Inception: Theories, Points & Counterpoints
Published on July 22, 2010 by admin · 43 Comments
By Nick Rogers
Yappers Nick Rogers, Christopher Lloyd and Austin Lugar dissect and discuss “Inception’s” true outcome. Obviously, MAJOR SPOILER ALERTS, and please join the debate with comments.
Nick Rogers
One ticket to “Inception” should cost about $750. Theater ushers could then give three hours of college credit to departing patrons in lieu of mints.
Intelligent, witty and exhilarating, “Inception” knocks you flat with punches of sheer spectacle and pop psychology no other summer 2010 film (hell, no other 2010 film, period) has even bothered to throw.
So few movies demand such attention, and Christopher Nolan’s too busy throwing haymakers to hold the audience’s hand through this mammoth mindgame — a film that, at first blush, feels like the bravest, boldest, most bracing blockbuster since “The Matrix.” Its inter-dream audacity makes “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” look like a Little Einstein title.
Nolan’s latest dangerous tumble down a rabbit hole of perception, identity and memory might be his masterpiece. It might also be the one most open to narrative interpretation.
In many ways, being taken by “Inception” is like being swept up in street magic: For all its complexities and exposition, there are simple illusions and emotions at play that dazzle the most. The same thing went for certain episodes, and later the ultimate endgame, of “Lost”: For all of the scientific-notation talk of “constants,” it boiled down to love and togetherness.
Those are present in “Inception,” too — very much a story of fathers & sons and husbands & wives, albeit viewed through a grimy prism. We all have dreams of success and comfort for our children and spouses that we hope become reality. Well, in “Inception,” you may see those dreams play out (at least in part), but they might simply remain dreams.
IF YOU’VE NOT SEEN “INCEPTION” AND WANT PURITY, BAIL NOW.
While this doesn’t begin to detail everything that happens in “Inception,” here’s the main crux (which could serve as a recap for those who got temporarily lost). Dom (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a single-minded man: He wants to get home to his kids, Phillipa and James, after being forced to flee the United States. The latest job presented to him by Saito (Ken Watanabe) makes that possible for him: Plant an idea inside a rival competitor’s mind to break up his company.
Think of this heist film as “Ocean’s Pi” and Dom — in DiCaprio’s best performance in years — as a man who values the solace of theft over the pain of creation for good reason.
Dom’s an international fugitive after authorities believe he murdered his wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard). In actuality, Mal took her own life.
After spending a lifetime in a shared subconscious with Dom — a lazy afternoon in real time — Mal didn’t want to leave to return to Phillipa and James, fascinated by the god-playing world she and Dom had created.
To persuade her to return, Dom performed “inception,” planting an idea in her mind — that idea being that the world they were in wasn’t actually real and that it didn’t matter if they died there because they’d always have each other in the real world.
The problem is that this belief carried over into the real world, which Mal also believed to be false and a place where they couldn’t actually die — tragically not the case when she took a nosedive off a hotel windowsill. (Here, “Inception” approaches the cautionary-tale aspects of “Altered States.”)
In the end, Dom, having carried out Saito’s heist mission despite breakneck complications, returns to Phillipa and James on American soil. But before embracing them, he spins his dreidel on a dining-room table. The dreidel is Dom’s totem, a unique way for him and him alone to discern reality from dreams. If it topples, he’s in reality. If it continues spinning, he’s in a dream. Although it audibly slows, Nolan cuts to credits before we know for certain.
Yes, “Inception” can be enjoyed on its surface purely as a cerebral ride with a wicked stinger tease. However, in a film that takes place within dreams, dreams within dreams, dreams within dreams within dreams and, in the climax, the raw landscape of the subconscious, it should surprise no one that the narrative’s face value could easily be discarded.
(On a side note, I don’t know whether “Inception” will contend for a Best Picture Oscar. But if there’s a better-edited film this year, I want to see it right now. At one point, Lee Smith simultaneously edits together five — count ‘em, five — layers of consciousness with suggested hints to an invisible sixth.)
