Inception: Theories, Points & Counterpoints
Published on July 22, 2010 by admin · 68 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
Readers Comments (68)
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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.
My question is… Whatever happened to the whole Mal stabbing Dom in Limbo??? Dom told Ariadne he’d go find Saito… but Saito should’ve been in the same Limbo as Dom.. So why is Saito young and Dom older??
And why does Dom awoke at the same beach he awoke before in Limbo with Ariadne.. Could the stabbing meant he died in Limbo?? Thus going to a new unconstructed Limbo?? Where Dom could have created the whole final scenes??? They never explain what happens if u die in limbo.. So what if Dom died after the stab and went to a new limbo (unconstructed)
two questions:
If mal was right and by killing herself went back to reality with Dom believing his dreamstate was his reality….why couldnt she just give him a kick in the real world and wake him up? Arthur uses a kick to drop Dom in a bathtub and wake him up from the prologue dream sequence.
And if Leo is in limbo and Saito kills him, assuming the sedative has worn off, that just send him back to the previous dream stage right? (example Dom shoots artur in the head to kick him back to the prologue dreamstate) Which is Fischers dream, but if Fishcer is awake, does that mean Dom is lost forever?
Im not sure what i think yet. But Im off to see the movie again and hopefully gain some insight!
Can someone answer me this – the scene just before the bus topples off the bridge and runs out of control in slow motion down the embankment, at level two, I think, all the players in limbo are tossed around inside. Why didn’t all this motion “kick” them back to the previous level ?
Names.
A lot of the names are completely relevant to the characters that embody them.
Ex: Cobb = Dream
Jacob = He who supplants
Dominick = Lord
Eames = Wealthy Protector
Militaristic person who forges monetary things (the chips)
Miles = Merciful
Mal is dead but he still visibly cares for Dom
Mal = Bad
Self explanatory
Ariadne = Greek mythology, led Theseus from the labyrinth of the minotaur.
James, a variant of Jacob. Cobb.
Yusuf = variant of Joseph = He who enhances. Recruited to create a specific cocktail to take things to level 3.
etc, etc…
So why Phillipa? The name means Horse Lover. I can’t find a thing that makes that make sense to me, and it’s such a strange and uncommon name, that…. since all the others fit so well, it would make me think her name should fit well as well…
Is there a cultural thing I’m missing?
Moreover, what of Saito, Arthur? If there’s no connection to name meaning and character portrayal for those, it serves to reason that Nolan is potentially messing with us on purpose to keep us talking about this movie for years. Purposely creating room for theories and ambiguity and equally purposefully leaving no room for proof. However, if there are cultural nuances for Saito and the rest, it could be beneficial to flesh them out, if this is a solvable puzzle (I believe it isn’t.)
I mean…
Phillipa?
They say an idea is like a virus? What if Mol planted the idea that if her top kept spinning, you were still dreaming in Cobs mind? He planted the idea to Mol, why couldn’t he be convinced?! And what about when Cob spins the top after going under in the sleep factory thing. He goes to spin his totem and never actually spins it. Sleeping or awake?!?!?! :O :O
Can ye give me opinoins on this please?
I believe that at the end, when Leo(Cobb) spins his totem, it keeps on spinning.
Now go back to when Leo(Cobb) meets Yusuf(the indian seditave guy) for the first time and they go down to the basemant. Yusuf shows 12 people that go there every day to dream for 3-4hrs which is 36-48hrs at level 1. Cobb says to Yusuf “Lets see what you can do!” and enters a dream but we only see a few seconds before he wakes up and goes to the toilet to splash water on his face then goes to spin his totem but drops it and is interrupted by Saito(Japanese guy). He never spins it!! He doesnt spin it until the very end of the film.
Could he be still dreaming since the basement??
To “The Kick”:
The motion didn’t kick them back to the previous level cause they hadn’t been kicked out of level 3. When the avalanche occurs that is the movement of the bus falling over the top of the bridge. But because they hadn’t been kicked out of level 3, they couldn’t be kicked to that level of the dream state.
To Baz:
As seen when Mal and Dom get kicked out of limbo, they return straight to their reality not back into another dream state. I think its reasonable to say that when Saito kills Dom, and thusly himself that they get kicked back into reality.
The confusing part is whether the level 3 dream is Eames or Fischer’s. Dom says to Ariadne that the level 3 dream is Fischer’s but this cannot be the case if Eames is the one controlling it as he’s the only one who knows the layout designed by the architect.
I think cob was in limbo state the whole time. There was no kick for them to wake up in the airplane.. he woke up wiith nothing attached to him.. and cobs totem wasn’t the spinning top, it was his ring.. I think mal was right and that’s why she kept telling him “you know where to find me”. Cob always watched the spinning top fall to make sure he was in reality but at the end he didn’t care anymore wether he was in limbo or not and he just walked away from it to see his kids. Another thing that proves he was in limbo is that how did the grandpa get from paris to the us all of a sudden?.. Mal was right and went backk to reazlity and cob is still stuck in limbo and she can’t kick him back to reality because he is in limbo. He is so deep in so many layers its impossible for him to be kicked out, he has to do it on his own and that’s why she always tells him “you know where to find me”..
