinning because it was his dream. If it wasn't a dream, the top would fall.
I believe the movie was a dream the entire time. This movie was an experimentation in dealing with questions all of us have had about our dreams. If we die in our dreams will we awake….if we die in a lucid dream will we awake…this is a movie about dreams and lucid dreams and how things and people in our dreams are all representations of our emotions…or maybe not. Great movie! Movies are about directors and writers exploring personal beliefs…we are mere spectators.
I am glad to see all of your comments, very good and thought provoking. Also, it shows that we all have a deeper intelligence that tries to grow when posed with dilemmas like this..
The way i see it, there are (2) ways to look at this, a simple way and not so simple way, BOTH ending with the same thought concerning the movies ending.
Thought 1 – simplistic theory) We may be overlooking this as the plot (written by author) states "In a world where technology exists to enter the human mind through dream invasion, a highly skilled thief is given a final chance at redemption which involves executing his toughest job till date, Inception". We could take this for what it is, in that there arent thaaat many hidden metaphors and only "idea" that provoke contemplation and different thoughts – hence why Cobb states "an idea can grow into anything".With this in mind, i see Miles role as primarily to help Cobb, and is only willing to do so by lending him Ariadne because A) he wants him to cut the shit, come to reality and see his kids..and B) He knows that he is the reason why Cobb is in this game – he originated it, taught and trained Cobb AND THEY DISCUSS THIS!.
2 – not so simple theory) Cobb may have come to the point where he was too savvy with having their lives built and produced in a dream and not real life (i.e. Mal's and Cobb's dream world, they dreampt their entire world, cities memories AND KIDS in the dream) at some point they realized that they had different desires, she wanted to have all this in the real world and NOT the dream and she desperately wants to leave it to go to reality but he wanted to stay – this is shown in 2 ways, A) when she leaves her totem in the safe..this is NOT because she never wants to leave the dreamworld…but that she has no need for it because she is NOT coming back, B) when she says "you said we were going to grow old together.." and Cobb replies "we havee, look at all we built and the decades we spent here until we were old" speaking of the dream world, not real life..she desperately tries to get Cobb to realize this and devises a plan that, in theory, should get him to commit suicide and return with her but he fails, and his sub conscious creates a projection of Mal that tries to keep him in the dream world on a wild goose chase (his real subconscious does not want him to leave). Cobb has many projections, of all types and all who (in some way or another) tell him to come back to reality…this hints at the idea that he is far away from it and chasing it even deeper into non-reality (i.e. he is off the beaten path he needs to go and is searching too hard). He admits that he has been stuck in limbo but never admits to getting out of it, therefore he is constantly (and selfishly) trying. For some reason, the others never ask what theyre payment is or why they should help, they do so because he wants them too and they ALL know that the mission is solely to benifit ONLY Cobb..they may all be projections, because they know that the more they help the farther the goose chase and farther he will get into the dream.
CONCLUSION AND THE ENDING: Regardless of these scenarios, i believe that in the end, his decision to not look at the top to see if it falls or keeps spinning, shows that he has finally realized that he NO LONGER CARES if he is in a dream or reality, all that matters is that his kids are his reality and his sub conscious is happy – not focusing on his work with subconscious theft/protection which has let him lose focus on his family. Yes, this also means that he may be still in limbo and chose to believe/continue with his "made up" reality that his wife is dead and now is happy with just his kids, while there very well may be a living Mal with living kids in the real world without him…As long as he is happy and satisfied, he no longer cares what "reality" is.
That's an outstanding point and probably the most important one of the entire film. Cobb simply doesn't care whether or not he is in a dream or reality. This is an amazing trasnformation of character. If you remember earlier on the film, Cobb battles with himself obsessively over whether or not he is dreaming or awake. He holds a gun in his hand as he spins his totem simply because he HAS TO KNOW if he is dreaming or not. However, by the end of the film, he simply lets this totem, this thing that has been his most important possession, continue to spin as he focuses his attention on his kids. He doesn't care anymore. He just wants to be with his family, anyway he can.
This is really off topic to the interpretation of inceptions ending, but do you think someone will ever get so obsessed or wrapped up with this movie's idea that they will actually convince themselves that this world is not real and commit suicide? It'd be pretty crazy but I can see the headline now 'Young Man Kills Himself After Watching Inception' Not a laughing matter, but people sue McDonalds for getting fat, could people blame inception on a suicide?
I haven't had the time to read all of your comments, only about a third of them. After two viewings I think I'm starting to think that Dom was never awake. Also that his wife was right and therefore alive and awake. The chase sequence in Mombasa was very dreamlike in my opinion and there were other snippets and pieces I'm sure have been discussed above.
The very end was definitely a dream because I'm pretty sure I saw a ring on his finger when approaching the customs booth. And what was that customs stamp about? Also the lighting and feel at his house and the appearance of the children make me think that.
But none of that doesn't really matter to Dom because he is finally happy.
Why doesn't Fischer recognize his planemates when he awakes?
I think maybe he does, and finds it a little odd. But brushes it of as being just a dream with the people on the plane. This way it's still a plot hole though too, because: how could someone trained to defend himself from subconscious-extraction-agents, like he was, not realize he'd been played as soon as he woke up?
Why does Fisher not recognize Saito – the CEO / Owner of his largest rival company.
Beats me.
Bit of a hole.
Do we know he's the CEO/owner?
Ok, I haven't read everyone's but…
I think Dom is sleeping the whole time. Dom and Mal were in a dream state for 50 dream years. When Mal jumped she when back to the real world and joined the children. The phone call was what Dom interpreted the voices of his children talking around his sleeping body. "Mom says you're not coming back", the older sounding daughter, and why it seems like a one sided conversation.
Ariadne is the real Mal!
Her and his father are trying to get him back. Mal in the movie is a projection form Dom. This would explain why "she picked things up so quickly" and created the bridge that Dom recognized. She's trying to get him through the maze.
The whole thing with Fischer and his father is actually coming from Miles subconsciousness. Miles feels guilty about his son being trapped because he followed in his footsteps. "Disappointed that you tried to be like me.", "You have to come back to reality.", dissolve the company, dissolve the fantasy…
The totem is a distraction, it's tied to Mal. When he lets go of the totem, he let's go of Mal. No one is supposed to know what your totem is, and the fact that Saito is playing with it proves that it's useless.
I'm also thinking that Dom ends up dying in the end, as this seems to be a last ditch effort to get him to a "Happy place" in his subconscious. After resolving past guilt's and ending up with his children in his old house, taken from a happier memory. Once he is there, his actual body lets go and he can die in peace. Or at the very least a perpetual happy dream.
Personally, I think saying that everything from the beginning of the film right down to the end credits is a dream makes the whole thing seem kind of pointless to me… I need things to have a meaning be it good or bad.
In other words, I try very simply to just understand what the story is telling and not assume it's all an elaborate fantasy.
Being so, I take it that parts are dream and parts are reality. To me all these people are real, the job is real, the world is real when not in dream, and Mal is simply a psycho bitch manifestation of Dom's regret and guilt toward what he did with his wife.
Saito and Dom both explicitly died, on level three and level one respectively and ended up in limbo.
Being that Dom, had stated previously, that he had been in limbo with his wife and managed to come back, the doubt is installed of whether the guys can actually awake from so deep or not.
We see the plane sequence and happy ending, which is either:
a) They managed to brake the rule like Dom did before, and by willpower alone, escape limbo
b) Both fail and this is Dom filling his limbo with the happy ending he so desperately craves.
The question is answered at the end of the film when you see the totem spinning round at a never ending rate: it is a dream.
I suggest we kidnap Nolan and beat the truth out of him! >:D
I have an intake on all of this. Ok I saw the movie for the first time tonight and i was keeping watch everytime they showed the kids in the backyard. And everytime they showed them, the grandma was calling them into the house. Everytime. But at the end of the movie the grandpa calls the kids in. And Then now people will ask well what happened to the grandma and why is the grandpa there? Well the grandma, i do not know, but the Grandpa if you remember when Dom was on the phone with his kids, at the end of the conversation he said he was going to send gifts for the kids with grandpa. So obviously the grandpa was going to visit them. So at the end of the movie, i believe it is not a dreaming.