While I think it’s impossible to grasp beyond basic to moderate narrative understanding after the strap-in, hang-on feel of the first-time viewing (especially with Watanabe’s strained English-language dialogue), suggestions are sprinkled throughout that the final moments are all in Dom’s head (from the moment he willfully stays in Fischer’s subconscious to the final shot). In some regards, that makes it a mega, meta “Memento.”
Perhaps the entire film is, too, save for sequences in Dom and Mal’s initial shared subconscious and the torturous reality following their departure from it.
Here are my rationales, and Christopher Lloyd’s counterpoints, discussing the theory that Dom’s regained freedom and family in the finale are not to be taken as literal reality, but as a wish-fulfillment fragment of his slumbering subconscious.
As it’s said in the movie, “The deeper the issues, the stronger the catharsis,” and “Truth? What truth?”
1. Where’s Grandma?
Nick: Unless I missed her somehow, where was “Grandma” in that final scene? Dom’s mother was presumably watching the kids while Dom’s father, Miles (Michael Caine), was off at a foreign university, right? Subconsciously, Dom has no idea who’s watching his kids now or where they’ve ended up. He’d like to think they’re playing in the idyllic backyard of Grandma’s house, so that’s where he envisions them.
Chris: Maybe grandma and Michael Caine are divorced and hate each other.
Nick: That’s a big leap of faith to make. Given the family fallout resulting from Mal’s suicide, I’d think Nolan would bring that up were it to be true.
2. How old are those kids again?
Nick: As to those kids, notice how they never seemed to age. And, again, unless I missed it, there was never a specific amount of time mentioned that Dom had been away from them (although it was long enough for it to have become a burden). Perhaps they’re at the idealized age at which he chooses to remember them in his subconscious.
Chris: The kids did age. I know this only because I spotted in the end credits two different sets of actors. It said James, 20 months and James, 3 years, etc.
Nick: Good counterpoint. I saw that credit notation, too, but didn’t know whether they’d been played in a flashback sequence. I still think the lack of explanation for how long Dom’s been away — and presumably able to build some sort of business around his technology — seems suspicious.
3. One call solves it all.
Nick: After at least touching upon the intricacies of extradition in “The Dark Knight,” Christopher Nolan pretty much just leaves it at the idea that Saito can make a call and get Dom back in the United States — and under his own name, no less. That seems like an atypical gap for Nolan and perhaps a tad too easy for it to be reality.
Chris: I thought of this same point. You could also argue that if he really wanted his life back, he could have targeted the governor of his home state and planted the inception: “I must grant Dom Cobb a full pardon.” Probably a lot easier to get to a governor than businessman Fischer (Cillian Murphy), or Saito, for that matter.
Nick: Ha. When you phrase it that way, it makes me think of Reggie Jackson believing he must kill the Queen in “The Naked Gun.” To me, a lack of explanation for Saito’s pull was the biggest smoking gun for the argument that the reunion is not to be believed.
4. Geek out on Greek mythology.
Nick: Apart from being the noble bearer of reams of exposition, Ellen Page’s dream-architect character is Ariadne, whose namesake is famous for giving Theseus (Dom) a sword and thread to lead him out of the labyrinth of the Minotaur (Mal). However, Theseus abandons Ariadne (much as Dom does in choosing to stay in the subconscious and not following Ariadne out). Perhaps Dom, like an addict, is creating loopholes in his mind that he thinks will lead him out and, in conjuring new characters in his mind, is drawing on his knowledge of Greek mythology.
Chris: Yes, the mythology allegory was fairly obvious, and I think just thrown in to show off how literate Nolan is.
Nick: Greek mythology: Always worth paying attention in class.
5. Arthur seems too good for that.
Nick: For me, this was the biggest huh-what: Dom’s heist pointman, Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), doesn’t anticipate that Fischer’s brain would have had a militarized subconscious from training to prevent extraction/inception?! That seems unexpectedly sloppy for a notably fastidious guy like Arthur. Maybe that was another manifestation of Dom’s brain showing the impossibility of ever really getting home.