Ok so I have read all of these theories and most of them point to the fact that the entire reunion at the end of the movie is a dream. I disagree with this and it must be “reality” (i.e. the top falls at the end)
I think that the top falls at the end signifying that he is in reality because of the shaking that it does and the fact that it is not spinning perfectly, if you examine the top when it is in Mal’s safe in limbo, it is spinning upright and does not topple in the slightest even after spinning for an extended period of time.
Also, I think that the top actually means nothing. Since Saito and his guard both touch the totem in limbo and the fact that it is not Dom’s totem in the first place means that too many people have touched the totem to make it a reliable indicator of whether or not Dom is in a dream at any point.
What truly says whether or not Dom is in a dream is his subconscious. I feel like since his totem is basically unreliable, the only thing that makes the top spin or fall is Dom’s mind. His mind makes the top spin when he wants to believe he is in a dream and it makes it fall when he wants to be in reality.
This brings me to my real conclusion.
The entire movie up until the very last scene (the reunion) is Dom’s dream and is actually an Inception done on him by his father-in-law. If you think about it, Miles (Michael Caine) is the one that taught Dom everything that he knew about dream sharing. (He tells us this when he is in his classroom talking with Dom).
My thought is that Miles is using Inception on Dom to make him finally let go of Mal and go back to his children. My theory is that there are no agents actually looking for him and the reason he “can’t” go back is because Mal won’t let him. His mind would never let him see his children until he forgot about Mal and finally got over living his life without her.
Please give posts on reasons I may be wrong but this is what I am sticking to until proven otherwise.
i watched now for the first time on DVD in the uk now, i love it, my thoughts are its fifty if he ever got home that, Dom needs a way out, always trying to find that “one last job” a goal from all of it, that’s right the kids dont age or we dont get to see their faces which i find out weird. the tokem is a biggie for me, some part where he spins it in the bathroom just before the buiness man peeks in, we dont see if it stops, or where he shows the girl. one big big, dream? I say 50/50 wish i can remember my dreams. sigh
Matt,
Interesting theory that Miles is using inception on Dom but I think it is too far out there (i.e. it’s a big stretch to make that assumption). There just isn’t enough of a story within the movie or enough evidence to suggest that Miles is actually performing an inception on Dom. You also make an interesting point about others touching Dom’s totem. However, if you believe that Dom is in reality at the end of the movie, which I do, then they would have only touched his totem in the dream state (limbo). That wouldn’t make the totem unreliable since they wouldn’t have actually touched it.
Nick, I disagree with your article in that I do believe that Dom is in reality at the end. And I personally think that many of the comments above are looking too hard for things that aren’t there.
The simple fact is that Dom’s children do age by the end of the movie (reality). As well, the totem never slows or wobbles in the dream state yet it does at the end of the film (reality). This is Nolan’s clever way of using a little inception on the viewer. And it worked very well based on the conversation above.
One of the other biggest factors that suggest that Dom is in reality at the end is that he is not wearing his wedding ring. In every ‘dream’ sequence, he is wearing the ring. That doesn’t mean it’s his totem (someone suggested it above). It simply means that in dreams and in his subconscious, he is still holding on to and feeling very guilty about his wife, Mal. In reality, he doesn’t wear the ring.
All of the other theories and questions are interesting but they are just noise. The kids, the ring, and the wobbling totem all point to Dom being in reality at the end.
To Nichola:
The level 3 Dream is Eames’ dream. Fisher is the subject who populates it with his subconscious (the army).
To Matt:
Nice conclusion for you. I have toyed with the idea of the story really being Miles’ inception on Cobb too. This is really thinking outside of the box.
I have watched the movie about 7 times now and have realised that Christopher Nolan has designed the movie to leave it up to the individual’s mind. He has added little clues all throughout the movie for the ‘for’ and ‘against’ of the whole movie being a dream. It can be argued both ways depending on which clues the individual has realised. I started beleiving that it was a happy ending at first but after watching another couple of times my opinion changed. Here are a couple of the clues:
(((STOP READING IF YOU WANT TO EXPERIENCE IT FOR YOURSELF)))
Cobb’s Wedding Ring – Look out for which scenes he is wearing it and not wearing it. When I realised this I was a believer of a happy ending.
The Children’s Age – The children seem the same age at the end to the beginning of the movie. Not a big point, but one which sway’s your opinion. Do we actually know how much time has passed throughout the movie?
The Children’s Clothes – Exactly the same in the final scene as most of the scene’s with the children. This one gave me chills when I first realised. I started to doubt that the story was as simple as it first seemed.
Let me know what you all think…
“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.”
There was an assumption made here. The dream-invasion technology wasn’t Dom’s. Dom said that it was developed by the military so soldiers could practice killing each other in their sleep. Second, Dom’s father was the one who taught Dom how to navigate the mind. This is very suggestive, and could mean the Dom’s father knew the technology quite well. This also could suggest that the technology is older than we thought.
There are definitely competitors to Dom’s service. Early in the film, Dom keeps on saying that he is the best. Why didn’t he say that he was the only one. What about the underground scene where all the people go to dream all day. There are many of those machines out there, and other people will find ways to abuse it.
just wanted to clear something up anthony said and something i’ve seen on other sites. the children’s clothes are not the same at the end as the other scenes they appear. the clothes are similar though.