@ Brad Brevet
I remmeber in the opening moments of the film you get a glimpse of Cobb's hand. In the shot he's wearing his wedding ring. Now if you follow the rest of the movie keeping this is mind you'll start to notice that he only has the ring on when he's in the dream world. Keep an eye out for this. At the end of the movie he isn't wearing the ring therefore is he in reality? If he only has the ring on in the dream world and he isn't wearing it at the end of the film he can very well be in reality.
Just saw it for the second time. Three new thoughts to share:
1. The color green. What's the significance? The taxi line in level one is called Greenside. The brand of safe that holds Mal's totem is called Greenleaf. And Cobb refers to himself as Mr. Green at the bar in level two. (Also, in that scene the exit sign behind him is lit in green – unusual.)
2. In that level two bar scene, someone breaks a glass and it reminds Dom of the anniversary night in the hotel suite when Mal jumps from the window ledge. He sort of loses himself in that memory. The weird thing about this is that all the customers in the bar stare at him at this point. They look hostile. Why? I think they are his subconscious projections noticing that something is up in HIS dream. Proving that he is the one dreaming and being manipulated. Is my logic wrong here?
3. What's with the sixties decor and clothes throughout? Is it just me or do many of the rooms and clothes look like they are from the early sixties? Same thing with the James Bond-esque snow action scenes in level three. Very sixties. The Cobb home, the hotel suite, the kids' shirts, Dom's shirt, the suits. Is this just a stylistic choice? At one point Cobb says he and Mal spent about fifty years together in limbo. Fifty years ago from now is 1960. Could Cobb be an old man dreaming this stuff? Not everything in the movie dream scenes is from the sixties. For example, there's a flat panel tv in the hotel suite. But could he be mixing modern fixtures such as tvs and guns with old memories of how he and Mal and their kids looked when they were young? Maybe Mal did die, Cobb went crazy in limbo, came out into the real world and is dreaming now of letting go of his guilt but remaining in a dream about how he should have taken care of his kids????
to Brett
1) Exit signs are lit in green where I come from (Portugal), other than that I'd have to look into that…
2) It's the CEO guy that populates the dream with his projections, the projections get hostile when they notice the strange "interference" Dom is creating at that moment, that's why Dom immediately "shakes it off" and carries on talking- Quick! Before they converge on him! This is exemplified early on with Ariadne, and is noticeable when you see the coordination between Cillian Murphy's character's puzzled expression and the zooming in of his projections onto Dom.
3) People used to the stylish clothing and fancy hotels and locations high society obligates you to indulge in + a fantasy dream world. I believe this to be nothing more than an interesting visual choice. Plus Dom and Mal had their fifty year long honeymoon in LIMBO. Now if real life 5 minutes is an hour in level 1, a week in level 2, 6 months in level 3 and 10 years in level 4, assuming limbo is way past level four they could have only been in deep sleep like 30 min tops to comprise de 50 years, if not less.
You are also from Portugal? Cool, that means I am not the only one :D
Personally, I felt that the whole point of the movie was that it didn't matter whether it was a dream or not. The top at the end, whether it works as a totem for Dom or not, wasn't given a chance to tell whether or not it was a dream because for Dom, whatever the reality of the situation he was happy. I think it's a statement on perceived reality and whether or not an individual's conception of reality lends itself to the idea of that person's reality. Dom, getting what he wanted, defines what may be a dream as a reality because in this version of reality he has resolution. It goes back, I think, to what the old man that was with Yusuf earlier said, that those who were dreaming for 40 hours at a time came there to wake up, and their dreams were their reality.
On an unrelated note, I was thinking, and in my interpretation Dom was dreaming all along (possibly still stuck in limbo), which would mean that when Mal killed herself she killed herself in limbo, resulting in her coming back to the classical idea of reality? Just one of many strands of thought this movie left me with.
How bout this… Dom was dreaming the whole time. I think a lot of people agree with that. Him adopting the totem from Mal meant that it would never prove if he was dreaming. He planted a "seed" or idea in his wife's mind to get her out of Limbo, but there was no one to do so for himself so he was stuck. (NOTE: that in his memory of her jumping from the ledge right before they showed she would rub her finger accross the blade without a single drop of blood.) But I think one thing that is missing here is the Girl. (Ellen Page.) The character that could change his appearance in peoples minds was a clue to this next idea I'm about to propose.
Ariadne (Page) was Mal… his wife trying to get him out of the dream state. Coming as his wife wasn't working. So she brought in all the characters at play in the story. People he knew to gain his trust and then one new person to plant the seed to get him out. He even said himself that the idea had to be cultured if the person saw the idea coming then inception wouldn't work. So his wife created this girl to make him realize he was stuck. It's why she caught on to architecture so quickly…
The defining point of that was when she put up the mirrors. If Ariadne was going to school in Paris and he and his family lived Stateside then how did she know about the bridge that he and his wife were kissing on, the bridge was in America but she specifically said she walked that bridge to go to school which was in Paris? She was Mal… she was sending him clues the whole time. Through his father who kept telling him to wake up and through the chemist who showed him all those people "Dreaming to wake up." And through the character that could change into different people.
Another point. The Security that was shooting at them throughout each level… The protection was always Dom's Security. If you notice they never take notice of him throughout the whole film. They always shoot at everyone but him. They couldn't figure out why the security guys were going back to the fortress in the Third level(Snow). It's because Ariadne was telling Dom where the others were and giving him a view of the architecture. It was his dream the whole time. And at the end he was still stuck. But he was at least on a level that he could get back to reality from.
The film in my belief was about waking him up and how to get him to come back to reality. Doesn't matter if he did or did not. The point was that someone was there trying to help him. And even if the audience never saw him waking up to reality… one could assume that he would eventually get there. The seed (idea) was planted. He was gonna make it out.
I also came to the same conclusion. Ariadne is Mal.
The security does notice Dom in the bar though. But to further back our conclusion. Dom notes that she is picking things up a lot faster than normal (because Mal was very good at it, 50yrs of practice). I think Dom's subconscious realized that Ariadne is Mal and his mind takes a fit and knifes her, because of the contradiction of his beliefs. All the security really is is the minds denial.
The Real Question is… which most of you will never get to understand .
What about you ? Are you dreaming or in reality ? Go check Dr. Awit Goswami for better conclusion to state of consciousness .
watch movie Mr. Nobody (endless possibilities)
about seeing his kids faces at the end:
i dont think its a dream because his dreams of mal (the elevator scenes) are of MEMORIES. he doesnt have the MEMORY of seeing their faces, so it has to be reality.
Dreams aren't dependent on memory…
He never allows himself to see his kids faces because "I'll see them up there, Mal" as he puts it (he's saving it for reality)
So when he finally believes himself to be in reality he lets himself see them. But it could still be either.
I hadn't even considered the whole movie being a dream (well, I had but dismissed it), but reading some of your interpretations really start to sway my opinion a bit.
Is Cobb the dreamer of the ENTIRE movie (much like Ariadne is of the dream worlds)? The entities pursuing Cobb in 'reality' would thus be his subconscious manifesting itself and attacking him in order to 'get out' of the dream (much like the riot at the beginning of the movie and Ariadne being attacked on the streets of dream Paris by Mal).
It would also explain why Mal is able to manifest on every level of the dream world (is it not explained that only the dreamer's subconscious manifests itself?) If Cobb isnt the dreamer of any of the words involved in the 'Inception' plot, how did the train tear through the streets of the first level? Why was Mal there at all if she is part of Cobb's subconscious.
From what I can gather Cobb is the supreme dreamer of all we see in the movie, Cobb being on the run in the 'reality' parts is his subconscious becoming aware that it is dreaming, thus attacking. Mal being present in the Inception worlds created by Ariadne is the result of Cobb being the dreamer of the outermost (and unseen) reaity.
…thus Cobb's subconscious affects ALL levels within the movie, whereas other dreamer affect only certain levels.
Could be completely wrong, but that works out the kink of Mal being in all levels which I thought was odd. Didnt read all the comments so it could have been explained by someone else in a better fashion
Spot on! It makes the movie flow a lot better if you believe that it is his mind. I only saw this movie once but what I gathered was he was dreaming the whole time.
He says it to Ariadne in the "training sequence". "Do you remember how we got here?" Does anyone remember why or how Cobb got where he was? What was the information he wanted from Saito?