Chris: Meh. If he’s so fastidious, how come he didn’t notice Dom’s obsession with Mal that kept ruining their missions? Besides, it would be hard to know if an exec received dream training unless you tapped his dreams first. It’s not like there’s a Web listserv where dream companies post a list of their clients. Now maybe if you tapped the CEO of a dream company …
Nick: This is the sticking point that ties a couple of my theories together. OK, so the supposition is that Dom’s been away from his kids long enough to turn his dream-invasion technology into some sort of business, recruit a team and have people (like Tom Hardy’s Eames) who he’s worked with “in the past.” If Dom’s team didn’t teach Fischer in the art of avoiding extraction/inception, then who did? Is dream invasion a growth market? I don’t recall mention of any sort of competitor to Dom’s services.
Maybe, as there was no spoon in “The Matrix,” there is no business. Maybe Dom was just a scientist tragically caught up in his own research, now subconsciously envisioning this as a likely application for his work. (He could be forever asleep in an environment like the one Yusuf [Dileep Rao] shows him.) Also, Arthur did know Mal was tampering with their missions; she shot him in the prologue dream with Saito. He just didn’t know Dom had stashed her away in a metaphysical memory hotel, as Ariadne learned when she took the elevator down to Dom’s brain basement.
Yes, I just typed that previous sentence about a major summer blockbuster.
Austin: I need to see it again for a lot of these points. During the movie, I had a theory that Mal was never real, but an inception planted by Arthur. That was mostly from odd lines like Cobb saying they met in a dream and seeing how her presence defines his entire situation. Their warnings about inceptions ran parallel to her involvement in his life. I’m not sure if that plays out, but I think it just works best as a thematic parallel.
I could just be the romantic or hopeful, but I’m not sure if I want to think that the totem keeps spinning at the end. Thematically, that just felt like less of a cliffhanger, but Nolan giving a “THE END????” type of shot. I think it’s too cruel to think that Dom doesn’t get to be with his kids at the end; even though it may just be a year or so in the real world, he had to endure potentially more than 100 years to get to that point.
Nick: That’s certainly an optimistic view and one that’s wholly possible. If Mal wasn’t real, though (an idea I’d love you to elaborate on), who fathered Dom’s kids?
(via Film Yap)
Tags: audacity, blockbuster, christopher lloyd, Christopher Nolan, eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, few movies, haymakers, inception, little einstein, mindgame, nick rogers, pop psychology, rabbit hole, scientific notation, sheer spectacle, street magic, sunshine of the spotless mind, togetherness, tumble down
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Marvellous work boys. This kind of article is exactly what I needed after that movie. One of my biggest huh-whats was the fact that in the final moments of Seito’s dream-state they alluded to them getting out, and then Dom opens his eyes. Why would they not show him coming out through all the kicks like they did with the others? And also, I get how the explosion kick would still effect him, which would jump him back to the elevator, but there’s a brick wall because the elevator would have already crashed and lost its kick effect, or maybe not, due to the time difference, however, wouldn’t the effect of the van falling have worn off after it crashes into the water?
Gah! I’m doing my head in. I’m not sure what it all means. But I thought I’d put my two cents in. =]
What a great article to read, thanks for posting it up
Regarding the kids…..when they call Dom on the phone, their voices are much older than the image we see of them in his dreams. Also, at the end when he goes back into the house, everything on the table is in exactly the same position it was in his dreams, wasn’t it? And the image of the kids was the same as when he left it, which he said he could never go back to. I think he was definitely in Limbo….purposefully.
Its a top, not a fucking dreidel
I think have a pretty good understanding of the movie but I am having problems rectifying some things…
When Cobb tells Ariadne that he cant go home because he’s wanted for murdering his wife and she doesn’t say anything, he says “Thanks for not asking me if I did”. Is he saying this sincerely because everyone else that he knows questioned whether or not he did it… or is he being sarcastic because he thinks she automatically assumes that he did it (and thats why she was speechless to that info)?