Or was it the last job he did before going into limbo? And the person, Ariadne(Mal), who was trying to infiltrate his mind used it to gain access to the different levels of his subconscious to plant the "seed". Which inherently ended up being the same device he used to get his wife out. Her totem.
"Cobb's subconscious affects ALL levels within the movie"
well spotted…
Some people say when you die in limbo you die in reality,but when saito dies too early in the deepest dream, he is sent to limbo, and you see Dom who later dies in a dream level and goes to limbo where saito is (first scene and near ending scene), saito is very old because 5 minutes in reality is an hour in a dream but within limbo it is much longer. so that is the old sentai. This is limbo because they said if you die in a dream you get sent to limbo, and in limbo it showed a clip of dom and mal killing themselves under a train sending them back to their home in reality. so if you kill yourself in limbo, you don't in fact die, you are sent to reality. In limbo, sentai and dom have a gun in that room in which sentai shoots dom and him and they find themselves back on the plane. The plane can't have been a dream as you can't dream if you had died. the question is whether the final scene where dom gets to see his kids faces is actually reality, because the kids are wearing the same clothes as in the memories and they are depicted as being in the garden playing. people believe that the final scene is dom dreaming on the plane because he can now dream again without aid now saito has made the call. The totem is never show stopping on the table at the end, but it does slow down, meaning that it is open to interpretation . this is the most likely analogy towards the ending. to conclude, in limbo, the idea of being killed and being brought to reality is a likely idea as proved twice when dom and mal are killed by the train and both dom and sentai shoot themselves in limbo and are not killed as you cant dream once you die in limbo, because thats just the end, another idea is that mal could be true believing they are living in a dream and dom should kill himself as "a leap of faith". the whole thing is open to interpretation- a seed planted into your mind, an idea that you won't stop thinking about, this is what the movie was trying to do and haven't they done it well!
eight lines down into what you wrote I stopped reading:
We don't see Dom and Saito kill themselves! I do not recall a scene in which a gun actually fires a bullet into each of their heads! In fact, the scene is completely cut off leaving us with the question of whether they managed to do the "leap of faith" or not. I'd like to know why many of the people here are convinced beyond doubt that they killed themselves.
i have only seen this film once, and i plan to see it again soon
the 1st time i saw it i was just in awe of its amazkingness, and i didnt think to uch about it, now half a week later i am startin to think about it and have my own teory, based on what i remember, and from comments made on here
my theory, is that the whole film is indeed a dream, and that the ending is the only reality there is
thats what i think, and i will be keepin that idea in my head when i see it next to play it out
and also find some points to go along with my theory haha
I was also thinking that. The very last scene could have been the only reality in the movie. It would just be so cathartic for Cobb to finally be able to go home and see his kids (and possibly his wife since she would still be alive). To get his life back after such a long and arduous journey, its the ultimate bookend.
On the plus side it still fits with my theory (and many others) so thats good haha
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.
—
That's easy. Dom only picks up that Totem after Mal dies, if we assume that the entire thing is a dream then we can also assume (rightly or wrongly) that the Totem is an element of that dream and thet Cobb's belief in it being real is one of a number of inceptions against him that ae needed to build towards the final goal (seeing Cobb reunited with his kids, believing that is reality and at peace).
There is even an argument that could be made that it is Mal controlling the entire inception idea for some reason (If her dieing is part of the dream) which would also allow for why her prescence is so out of control.
Guys great discussion going on here … exactly what i was looking for after watching the movie ;)
My take on all this:
I think we can all agree that it is up to interpretation wether Dom is dreaming or not when he sees his kids in the end (or at least it is meant to be that way because this thing is still spinning – personally i think it will never fall but that doesn't matter right now=)
Of course i think all or at least a lot of the interpretations that are presented here are valid in there own way but i am thinking about the way nolan wanted us to see the movie.
Like i mentioned before he definately wanted to leave the ending open to interpretation and then thought it was directly connected to wether dom and saito get out of the limbus or not (thats why we don't see them kill themselves in limbus as we don'T see the top fall in the very end)
Now i think thej probably never wake up … i think when dom reminds saito of what they were talking before (be young again and stuff) that does not cause them to come to the conclusion to shoot themselves but thej end up in annother version of the limbus filled with what thej always wanted to achieve…thej share this version like dom once shared a version of the limbus with his wife… and like in a dream everything works out perfectly for them:
saito is young again and the mission he started was a success while dom gets to finally see his children (which i think can not be real .. points like their age etc. were mentioned before)
And another point that supports my view i think is that when he spins the top in the end wether or not it falls… he just doesn't care and goes to see his children…and since he doesn't care if its real or not … the limbus is his reality now (as he has no reason for leaving it in the first place- though his wife is still death because otherwise his subconcious couldn't except its real ;)
Plzz excuse my bad english … its late and i am not a native speaker/writer but i am very curious to hear what you think about my points ;)
I don't know if this was brought up already. it seems there is about 2.5 hours of posts at this time.
If anyone goes to see it again, a couple of things. Saito said "this is an audition" and cobb and his team failed. I also can't wait to get this on dvd to freeze the moment in the beginning to see what Saito's confidential papers say. also; for me one of the big things I need to badly confirm or deny. When they wake up from Saitos "2nd level" dream, the asian kid wakes them up. I'm almost certain he looks at his wristwatch right before he goes to wake them and his watch is still running fast! If this is true, there is nothing left to the imagination.
Yes, I also remember this scene. But I didn't understand it…
Given that the Mombasa chase scene is a dream – who is the dreamer? Ariadne? Dom must be the subject or he wouldn't be attacked, right?
The Mombasa chase was real. Cobb was not wearing his wedding ring.
And second question – why don't they wake up when the van spins out of control? I thought the inner ear was not influenced by the sedative.
First off let me say Nolan is a genius. Because yes i believe the movie does have an absolute answer, but i also feel it is up to the audience. This is my absolute answer. The children have no reference, they're just an element to make you doubt your decision. The entire movie Cobb is trying to find his own reality, he doesn't know what to believe is real anymore. "When you wind up on the shore of your own subconcious, you lose track of what's reality" and in the movie he's struggling to find that, as Mal is always brought up and making him doubt if she's real, if he's dreaming, if the whole world's real. Many people go back to totems and i feel their the most important aspect. It is explained that you should never share totems, yet that's exactly what Cobb is doing, he is using Mal's and Saito later uses cobb's/ Mal's. So totem sharing yes could mean you get a false view on reality and whats a dream. It is again though, another rule that Cobb made up and brakes himself. Yet it could also be just his totem because totems should be something that only you know the gravity of, and since Mal was dead, he was the only one. But that's for another day… The ending, i do not believe Nolan wants the audience to decide whether all of us r dreaming or if we're living in reality, although a part of me wants to believe that he's trying to make us debate whether Cobb was dreaming or not, cuz that's exactly what were doing. I doubt he wanted a post "The lottery" reaction, and i also doubt the people that believe that the story ended before we found out whether it was a dream or reality because the top "looked like" it was about to fall. My final conclusion was that at the end, Cobb was still confused of reality and dream, but chose to accept one reality, the one with his kids and even though he accepted that it was his reality, it wasn't necessarily because the totem didn't fall. So was he dreaming? or was it a false read because it wasn't really his own totem? Although Nolan didn't want us to debate whether were dreaming or if cobb is, i believe he did want the after effect of us creating our own thoughts and yes i believe he was planting a FALSE inception on us. For the user that said that the whole movie was an inception on us was correct and also incorrect because we base most of our ideas off the movie- the genesis. So nolan was saying that an idea even though you might feel comes from someone else, it still spreads like a "resilient parasite" and it will grow whether you like it or not, which is the movie's afterthought and discussion. Mal got the idea from Cobb that the real world wasn't reality, but she killed herself because she still believed that, cobb had no control over that. Yes he thought that the spinning totem meant he was in someone else's dream but he chose not to believe that anymore at movie's end, and sprought his own ideas.
No one has asked the most important question. Who was the guy that gave Dom the plane ticket? Who was he connected with?
I have also asked that… its a great question. It could be his subconscious protecting him, if you are of the camp that believes that Cobb and Mal were still dreaming when Mal killed herself. She did mention all the things she 'did' to make it look like he killed her; so perhaps that was one of his projections he put up to escape the guilt.
?