………….which brings up another question, Why are certain people helping him even though he’s wanted for murder? Mal’s father, Miles (Michael Cain) seems very nonchalant about the fact that his daughter is dead and that his son-in-law is accused of the murder and that his son-in-law fled the country. A real father would at the least NOT HELP someone who murdered his daughter (If he thinks Cobb is guilty) or Try to help his falsey-accused son-in-law to clear his name (if he thought he was innocent). This doesnt make sense to me.
Also Miles tells him to come back to the real world when Cobb tells him his plan to get back home. Why did he say that?
And Arthur apparently knew Mal, before she died. He said “she was lovely” but he also seems not to care that Cobb is wanted for her murder. Maybe it’s a “bro’s before hoes” thing. But no one really seems to care that Mal is dead and Cobb is accused of killing her.
Another thing that seems cold to me is the fact that Cobb and Mal were in limbo without the children and Mal didnt seem to care. She was happy without them. What kind of mother would be happy without her kids. Even when she leaves limbo she says she can tell that the kids are not really hers and Cobb whisked the kids out of the room…
maybe she didnt want any kids. She wanted Cobb all to herself. But he really loved the kids and couldnt be without them so he was always trying to get back to his children, while she was always trying to get him alone in limbo… OR maybe they couldnt have kids at all and he left her limbo for another dream world where they DID have children and she wanted him back. That may not make sense… i just thought of that LOL…
But really why didnt she care about not being with her kids? If you have any answers to these questions please comment.
…another question I have is why was there a gun under the pillow in Saito’s apartment with the green rug. Nash was the dreamer and maybe the architect… regardless of who was the architect why would anybody but Saito put a gun under the pillow?
Also when they are about to leave after they failed the Saito job on the train, Arthur comes to Cobb’s room after he gets off the phone with his kids and says that THEIR ride is on the roof– but when they get to the roof Saito’s helicopter is the only one there. Why would that be their ride, Why would Saito be helping them get away from the company they were working for?
I’ve seen some comments that theorize that Saito is the one behind the whole plot and is using and performed inception on Cobb with the idea that he could go home if he did this job for him
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What if,(OLD)Dom and Mal had lots of (LOTSA!!!) sex with Mal in Limbo gave birth two kids. These two kids were Mal and Dom (in the first dream stage and reality). And they (adult Dom and Mal) in turn, had sex (at least twice) to have 2 more kids, which in my theory is also Dom and Mal but with different names (presumably because they’re in same stage/reality as their adult versions).So Dom and Mal, are therefore, their own children, parents and grandparents. You really can’t go wrong with my theory. Why you ask? Because there is sex, yes, SEX! more accurately incest sex. Awesome!
I don’t understand the order of how Mal and Cobb got out of their 60 odd years in the dream state. They must have been very deep in for it to only be a couple of hours real time, and if Cobb had to go down another level to plant the inception of ‘your world isn’t real’ and used the train crash to kick them back, how come they ended up in ‘reality’ and not the paris level where they would have been 80/90??
I think the point may have been that in the end, it didn’t matter to Cobb whether he was in reality or not. That’s why he didn’t bother to notice whether his totem fell over or kept spinning.
If it doesn’t matter to Cobb, maybe it shouldn’t matter to the viewing audience. The point being, Cobb is satisifed with wherever he is, so lets leave it at that.
I don’t believe Nolan will ever disclose his thoughts on the ending. There are too many plot holes either way. And if the Director’s theory is washed to hell, the movie definitely will lose its luster.
Finally, some random thoughts: How did Cobb and Mal slip into limbo? If they were in limbo, that must have meant they died in a dream….so when Mal took her leap of faith, wouldn’t that have sent her back to the original dream?
Also, how did Cobb slip into another level of dreams to find Saito with no help? It seemed as if there always needed to be at least one other person to monitor the device everyone was hooked up to. And, for that matter, whose dream was limbo Saito in?
Ok, here’s my theory….
Ariadne if their daughter. Cob and Mal are in a shared dream state, the mother died (for whatever reason in the real world, never seen in the movie) and Dom refused to leave the dream world and hold onto the fantasy. He’s been in there for 10 real time years (math from the movie 50 years dream time). So her age works The father has tried to get Dom to come out and failed, so he brings in the daughter to try. Dom’s totem (the top) is actually his wife’s. No one in the movie sees or touches anyone else s totem so the fact that he’s using his wife’s, not only nullifies the effect but allows him to continue to deny that his wife is no longer in there with him. If the top stops spinning and drops it means his wife is dead, which is why at the end he leaves it behind accepting that she is dead and joining he children. This keeps him in the dream world, but for different reasons. Sequel anyone…
Good article. I guess since this is simply a movie there is the odd chance that:
1. There is no “true” interpretation
2. Nolan’s mind and resources are not actually perfect, meaning that some plot holes or rationalizations may not be deliberate clues at all.
3. The film itself is a dream, having the audience experience the various levels of consciousness rather than the characters (giving us cretins the convenience of dismissing any weird unexplained turn as simply just one of those odd things that happen when you dream)
Anyway, ignoring the three points above, it seemed obvious to me that the last scene was a dream. The kids where the same age as in his memories, playing in exactly the same place. Etc.
However, you thought it was weird that a simple phone call could get him through immigration. However Saito may well have pulled strings for days or weeks, just waiting to make that one final call that would settle the deal.
By the way.. How come Mal and Dom where young when killing themselves? Didn’t they grow old in their world?
It was all a dream. How do i know? Simple! Im suprised how noone noticed. The dreidel is the key. It never fell trough entire movie. Each time cob spinned it, he was interupted…(f.e. Bathroom etc) the only time it did fall was in the first scene in limbo, but there is a catch, cob wasnt the one who spinend it, it was saito. Other things that people over net are trying to explain are irelevant. Its all a
bout a small details
My theory;
His wife was right, and they were in a dream the whole time.
If you remember earlier in the movie, Dom said that dreams could be confused for reality. I think he was never in the actual real world at all. When his wife died, I believe she went back to the real world.
I believe he’s been stuck in the godly world with her for so long, that he lost sight of what’s real.
UNLESS..
what if they both never had children? What if the kids were actually figments of their imagination. Something they created for their “perfect” world together.
the kids never grew old at the end, they were the exact same as they looked in his dream.
ah, the never-ending possibilities.
Did anyone else see Mal sitting on the ledge through the window when Leo was splashing his face with water after sampling the sedation for the first time?
@ Nattah Gudgrrl: Miles is Dom’s father, not Mal’s. As for the article, the technology was developed by the military, therefore Dom and his team aren’t necessarily the only ones who possess it. But overall, solid and interesting read. Also, there are a ton of questionable moments like the gravity change only taking place in the hotel level, and all of the bumps and the missed kick from the van not waking Arthur.
Also, I read something about Dom wearing his wedding band in every scene that is believed to be within a dream while the wedding band is absent in every scene that is assumed to be reality (not my idea). The audiences totem perhaps? I forget about the last scene though >_> sorry.. Sorry about the triple post, I had a lot of stuff to get out lol. Happy speculating!
A theory; Miles with the help of Ariadne plants a seed in Dom’s head so he could “be” with his children.
One thing I noticed was that in the beginning of the film, you see Dom using his totem twice. He uses it once after the team leaves Saito on the train while he sits in a hotel room, and then uses it a second time in the warehouse at night after he does his first session with Ariadne. Both times, the totem falls over, telling him he’s in the real world.
The next time he pulls it out, he’s in a restroom after he meets the chemist and tests out his sedatives. He sees images of Mal and the train, and then ‘wakes up’ and washes his face. He takes out the totem and starts to spin it, but Saito appears in the doorway, which causes Dom to knock it down on the ground. After that moment, you never see Dom use his totem until the final cut-scene (he spun it once during that time, but it was in a flashback where he’s telling Mal that he planted an idea in her mind).