There's something that keeps coming back to me when I try to decipher the movie:
From what I understand, according to Dom's first explanations about dreams to Ariadne in Paris, the projections that are in a dream are solely those of the person's whose subconscious everyone is in.
So anytime Mall manifests herself, we have to consider that we're actually in Dom's subconscious.
To back this up, I also realized that all throughout the "Fischer Dream" sequences, Dom is never attacked once by the projections, while Fischer himself is shot by Mall, a projection, in the 3rd level. So they can't be in Fischer's subconscious, since projections don't attack the person who's subconscious they're in.
I admit that this only holds up if we consider Mall to be dead in reality and only a projection of Dom's, and not alive and dream-sharing.
Basing all of this on the idea that the Inception that's at the center of the movie is actually to rid Dom of his guilt over Mall….At the beginning of the movie, Mall shows up in Saito's dream. Going on my hypothesis, we'd actually be in Dom's subconscious at that point, which is where I think the inception into Dom's mind starts. To justify going deep into "Fischer's subconscious", we have to give him a reason to, and what better way than with that kind of ploy.
I also think that the Mombasa bit is a dream, since we have no idea how he got there (whereas we're shown train, helicopter and plane rides for other locations), and Saito showing up like that is just too big a coincidence. In that regard, I'm siding with Brad, and say that when Dom wakes up on the plane he's in reality, but that when he gets to see his kids at the end he's in a dream, since we never see how he gets there.
If you’re still confused about the levels and “kicks”, I’ve created an infographic explaining the ending: http://ustandout.com/free-designs/inception-explained-infographic. My theory is that Cobb’s “limbo” is really another dream level, and that Cobb finds Saito in the actual limbo (which is the reason Saito is old while Cobb is not; Saito got to limbo first, where time seems exponentially longer).
To your question 3: I beleive Miles IS Grandpa. I don't know why, just the way he and Dom interact.
Also, at the begining and the end of the film, where Dom is talking to the old man, some people may not interprate this, but Dom is talking to HIMSELF. The version of himself that grew old in Limbo.
It's established in the movie that Miles is Mal's father, thus Dom's father-in-law, thus grandpa to Dom and Mal's children.
The old man is certainly not Dom. There's nothing to interpret… he's talking to Saito. Unless, that is, Dom somehow became Japanese during his time in limbo.
Hi,
Loved the movie, love the discussion, but I have one thing that bugs me.
OK, so the reason that they go into limbo when they die is because of the strong sedative, but it seems to be implied that if you die in limbo, you wake up in the real world. Is this true and if so, why would that be, I mean to me it seems completely illogical, because you are still sedated, no matter what, and the point is that you cannot wake up.
Also, I actually have another thing that bugs me. When Mal and Dom first entered limbo, they still knew it was a dream because he says that they felt like Gods and in the movie you can see them building sandcastles and then destroying them and behind them the rock explodes. Did she then later forget it whilst he didn't?
Anyway, I would say this is the best movie I have seen this year and I think Christopher Nolan is a genius.
I believe that Michael Caine's character Miles is actually Mal's father and here's why.
First of all, when Cobb is speaking to his children on the phone, we do hear the grandmother's voice and she has a French accent, like Mal. She also refuses to speak to Cobb, which is not something a mother would do to her son. If anything, she would want to speak to him if she knew he were in trouble. It sounds much more like a resentful mother-in-law, suspicious that her son-in-law may be responsible for her daughter's death.
Furthermore, in a scene between Cobb and Ariadne after she becomes privy to the visions that have been plaguing Cobb's mind, Ariadne insists she should go along with Cobb on the job regarding Fischer, and he very quietly replies, "No, I promised Miles." He probably wouldn't use his father's name that way. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
I know that this may be irrelevant information, but I thought I'd throw it out there anyways.
For some reason I feel compelled to say that Dom's totem (not the top, because that is truly mal's) are his children. I don't know why, but he is incredibly protective of what is supposed to happen in reality and the dream. He knows that he left his children and couldn't see their faces. Therefore, he refuses to look at them in the dream (when mal calls out to them in limbo) because he knows it's a false reality.
I have no idea, really, I think my brain has been in limbo since I've watched this and has thus "turned to mush" lol. I just don't understand the totem, because the top is truly not his totem, it's Mals. So, will it really work if you take someone else's totem?
I will say though, the children are absolutely without a doubt, older, and although the clothing is similar, it is NOT the same. The website I have linked shows the pictures of the kids side by side.
Also, I am inclined to believe it is truly reality. I want it to be, but things are so similar to his dream state it's hard to distinguish. He is the best architect there is, and the ending looks so similar to his dream state, except for one difference, he sees his children's faces and they have aged.
There are plenty of things to discuss. Subtle nuances such as Ariadne being the greek goddess reference, his wedding ring only being on in what is perceived to be the dream state, the top wobbles at the end but stays perfect in the dream world, etc.
first of all there are very clear clues in the film that at the end Dom is still dreaming, men chasing Dom in reality, changing places in a snap, buying a plane company at once, coming back home where all the scene were same after years, even the bananas on the table, etc. And at the final scene even if the spinning totem falls, it doesnt mean anything as it wasnt the Doms totem.
I think that all the film was a show to the audience of showing how they planted an idea in Dom's brain in a dream, inception was made to Dom.
Dom was struggling with his subconciusnous in the form of his wife Mal, which/who tells him that he was still dreaming and should wake up. the planted idea was that he was in reality and he should except this and try not to get out.
In order to do that, they constructed a game where Dom had to do a final job and the price was his children. Team he chose was also in the game to lead him deeper into the game and go deeper in his mind so that he had to confront his wife. So they used the same plan as it was done to Robert Fischer, they used Dom's problematic relationship with his wife and his guilt about her and the children. While he was dealing with this relationship, adriadne was leading him and she was always there for here, just like Mr. Charlie. She was leading him, and he finally come to the idea that he had to get rid of his wifes image in his mind and stay in so-called reality. So he thought that it was his idea, but actually it was a good played inception.
My question is, do we ever find out how they got to Sydney to start this whole process? This does not strike me as the kind of detail they would just leave out as unimportant.
As stated in the beginning, you never remember how you got where you are in a dream, so is this a clear sign that the flight from Sydney-LAX was a dream or am I missing something?
(some of this is me just working it out, so bare with me) Saito is a curious character for many reasons. First, he's able to figure out he's in a dream without any training, suggesting he has some preconceived dream sharing skill. Dom is going into his mind to find his "expansion plans" for the Cobol job, but once Saito asks him to perform inception they all forget about that job, and then Dom has Cobol after him (who seems to give up tracking him down.) Also we know Saito was giving them a test and says they failed knowing that Dom was successful in getting the "confidential document" from his safe, then hires them anyway. Why? and when he shows up in Mumbai right at the exact moment to "protect his assets" really feels like they're in a controlled dream especially that narrow ally is something a dream architect would create to make it difficult for the projections to follow. That alley is kind of paradoxical. One last thing that kind of hints that Dom and Saito never got out of limbo is when Saito is enticing Dom to take the job by telling him he'll be able to see his kids again and he says "like inception," suggesting that the kids he sees again won't be his real kids.
I believe the audiences totem is Cobb’s spinning top. We are compelled by the director to believe in it. It becomes our reference point for the entire film, until the final shot.
Is a lesson in what we use as a reference point in our own realities? Our reference points of people, places, things, religion.
I think Cobb's dad is the dreamer of "reality"! and he's incepting Cobb on so many levels, it's frightening. He used Mal to plant the totem idea, which in turn convinces him that what he believes is reality, truly is.
in the end, the whole movie was a maze o_o there's no way to know for certain that the last scene was reality except to realize it is not our reality.
There are some masterful ideas. The idea of inception is certianly well alive in many forms. The film stays with you for days afterwards. On reading the credits, the children were older. The grandmother is a mystery, after hearing Cobb speaking to his children, that will remain a mystery. I think the final scene is about Mal's dream. She is lost in limbo but her totem spins to signify that her dreams of Cobb returning to their children are alive. We are not given enough time to confirm this, but why the time difference? The time he spent with Mal would be similar to what has passed. The audience never see the totem working to prove his reality. Great film. Well done Mr Nolan.