Does anyone think its possible that the entire second half of the movie could be a dream while the first half was real? I don’t know if I fully believe it, but I think it could be possible that he could still be in the chemist’s basement living out ‘the job.’
PS- Even if the kids are supposedly older in the end scene, they’re still wearing the exact same clothes. Same lighting too. I agree with the group that says Dom is still dreaming, sadly.
There is more than one occasion when Dom spun the top and it fell, before speaking to his kids on the phone and after one of his experiment sessions, but using the top i think is useless, it was never his totem to begin with, it was Mal’s. The only time it never fell with Dom is in limbo with Mal, when he spun it to assist with planting his idea, but time moves much slower so maybe the top spun for a lot longer than it would have been possible in other higher levels of dreaming.
Also this can be all Dom’s plot to offer a man of Saito’s status to want something enough to arrange him safe passage back to the US. Inception into Saito’s mind, too many possibilities! A friend of mine also came up with the idea that it was all a dream and uses the possibility that the chikdren’s faces were Dom’s totem! They were never seen before the end, maybe proving to him that they were never in reality till he was back in the US.
Just a couple of thoughts that stood out for me. As many have said in the last moments of the movie, the children have not aged, and in fact wear the same clothes throughout the movie. This includes moments that should be memories, not dreams.
Also in the shots of Mal sitting on the hotel ledge and she jumps to her death, why is she sitting on the opposite ledge of the hotel room? Shouldn’t she be on the same ledge of their hotel room? How could she get to the otherside? And why is the opposite room a mirror image. I don’t believe Dom’s explaination that Mal killed herself is true. This leaves me to believe the flashbacks/memories are more dreams.
My theory- The whole thing is a dream.
Reasoning:
- Dom’s totem. It wasn’t his at first, and others knew about how it worked, meaning it doesn’t work for him. Therefore, its toppling/spinning is meaningless.
- Strange elements, such as Saito showing up in Mombasa, Ariadne following Dom without question, and, as Shannon said, the kids were in the exact same spot when he got home.
BECAUSE COBB IS DREAMING:
-Mal is alive. She died in Cobb’s “reality”, which was a dream, so she is therefore awake or in Limbo. In my opinion, She is both awake AND in Limbo, as the Mal in Limbo is Dom’s projection of her.
- Someone is trying to extract information from Cobb, assuming it is his dream. This extractor is most likely Saito or Ariadne, considering both engage in strange behavior.
It doesn’t matter if the spinning top/dreidel falls at the end of the movie… It’s not his totem, it’s Mal’s.
The whole way through the film there is talk of not letting someone touch your totem because then it can be manipulated by them in a dream, throwing your grip on reality off.
That throws up a few different aspects as to what could be happening… Food for thought
Just rewatched the movie, Cobb wears his wedding ring in every scene in which he is supposedly dreaming.. and doesn’t wear it when he supposedly isn’t. Final scene you don’t see whether or not he is wearing the ring.
MY QUESTION… which everyone else seems to have skipped is… what was Cobb’s totem before the spinner? Because he clearly states in the movie that the spinner was his wifes totem. He also says that it has to be something that only one person can use… Thoughts?
How do you know Miles is Dom’s father? I don’t remember him calling him Dad and even if he did it wouldn’t be uncommon to call your father in law Dad. Everything about their interaction screams father in law and I never for a second thought anything else til I read it hear. I still don’t think it was his father. Ultimately it doesn’t matter and neither does anything anyone is talking about. This is all just a vessel to tell a story and breaking it down, it will never make any absolute sense. It’s about character, emotions and the ideas and notions of reality. Its a modern day Citizen Kane. Nobody actually heard Kane say rosebud when he died yet the whole movie was a search for the meaning of rosebud. Ultimately the plot points of this film will always be open to interpretation and the puzzle can never really be solved. The structural parallels to Citizen Kane are uncanny actually. Remember the briefcase in Pulp fiction and the Maltese Falcon. The whole movie is a mcguffin.