I think the last scene can be read as an outro, a unit not necessarily joined to the rest of the movie. Used in this case to show as Dom being out of guilt, after the tripp. that is our happy ending: Dom tormented mind finally is in peace: he can dream and see his children faces with no sence of guilt.
sweet dreams
It's interesting to see everyone's different take on the movie like we're all projecting ourselves/our interpretations. The editing of the scenes to me is also like the penrose stairs. And for me the film draws from Kurosawa's Rashomon theme of perception v. reality, that is, the idea that the narrator's story (what we see through "his eyes" or his memories may be unreliable (either poor memory or deliberate obfuscation) which is in conflict with our usual predisposition to believing what the camera shows us is real/true (another e.g. is Usual Suspects). So Cobb's retelling of his memories may in fact be a lie or inaccurate (such as the scene of Mal's suicide from the "opposite" building v. Ariadne's trip to his B level subconscious where Mal is in the same building). It's also interesting that Saito's apartment rug worked like a totem by accident – it didn't feel right (though in a dream would you pick that up? lol). Finally, this reminds me of an old parable of a man who fell asleep and dreamed he was a butterfly. But when he woke, he wondered if he was really a man or was he a butterfly dreaming he was a man who dreamt he was a butterfly.
How come at the beginning/end when he goes to see the Chinese man how come he had aged so much yet Cobb hasn't aged at all?
Great theories by everyone. Awesome movie to have everyone so involved after having seen even multiple times.
One thing I'm having trouble with regarding Limbo:
It sounds like the prevailing theory is that when Fischer dies he goes down a dream level, not into Limbo. Cobb and Ariadne then follow him down to retrieve him from Mal. Saito and Cobb however go to Limbo upon dying(Cobb from drowning in the van as a result of missing the kicks and Saito from getting shot). Why is that? I thought that it was explained that if you die in a dream while under sedation that it was straight to Limbo and the time difference was so great that by the time the sedative wore off in real life and you woke up your brain would be mush. I don't understand why there would be a different outcome when Fischer gets shot and dies. Cobb gets very nervous when Fischer almost shoots himself in the hotel because presumably he would go to Limbo and be unretrievable or his mind would be ruined from it. Then he gets shot and dies and all of a sudden it's no big deal to just follow him down and get him back?
Also, is there a theory on why death in Limbo wakes you up even under sedation when in any other level of dreaming you go into Limbo or in Fischer's case possibly a lower level of dreaming? Seems strange to me that death in Limbo is an immediate escape from sleep even though you would still be under sedation in reality.
I'd love to hear your thoughts.
What puzzled me the most is why Nolan uses "Non je ne regrette rien" as the main soundtrack cue throught the movie.
Why that song? I don't think is just a simple Piaf reference. I doubt he used that just because the liked it!
The trauma for Cobb is that he feels guilty. Mal, in his dreams, IS guilty. Why then, to wake up, must he listen to a song that says 'I regret nothing', because he actually does regrets something!!
Is it because he should stop regreting in order to wake up?
If that's it, who's cue is that? Cobb's or Nolan's? I mean, is that Nolan speaking to the audience or Cobb speaking to himself?
This is spot on. Whatever else is true, *the* recurring theme in the film is Cobb's guilt and his inability (unwillingness?) to look at his children's faces. When I watched it, I got the sense that his loss is deeper than an inability to return home because of being framed by Mal. I think the "return home" that Saito says he can arrange is Cobb's waking up, once he works through the guilt that makes him want to escape reality by staying asleep. My only question is what Cobb is actually guilty about, since if this is right, his causing Mal's suicide was all part of a dream. He says to Ariadne, "Thanks for not asking whether I killed my wife". Is it possible that he killed her in reality as well? Of course no amount of attention to the film's details can settle this for sure.
because after he planted the idea that killing herself would take her to the real world, she will continue to do it in every level of her dream, even in real life when she gets to it. No matter what she will eventually kill herself in real life.
In my opinion, Cobb stuck has already stuck in the limbo from the whole time. And we know that limbo is a state where your mind is lost in your subconscious and never to go back. This pretty much rules out everything else. I don't think Ariadne is an agent sent by Cobb's dad to save Cobb from limbo, since he can't be saved. Why would anybody take the job to enter limbo and hope to wake up from it? So my guess is that this is all merely fragments of Cobb's subconscious mind, and that what we see in the movie is Cobb's mind leaping from one to another jumbled up with his memories and his ultimate desire to return to reality.. which he can't do, so he has to accept that his dream/limbo is his reality.
After reading Brad's assessment on the film, I was impressed. Assuming that Brad Brevet's interpretation of the movie is correct(which I totally agree), Is it fair enough to say that Mal is truly alive and well in reality? ; Adriadne suggesting an IDEA to Cobb about "confronting his guilt" seems like Adriadne is the extractor in this movie, planting an IDEA TO Cobb.. I don't know, but it seems to be…. The whole story is still in the dream world I guess. But what is the real job assignment in this film? Is the mission really for Fisher?, for me, I think this whole mission is for COBB. …..
I read many post asking the same, rather if it is one way or another…
Couldn't be both?
that the hole Fisher's inception trip turned also (not necessarily planned) into an inception mission for Cobb?
My take on it…
I think he was still in a dream within a dream when he wakes up and goes home at the end. He is one of those people who choose to stay in a dream state at the chemist's lab. Either his wife keeps coming in as an attempt to get him back to reality and he's constantly fighting her to stay in this dream state or those are just memories of their journey together into dreams or their fights about whether to dream or not – clearly they disagreed on this and it's projecting in his subconscious. He feels guilty bc he enjoys this dream state but at the cost of leaving his wife and children. That's established because she constantly reminds the audience that he promised they'd stay together. I think the most important clue is that reality is NEVER established in the movie. The top is irrelevant bc we are told upfront that one should never use another one's totem and he uses his wife's t/o the movie. It would have been great if Ariadne used hers!
…I think Director Nolan's attempt in this film is to make the viewers make their own interpretation on the movie. For short, to each his own understanding on the said film. Many scenes in the film are questionable, there's no question about that. But the true beauty of the film is that for the audience to make his/her own ending version. Again, Christopher Nolan is a master on this genre. Hoping for a sequel. Fingers crossed.
I saw the movie 2 times and can't wait to see it a 3rd. I have some thoughts/potential observations that I'd like to get feedback on:
1) In the scene where Mol jumps, I think that Mol was in the same hotel room as Dom even though Dom was looking at her across the street. So, if true, this scene was made up by Dom in his dream and he didn't actually experience it with Mol.
2) I need to see the script because I think Seto says to Dom in Limbo what Dom says to Mol in Level 4. If that is the case then my interpretation is that we have witnessed inception being performed on Dom. The Fisher story line demonstrates the methodology. I believe that Mol is planting an idea in Dom to come back to reality and I believe that she forges herself to be Seto throughout. Level 4 Dom believes that coming back to reality – letting go of the guilt is his idea (tells Mol that) and in the limbo state he actually does it.
3) Didn't Dom say something to the effect that he went deep into Mol's dreams to find her biggest secret and it shows him opening a safe and in the safe is Mol's totem? What importance did that have other than to show us that the totem was not Dom's?
4)Could this be a theatrical statement on addiction? Dom is addicted to dreaming, can't find reality?
I want to believe that it was Dom performing inception on himself to wake up. I think he was depressed following the death of his wife and was sleeping away his sadness. He couldn't wake up because that would mean saying good-bye to his wife for good.
Anyway, loved the movie and I love reading everyone's interpretation…
I watched the movie yesterday,and I was so confused by the ending and the whole movie actually, but I was talking to my friend, and she had a very simple explanation that I didn't think of , she thinks that when he woke up on the plane in the end he was just a normal person travelling to see his kids because when he woke up he didn't recognize the other members and he left alone, also his dad was waiting 4 him and the machine was not attached to him when he woke up, so maybe the whole idea of the movie revolves about a dream that he had in the plane !!! do u think it's that simple?! I wasn't convinced at all honestly
Insanity or a world created…Cobb was right there. He is unable to cope with Mal's death and has lost touch with the real world. It is evident when Michael Caine's character implores Cobb to return to reality, to wake up. Cobb is a modern day/sci-fi type Walter Mitty.
Well. Very well explained article you have here. Albeit even with all the evidence that points to a dream that you found, I still believe it is reality. I wanted Dom to be happy and know that he can be with his REAL children, in reality, not in Limbo. Not that I'm arguing with your opinion, I am just stating mine.
Thank you for your insight into the film and for sharing it with us.
I think, Movie started with some fact which has not been shown.. Dom was returning to home and he had a dream … and the movie started …. at the end he woke up at his destination and go on to his normal life… Reason to believe this is that … at the end no one has spoken with each other… like a fellow passenger they spread smiles to each other … Dom's architect and his dad's student also not spoken with Dom, as per movie she is more worried about him and his return to real life… she has also not spoken with his dad who has introduce him with DOM… so think this way.. Movie was a dream of Dom which came to an end when he reached his destination… and theory explained in the movie was all in the dream world not real… it is just a director or story writer's cut to make people think about something which is dream… and put their assumptions…
If u watch till after the credits the top falls!!!
You know I'm starting to wonder if there is a correct answer. This is because of two things:
1. At the end, Philippa (the little girl) is actually wearing different shoes, she's no longer wearing the black sneakers she was wearing every other time we've seen her. However, she DID sound much older on the phone and it IS weird they are wearing the same clothes.
2. Dom's wedding ring- he seems to be wearing it in either "reality", or in memories of the past when he is with Mal. This helps to distinguish what is real and what is not. However, in several key scenes, including the last one, Dom's left hand is – frustraingly – hidden.
3. References to the word 'green'. In most of the subconcious levels – I'm not sure if it's all – there is something to do with the word green. Mr Green, Greenside Taxis, Greenleaf written on the safe – but that doesn't occur in "reality". Is this some kind of clue?
These small inconsistencies make me wonder if Nolan hasn't made it virtually impossible to conclude this one way or the other… but maybe I just need to see it again with some frame by frame pausing!
Sorry in the above I meant that Dom is wearing the ring in dreams or in memories, not in "reality"….
There is one tiny detail which convinces me that the top was about to fall when the final scene cut out. That is, the audible oscillations of the spinning top were changing, meaning the movement of the top was varying, meaning it would eventually, necessarily, fall. Therefore, not a dream. The scene is very dreamlike, but life is like that sometimes, no?
@K
If that's the case, that only proves that he's not in anyone else's dream (citing the reason and behavior of the totem provided in the movie). He could still be dreaming, or in reality.
I like to think that he's dreaming of the day he was reunited with his children; it explains why the kids are wearing similar clothing, albeit not identical clothing. Either way you look at it, whether he's actually awake or not, the ending has resolution to it and there is some satisfaction when you leave the movie.
Dear all, really I think that one of the targets of director was to make us to discuss such theme. Everyone can find several things which say – it was a dream, but other things say – it was a reallity. Even left hand was hidden.
Really, even director doesn't knows was it reality or not.
P.S. But anyway, it was nor dream. nor reality. It was just a good film.
http://i27.tinypic.com/2lwktja.jpg
In my opinion a lot of the analysis is flooored on very basic levels. Most of the scenes slash devices described as common and indicative of dreams are also very common devices for movies- ie narrow escapes. Secondly the reason Cobb can reenter the us is clear but this isn't mentioned on any post above ihave read – if the us could break it's dependence on oil it would forgive the perpetrator anything. Further points people have stated the top is always spinning in a dream this is incorrect- it won't stop spinning if spun- ie is perfectly balanced. The top will work fine for Cobb the only time it wouldn't work is if someone knew it's exact characteristics- ie his wife was alive(so she must be dead) . The details of the mechanics of how the dreams are shared are deliberatly skimmed over- how many sci fi films bog down in the how ? The pass on the passport at the end is not genuine because it's ilegsl to reproduce one. The end is left slightly dubious so people will discuss it and see it twice – so the company makes more money
I belive the begining is reality, I mean throughout the movie when Dom is dreaming, Mal interfers, and she never did this once in the reality part of the moive. But then after he finaly defeats her, his guilt, she no longer can infiltrait, and she is laid to rest. So after they all wake up on the plane, at some point, Dom begins dreaming again. This time without the machine, because his guilt was put to rest, which was the one thing keeping him from free dreaming. Just a theory, that wraps everything up in a nice little bow, while remaining a happy end.
Two things.
Dom's eyes are a totally different colour when he wakes on the beach at the start and end.
also, you cant read in a dream. at the start during the inception on the train, he looks at his watch and the make etc is all muddled.
but at the end at the airport, all the words visable are legible.
its look like there should be rules in the hole movie environment, no rules no good explanation:
1 To go in limbo you have to pass level 3 of sub dreams, OR die while you are too anesthetized ! (the effect in the real world will be coma, even the effect of the anesthetic is over)
2 To get out of limbo you must suicide yourself, or be killed from some other guy!
(or let say it simple you must die, but this will happen only if you are in limbo)
3 You can look young, older, different in all levels of sub dreams, not only in limbo, but in limbo is quite possible to become older because you thinking that this is reality, and is normal to be older every year you stay there.
4 In level 1,2,3 the architect was the girl, but when they go in the limbo the architect there was Cobb.
5 The machine into the briefcase combines the dreams of all members in one dream, and all members have projections which dont like some other people to change their own environment, some of the projections (like Fischers ) are even trained to attack such attempts.
Well, at the end of the movie they didnt show us if the whipping-top stop or continue spining, i think that continue ( its all a dream for Cobb) BECAUSE in the plain Saito call by phone to his people to resolve Cobb problem, but if you remember , Saito said he will call them only if he see that the Inception is done????
Well Saito was dead when the Inception was done, so he didnt saw it !!!
So we should expect INCEPTION 2 – AWARENESS
I just finished watching this movie and I am puzzled as to what happened at the end. I researched immediately but I have even more questions now.. I saw that many people think that the whole movie was a dream. Well if you can wake from a dream by dying then why didn't Cobb wake up when he drowned on level 1? if that was all that it took.. he died twice if all of it was a dream, once with Mal and once in the river. About the kids. We never saw their faces, maybe they were younger when he left them, with the same hair length.. but we never saw their faces so we would never know if they didn't age. And all this rambling and I still can't tell if this film was a dream or it ended with reality.. :\
Antonia, Cobb could not wake up in the dream by dying because they were all under HEAVY sedation. Which is the reason Saito went into limbo in the first place after he got shot. Mal did not kill him she only wounded him. Cob went into limbo as well because HE DID DROWN in the van. He awoke on the shore as a representation of his watery death.
Giveaway signs that it was all a dream…
When Mal is taking his final stroll down the walk way after
picking up the bags in the airport..
Notice that there is an older man about 20-30 feet ahead of Cobb and cob is almost seeming to mimic is his movement down the hallway "stepping in time" with one another.
When cob passed Yuseff and Athur (while we are looking at the back of Cobb's head) they can clearly be seen with two women own in a green shirt, one in a brown jacket, and another man in a suit to the left of Cobb.
When the camera angel flips and we are looking at Cobb' face Yuseff and Athur have disappeared from the seen but the two women and the man in the suit are still there.
As Cobb moves down the walk way we can see that the big black and white Airport sign says… "Ground Level" with an arrow pointing up on both sides of the sign. Possibly hinting that Cobb's is still sleep and that he needs to "Wake Up" to become "Grounded" again.
Lastly…. the man holding the sign that reads FISCHER is absolutely not real. The closer you get to him the more he seems to be a mannequin or even a card board cutt out. He never moves or even blinks and never his facial espression never changes. Everyone else in this scene (once Cobb passes him and you can see the back of the mannequin's head) is moving in some form or fashion except him. And actually as
Cobb is passing him he seems to become almost "flat".
Also as cob is approaching him there is another man right behind holding a yellow sign and if you watch the movie in slow motion on a BLU-RAY player he amost seems to grow old right before your eyes. Look at is mouth and neck area they seem to go from a young to old form as Cobb approaches.
Also after cob spins the top on the table…
Notice how the paper is laid out, with the dinosaurs, water color paints etc. The paper and the way everything is laid out (including the way the sunlight is hitting the table) reminds you a bit of a sea shore doesn't it? And wooden window slats in the background look very similar to the rectangular shaped buildings that were on the skyline of Mal and Cobbs' dream word that they built.
Actually even at the reverse of that angle where you can see the chair it even has rectangular slats as well similar to the skyline buildings.
at then cobb is not wearing the ring, so he is not dreaming.
he wears the ring only when he is asleep.