@AdepT: There’s a lot of speculation as to whether the top is the totem. The other option is the wedding band, because Dom wears it in every scene that’s a dream. Just thought I’d clear that up for you!
OMG this film waz Krazy!!! My brain could not handle it!!! Too many theories, too little time! Waz up wit Mals mole on her FACE? It got larger with every scene! I think that it represents Cobb’s growing guilt. My only reservation is that Cobb had two indents on his face as well. This may represent the number of times he killed Mal (like a gang symbol). What do ya’ll think????
Well what was it that mal had locked away in her memory for so long that he “thinks” he discovered?
My theory is that mal as the wife and the children don’t actually exist but that she is the inceptor so to speak. She planted the whole dream in his mind – the guilt, the family and even the Fischer job – for some other unknown reason, a lot of the characters are doing a “mr Charles” on dom trying to define reality and dreaming, also you never actually see mal’s shoe drop or the drop itself before she kills herself, perhaps that suicide sequence was a dream also?
Also mal is pronounced very much like “mole” as in spy or plant or double agent – at least that’s how it sounds town Australian ear
So “mal” works with the rest of the team to create and inception (?) in dom, that’s why they all exist within dom’s dreams, also explains no kick when waking up on flight, just a deeper level perhaps.
Ps if it were all real and we can take it on face value – what a stupid flight attendant?!? If it all went wrong she’d have 7 comatose first class passengers hooked up to a dream machine heavily sedated!!
@AdepT Even if Cobb wasn’t wearing a wedding ring in the last scene, it wouldn’t mean it was reality. This is because back in crazy unconstructed dream space land he confronted the “shadow” of his wife. Thus, this argument for understanding what was reality vs. dream, throughout the movie, is not entirely without holes.
I watched for the wedding band during my second viewing of the movie, and I think there’s something to that, but it gets very complex.
Let’s start with something we can first assume to be “real/awake,” such as the first time he meets Ariadne. He isn’t wearing a ring, and so from that, we assume “no ring” means awake. However, in the initial scene where Mal jumps out the window -a scene we assume to be occurring as “real/awake” because Dom tell us it is- Dom is wearing his ring.
SO. Is the implication that after Mal’s death, Dom (who theoretically is dreaming) stopped wearing his ring? Because if so, then perhaps all the “no ring” and “real/awake” scenes have just been reversed (e.g., he IS dreaming). If you continue with that theory, then it could be assumed that the “with ring” scenes (not counting flashbacks) are Dom believing that he is dreaming – on a singular level, not dream within a dream.
And while Mal makes several statements about “unnamed” organizations and whatever always chasing him and trying to kill him (the projections), I think there are several scenes (specifically when he goes to find Eames) where his actions should provoke the projections to start attacking him. For instance, when he’s in that coffee shop and the waiter begins yelling at him, I THINK (don’t quote me on this) the other customers ignore Dom until the shooting begins. It’s the same in the streets; I feel like they (projections, if this is a dream) should all be attacking him, but don’t.
I suppose the counter-argument to that is simply that he’s in his OWN dream, and projections don’t attack the “owner” of the dream, but if he and Mal shared dreams so often, is there any way to know who the initial “owner” was (if such is indeed correct)?
My uncertain opinion (after 2 viewings) is that the entire movie is a dream, but I think seeing it a third time would really help. But I do agree, I felt like the immediate cut from old-Saito to awake-plane didn’t really fit in with the rest of the smooth, explained (to a degree; explained or at least witnessed by the viewers) transitions from scene to scene seen in the rest of the movie.
Lots to think about, my mind is reeling!
@ Nattah Gudgrrl: That room was a recreation of SAITO’s apartment, in Saito’s apartment he evidently keeps a gun under his pillow. Either it was placed their by the architect so that it would seem more real, or because Saito was so certain that it would be there, his mind created it.