What if the whole movie was a dream?? I mean think about it… what the hell is a dream inception? The whole plot seems to be make believe. Only in a dream would you accept that it is possible to share dreams with others and induce a dream state.
If you reject the original plot mechanism, the same could be true of every fictional movie ever created. Star Wars? One long dream sequence. See? You have to accept at least the basics.
I think that the vision of his childrens faces were his totem. this is why you never see the faces until the end, telling us it is in fact reality. when Mal tried to trick him into lookink at the kids faces and he turned his head. why? because if he looked and seen them he would think it was reality, but he didnt look. the top spinning was just a way for him to hold on to Mal, it was her totem not his, so therefor it does not matter if it fell at the end or not, when he called his kids at the end and they looked at him, he knew right then and there it was reality, because I belive that was his totem.
Cob mentions himself that is reality is being with his kids. The whole time he seems to be in a battle with mal of who are his kids ( Projections or not)In the end we are in Cob's reality ( thus why he doesn't care whether the top falls or not) even if it might not be the real world. He got rid of what was stopping him and got what he wanted to see his kids faces and being with them
The entire movie cannot be a dream, not just because it would be a total F-you to the audience, but simply because of the fact that at various points of the movie, we are not following Cobb. The scene where Arthur teaches Ariadne some tricks about designing levels – Cobb is not in that scene at all, and if it was just his dream, he would never not be a part of it. There is another scene where we start with Ariadne's perspective as she makes her totem. Those scenes are reality, which means the whole "The entire movie was a dream" theory is faulty.
the end is real, he is not dreaming, he is not wearing the ring, as simple as that.
when he is dreaming he is wearing the ring, when he is not dreaming, he is not wearing the ring.
Here's a question… is the Mal in his dreams just a projection, or is she the real Mal, a part of limbo? It depends on the way the dream mechanism works, really.
projection.
remember the top doesn't mean anything because it was originally Mol's. the totem is void as a device to determine whether one is dreaming or not as soon as someone else touches it. so actually nowhere in the film is the top at all relevant to determine what is or isn't "reality".
read again.
when cobb is dreaming he is wearing the ring, when he is not dreaming, he is no wearing the ring.
and the kids are wearing different clothes in the end.
besides michael caine said the end was real:
"[The spinning top] drops at the end, that's when I come back on. If I'm there it's real, because I'm never in the dream. I'm the guy who invented the dream."
Parts of the story were dreams but the end was reality. I know this because in the real scenes Cobb's wearing a wristwatch and isn't in dreams. Also throughout the film there is clicking in the background 'music', that of a clock, or watch. It's all about the wristwatch.
I think that Cobb did, in fact, wake up. The main point I have is the fact that the top at the end wobbles. In the dreams, when he spun the top, it never wobbled at all, just continued to spin.
On a side note, the wardrobe person for the movie did an interview and stated that the children were in fact wearing slightly different clothes.
I havent read every post so this may have been mentioned already. When Cobb picks up his son at the end, the son tells him they are building a house on a cliff. Does anyone think this falls in line with 'dream construction'? The house in the ending seen appears to be next to a cliff.
lol..meant 'ending scene'. Im thinking that he is still dreaming. Constructing the dream through his projected children.
man, michael caine said it was real.
besides the kids are different, and cobb is wearing the ring.
ITS REAL.
I only saw the movie this morning. First time. Im really confused. Dont know what to believe. We are all confused. Nolan needs th explain to us
ok everyone. I figured out the difinitive answer and it is going to blow your mind. you will not believe me at first, it might take you a while to see what I see. But see that is because I am an adept lucid dream/astral traveler and understand what all the symbols of dreams mean. all the symbols (totems) in our dreams represent our false perception of reality. Life is but a dream. Livin the dream. we think they are two different things but they are not. make no distinction between dreams and reality, this is a false distinction created by polarized perception, splitting the two hemispheres of our brain in half to represent our cut off from oneness. our langauge has confused man, think about the meaning of the story of BABEL. It is the meaning of every story, it represents mans dissconnect from his creator. every building you see crumble in inception is a symbol for the removal of this seperation between man and the creator. In the end the top keeps spinning because cobb has figured out how to hold the ideal dream in place. that's all life is, doing what you have to do to hold your ideal dream in it's ideal place.
i think that Cobb is still dreaming thinking that it is reality while it's only level one. going more into levels of dreams what what got him confused, esp when Mal kills herself, allowing her back into real reality, no dream, where she's with her kids. Cobb is still hooked up, living with his regret of Mal's death, allowing him not to wake up. which is why Mal cannot kick him out, which she only jumps in his dreams, pretty much all levels, to try to wake him by interrupting his plans.
the time span of all this makes sense that it's a short time period, having them live 50 years together and growing old could only mean that they were in a dream within a dream, probably even with in another dream.. making them in the same level as the fortress level. jumping back to level one, it all happened in a short time span.
idk, i'll have to watch it again, and put into consideration of all ideas posted, tons of good ones..
I agree. I like your interpretation too, as this is how I interpreted it.
The top never worked. IT WAS MAL'S TOTEM. It never worked for Dom because it was Mal's. He woke up when he died. It all was a reality and the top kept spinning because it was Mal's, and it doesn't work for Dom. The end was reality, they are the same age because Dom was dreaming some time during the duration of the dream within a dream within a dream within a dream
INCEPTION WAS JUST A REALLY LONG BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY MUSIC VIDEO.
Cobb's totem is the children.
In short: Cobb is always dreaming when he wears the wedding ring to remind himself of Mal because he misses her, but in the harsh reality he knows that she is dead.
The top is Mal's totem, it doesn't work with Cobb and his totem is the children's faces. The entire movie cannot be a dream because in various points the perspective is changed.
The end is reality, Mal is dead, and he sees his children.
My theory is that Cobb's real totem is his gun, not the top, which is Mal's. Evidence for this is that the gun and the top are stated as being the only two things that he is carrying when dragged before Saito at the beginning and end of the film; he is holding his gun when he spins the top in the hotel, checking to see if he is real before phoning his kids; he is holding his gun when he confronts Mal in Limbo for the final time and is thus able to convince himself she is not real. This is complicated by the fact that Saito touches the gun in the scene near the end when they are both in Limbo. Immediately after touching the gun Cobb awakes on the plane. Has his totem now been compromised?
Of course this theory could be wrong. His real totem could be his ring or his watch.
I have just watched the movie for the third time. I regret not seeing it in a theater. I have read this entire discussion. But I have some minor issues which I hope people will comment on.
Why did the first, failed architect need to be killed and why was that Saito's decision and not Cobb's?
We were never shown the full function of Ariadne's totem. Arthur's, being the loaded die, I assume would always come up a certain number in reality and not do that in a dream? Cobb's/Mal's would fall in reality and keep spinning in a dream. Ariadne's Queen would, assuming again, fall over in reality if pushed but what would it do in a dream?
In the initial kidnap scene, Fischer's projection of security men attacked far too aggressively. They were wildly shooting at everything and would have put their employer at a very high risk.
Good questions!!
Just to further the discussion…
you don't see the first architect get killed… while its implied, he may not have been killed, but the threat of his death was the Saito used to hook Cob into doing the job.
As for the security men – Fischer has been trained to kill himself in order to wake up – perhaps his subconscious is working on the same premises. From that angle it seems that his 'training' didn't include anything about heavy sedation to the extent that the chemist has put them under in this case.
I just watched this rather quickly – but my first run at this is. That he tried to bring his wife back from the dream world to the real world. The spinning top is NOT what helps him determine reality when HE is dreaming, but only when he is anothers dreams. In his dream it is, his children. His ability to see there faces – lets him know he is back to the real world.
My review of Inception: meh. I found 'Paprika' much more interesting, smarter, and more original.
one best movie all time unbeatable and experimental movie.. not sure how they cant think and do this movie … fantastic
I don't think the whole movie was a dream..because when Cobb spinned his totem after waking up from a dream with adriane (when adriane made a bridge, then she was stabbed by Mal), the totem stopped spinning..
what if the whole movie is following Dom in limbo, and Mal is the only one who can join him there because of the inception he put in her? that would explain her ability to join him on every level, and why all the people central to Doms experience are aggressive towards her.
What really adds to the whole story is that after Dom spins the top he walks away from it before he sees it topple, meaning to him it wasn't important whether it was a dream or not. He was happy just being with his kids.