As for why they said “THEIR ride” was on the roof – it’s because that WAS their ride, but Saito had hijacked it and was hiding inside… I thought that was pretty obvious.
@goldhand. Yo, cocky fool who thinks they know all, the top does fall another time. When Dom and Ariadne are on that bridge that she made out of the mirrors. After they both wake up when mal stabs Ariadne, Dom goes straight to a room by himself and we watch him spin the top and We see the top fall… Without any interruptions… Idiot!
I need to see the movie again. For now, here’s my theory:
Dom’s totem was not the spinning top. It was his wife’s and it really wasn’t a totem. He planted the idea that it was in his wife’s mind when he tried to jolt her out of the dream state. Later in the movie, it represented Dom’s guilt over that inception and Mal’s subsequent suicide. At the end of the movie, it doesn’t matter whether or not Dom was dreaming. What mattered was that the left the spinning top- which symbolized he was no longer carrying the guilt of his wife’s inception in him.
Why did Mal and Cob die young on the train teacks to go back to reality but then later in the film, Cobb said he they grew old together???
Does anybody else think that the question of whether he is dreaming at the end of the film or not all hinges on the fact that we never get to see the totem spin correctly after the incident in Mombasa? We see him dream in Mombasa, and we see him ‘wake up’ from the sedative, but from that point on we I ‘m not sure if we ever see the totem spun again until the end! Just a theory!
i don’t see why the fact that it was his wifes totem originally matters so much. a totem is an odly weighted item, which only you know. granted mal knows it as well, but that doesn’t make it any less effective. the key, in my oppinion, to knowing if the end is a dream, is how the top spun. after watching a second time, every time he spins it in what we assume is “reality”, it doesn’t only fall, but the way it spins is different that what it does in “dreams” after watching it spin in the final limbo scene with elderly saito. when he spins it again, it wobbles the same way it did in the “reality”. in my oppinion, the final scene isn’t intended to show the audience if it’s a dream, its intended to bring you into dom’s mind more, as an element of the film, not a key plot point.
there’s also an interesting theory i’ve heard, that hasn’t appeared here yet. and that is a paradoxal theory. after dieing in limbo, you return to “reality”, or that state of your subconcious, with projects of those you know, in familiar places, and you go down levels from there, but ur always just going deeper. no support on this one yet, just an idea.
Why couldn’t Cobb just live with his kids in a contry with no extradition agreements??? Surely the grandparents could fly them there to meet him!
Interesting the phone conversation he has with his kids, where his son asks “Where is here?” Or some thing like that can’t remember exact wording.
The director has successful completed inception on all of us :C
Everybody says that the kids looked the same but if you look at the cast, there is his kids Phillipa 3 years James 20 months, and Phillipa 5 years James 3 years. so what they didnt look the same, they were older. but this means a year and two months passed, by calculating it by james’ age. calculating phillipa’s age, between a year two months and two years has passed from when Cobb last saw his kids and when he ‘saw’ them at the end. whether that can contribute to anyone’s ideas or not, i’m not sure. but my brain hurts at this point, i think i’ll give up for now.
I’m pretty sure that “reality” is DiCaprio’s dream.
I have problems with the beginning of the film, though…
Is it Saito? The japanese business guy? Imma refer to him as JBM… He is the old guy that plays with DiCaprio’s top. Though, isn’t it forbidden for that to happen? We know that Dicaprio was hunting for JBM in Limbo but that wasn’t limbo, was it? He later saw JBM and he was wearing a suit and was with Gordon-Levitt. But this was dreamt up by some other guy (I can’t remember who) which leads me to think that limbo is a joint playing field which you can just go to.
I also think that DiCaprio is dreaming everything because everything seems to work perfectly for him. There is a scene just after he gives Juno the tutorial on dreams where he spins the top and it just falls onto the floor. We never see anyone else’s totems in action (besides Juno’s as soon as she’s made it), probably because they wouldn’t work. If they were to work, it’d be because DiCaprio’s world allows the physics of it. He decides what dream level to be in and how it words.