This whole movie plays on the genre that the matrix played on: defining what reality really is. To me this whole movie makes more sense as a dream, amongst many other reasons, I say this because it made no effort to make its plot scientifically sound.
At first i was thinking also one million possibilities,that he is a psycho and ariadne his psyciatrist, mals alive and he is dreaming e.t.c.
BUT there is a really tiny thing to notice!when cobb is dreaming he's wearing his wedding ring and when he is in real life he is not wearing it because his wife is dead!
well this being a reasonable explanation or not the movie is one of the best movies delivered to the art of cinematography!
just because we didn't see the totem falls at the end, we really can discuss about it for almost a year. Nolan is really damn genius.
Its reality at the end- nolan goes at length to distinguish dreams from reality to the viewer spending around the first half the film doing so. Also the entire plot and gravitas are nullified if not- theres no danger no suspense. Some people are just trying to be clever
I think that the end of the movie is reality, starting from when he wakes up on the plane. The reason Cobb and Saito meet again and Saito is old is because he got stuck in limbo (remember he died during the level 3 scene where they were breaking into the vault). Saito was never shown getting out of the van when it crashed into the water(Level 2). Therefore Cobb and Saito were both stuck in limbo. I believe that this is why Saito asks Cobb "are you here to kill me?" When they met again at the end. The kill would be his kick to wake back up on the plane. We know that time under is different from time awake so that;s why he has aged so much. While he knows about being under he does not know how to design and recreate dreams as Cobb does therefore he has created his dream out of memories. I believe this is how Cobb figures out how to find him, just like he knew where to find Mal. Cobb knows how to create a kick to wake him up and knows how to go under multiple times. Therefore when he found Saito, he was old and Cobb was not. When Cobb found Saito they killed themselves to get back to reality (the gun on the table). This is why Saito looks so confused when he wakes up from his dream on the plane.
I dont believe the totem was working for him, I believe it was just to keep the other characters believing that was his totem. Meanwhile his totem was something like his gun, ring, or seeing his children's faces.
I believe that he was finially in reality because the totem started to shake and he finially saw his kids faces. If he was finially sure about it he would not have seen them. It might be wishful thinking, but it makes me feel better and happier if I believe that.
random details-
*when his wife killed herself she woke up.
*What was it that he planted in her mind for her to believe it wasn't real? if it was his dream and only she knew the true weight of it what was it he planted?
the idea of how much the totem weighed?
*The kids never aged
*his wife is supposed to be his sub-conscience so what if he's trying to tell himself to wake up the whole time.
what if the idea that he is in reality is planted in his head.
*The Wife would of woke him up
*why were they there in the first place?
*did they actually live in there dreams or did they just go for a couple of hours everyday like the people in the basement?
*If they lived in there dreams, 5 minutes was equivalent to an hour and they lived in the dream for 50 years, how is that possible unless they were in different levels of a dream where they have more time?
*at the end his son says "look what i've been building"
and the daughter says "he's building a house on a cliff"
—-
just a few things to think about…
at the end when the top is spinning he doesn't wait for it too stop.
the moral is he doesn't care if its truth or reality.
he's happy.
Inception Theory
Let’s get right down to brass tax. By now I imagine that everyone has seen the movie Inception, directed by Christopher Nolan. Cobb (Leonardo Dicaprio) is in fact, in a dream state at the beginning, middle, and end of the movie – but at different dream levels. By extrapolation we can determine that Mal (Cobb’s wife) and Cobb were undergoing “shared” dreaming one afternoon when they went so deep that their dream state became their reality and 50 years (in the dream) had passed. Mal did not want to leave the ‘dreamscape’ they had created so Cobb incepted her so she would be convinced they needed to kill themselves to wake up. Once they do commit suicide (train), Cobb believes he is back in reality but Mal believes they are still dreaming so she commits suicide to “wake up” and effectively forces Cobb do accompany her in death by notifying their lawyer of the event so Cobb couldn’t stay with them. He decides not to join her. Mal now dies in reality by jumping off the ledge and Cobb feels responsible for this suicide because he implanted the idea of “dying to live” by incepting her. My theory emanates from the basis that the whole movie is Cobb’s dream following his wife’s fate. Michael Caine (Miles) hand picks Ariadne as an architect; her mission, to plant an inception on Cobb to free him of guilt of his dead wife. The whole Fischer ideal is used as a foundation to plant subtle clues to Cobb to not only come back to reality but to free himself of guilt over Mal. 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 between 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. 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 original architect rats them out makes Cobb look for a new architect. Where would Cobb go to find a new architect? That is right, his dad Miles. The whole movie wasn't called inception for Fischer, it was an inception for Cobb to get him back to reality. Why else would Miles know to pick up Cobb at the airport at the end of the movie? Rather, how would he know he Cobb was coming and that he needed to taken back to see his kids – Miles is never told of this nor would it be implied. He must have knew he was coming (Miles plan in the first place). A strong rebuttal for the totem falling argument: 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. Not to mention the fact that Cobb’s totem is originally Mal’s and unreliable as Cobb explained, “If someone touches your totem, it defeats the whole purpose.” An even more ambitious theory would be such that when Cobb 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). Substantiating evidence of this theory is that when Mal does jump from the hotel ledge and goes back to reality there is evidence to suggest she was right in that it was still a dream. Are we supposed to believe that she went up to the hotel room and then proceeded to trash it, ride the elevator down, walk across the street to another building or hotel, ride up the elevator, and finding the room which was across from the one where Cobb was sent for their anniversary – just so he could not stop her from jumping? In a dream, this is perfectly reasonable. In reality, would someone go through all that unnecessary trouble? Not to mention, upon further review, looking 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. This is synonymous with the infinite mirrors that Ariadne presents to Cobb in her “training”. All of this evidence backed by subtle clues that members of the team keep telling Cobb such as “take a leap of faith” and the chemist says dreams are their reality; these people come here to wake up!
so you're saying that everybody was hired so that dom to finally not feel guilty?
hey it's me again judy so what are you saying that in the hotel room a dream is going on because you see that it's a splitting image so where does mall go? that would mean that she woke up? and also if these people were hired why would saito who was just hired to release don from guilt and up you know going into limbo or yea cause they get shot up….
It's been a while since anyone commented here, but great article Brad! One thing to add that I paid attention to after watching the movie for the 100th time. When he was in the hotel room an he spun the top, it spun for approx 16 seconds before falling. I then went to the end and timed the top again. It spun for about 24 second, that is A LOT longer. That tells me it didn't stop spinning. How much harder could he have spun it? I know it's not an exact science but there is definitely an inconsistency there. Just a thought.
the kids are actually wearing different clothes. i found a side by side shot and the girl has dark sleeves on her dress in one picture, and light sleeves in the other. The boys shirt is slightly different (barely noticeable)…Chris Nolan did this on purpose to mess with people. Also, if you look at the list of actors in the movie, there are two different girls and two different boys playing the parts…younger ages and older ages. So it was real and the top did fall.
The entire movie was a dream by the DOG. You never see the dog because the dog doesn't realize it is not a person.
where's the LIKE button, lol
As far as the wheel spinning or falling in a dream, even that is not absolute! Even in the dream you at times may have it both ways and dream is not bound 100% with physical reality. It may fall, if expected, or continue spinning or even change shape or fly depending on what forces ( subconscious , conscious, metaphysical forces , archetypes … ) are interfering with its presentation.
All said the last shot of the movie showed a continuously spinning wheel. That is against the physical reality and therefore proves he is in the dream.
However if it had fallen, even then it was not rulling out the dream state.
Eric…I think you nailed it here. Cobb is stuck in a perpetual dream state. He just changes levels througout the movie.
The whole scenario with Fischer seemed silly (how did Saito know there would be a monopoly in the future? Why would Cobb's team care?), and I think it was there entirely to work on Cobb.
I think the total lack of character development is due to everything happening within a dream. Think about it…NONE if the characters are really developed (beyond Fischer(Maybe)). Everyone behaves as a mere projection.
At the end, Cobb is able to see his children again, but it is not in the real world. He has just been able to move beyond his guilt about Mal's death (even though she might still be alive in "reality".) Perception=reality and this is the reality that Cobb has now chosen . And it gives him comfort.
Hey why don't we just write to the writer of story and find out what the truth really is?