View Full Version : Inception
Razanir
2012-09-02, 09:10 AM
Inception. I just saw the movie for the first time yesterday, and I'm not quite sure what I think happened at the end. Your theories?
DiscipleofBob
2012-09-02, 09:43 AM
Assuming you're talking about the ending:
It's purposefully left up to interpretation whether he's still in the dream or in reality.
The major point being is that the main character no longer needs the crutch of the totem to determine if he's in reality or not. He's willing to accept things as they are.
The director is quoted as saying he believes that the main character is finally in reality and home with his family.
If you're a more pessimistic type, you can easily interpret the scene as a sign that the main character's still trapped in the world of dreams, and this time he accepts the illusion and is never getting back out.
Inglenook
2012-09-02, 11:50 AM
I thought the top at the end looked like it was beginning to wobble, which the dream top didn't do. So I say he made it back to the real world.
The important thing is, that he no longer cares. You can never be sure when you are actually in the waking world and the only way to be sure you are is to kill yourself. So he stops worrying about it and just takes the life he's experiencing now.
The result is not shown, because it no longer matters. When he walks away with thr result still open, the philosophical problem is solved. Showing the result would proof him either right or wrong, and that's not what the scene is about. The scene is about that it does not matter.
Xondoure
2012-09-02, 03:04 PM
Here's something that's been bugging me: they were supposed to have subjective days in the third layer, so why does that one seem like the most time crunched?
shadow_archmagi
2012-09-02, 05:10 PM
Here's something that's been bugging me: they were supposed to have subjective days in the third layer, so why does that one seem like the most time crunched?
That bugged me too. I guess they spent a lot of time on snowmobiles. The other thing that bugged me was
The thing about the magic no-wakey drug was that it was keyed to the inner ear, right? So why would IMAGINARY DREAM FALLING wake you up? Also, the progression of increasing hostility by the dreamites seemed pretty slow- The girl bends the city in half, summons a bridge, and does some other magic before anyone openly attacks her.
Why don't they abuse this more, if you can get away with three or four miracles before anyone becomes hostile? For that matter, what incentive is there not to anger the dreamites if they're already attacking with machineguns?
Xondoure
2012-09-02, 05:19 PM
After they're ticked I agree there's little reason. But it probably takes less than that to piss them off, it's just that the other guy had them mostly under control.
CarpeGuitarrem
2012-09-02, 05:24 PM
The important thing is, that he no longer cares. You can never be sure when you are actually in the waking world and the only way to be sure you are is to kill yourself. So he stops worrying about it and just takes the life he's experiencing now.
The result is not shown, because it no longer matters. When he walks away with thr result still open, the philosophical problem is solved. Showing the result would proof him either right or wrong, and that's not what the scene is about. The scene is about that it does not matter.
Yup. This is my take, too. If he's in a dream, he's gonna wake up eventually, anyhow.
An interesting point to make: as with Nolan's other films, Inception revolves around a protagonist who obsesses about something.
Memento: the main character obsesses around an unsolved murder
Batman: Batman is the posterchild for obsession
The Prestige: two magicians obsess over outdoing one another
I've also heard that Insomnia deals with an obsessive character of sorts
When you view Inception through this lens, I think that it becomes very clear that the whole movie is about what it takes to get Cobb to start healing. Ever since his wife died, he's been obsessing about one single question: "Am I really alive?" He has that doubt gnawing away at him, constantly, which is why he always falls back on his totem.
The movie ends with him leaving the totem behind, because he's stopped obsessing. He's going to move on and live his life as well as he can, and if it's nothing but a dream...then he's going to leave the dream sooner or later, and it'll all be but a shadow in his memory.
What matters is not whether his life was real, but that he chose to live it.
KillianHawkeye
2012-09-02, 06:20 PM
Here's something that's been bugging me: they were supposed to have subjective days in the third layer, so why does that one seem like the most time crunched?
About this, I believe it's because they ended up having much less time than anticipated. The unforseen level of hostility plus the rush of trying to keep Saito alive meant that they couldn't use all of the time that would have been available. I don't know if that completely accounts for the discrepancy, but it's something.
As far as the ending scene: I remember hearing that there was a different set of actors playing Cobb's children in the final scene where he sees their faces. These children were a little bit older than the ones he kept seeing throughout the movie. To me, this is quite a revealing bit of information.
Xondoure
2012-09-02, 07:17 PM
That doesn't account for the kicks, which all had to be at the same time happening so early in that part of the dream.
Reluctance
2012-09-02, 07:38 PM
Why don't they abuse this more, if you can get away with three or four miracles before anyone becomes hostile? For that matter, what incentive is there not to anger the dreamites if they're already attacking with machineguns?
In their world, everybody with a secret worth keeping has trained themselves in lucid dreaming. Subconscious defense mechanisms are one thing. Being tipped off by something as minor as the wrong type of carpeting was enough to blow the intro job. Something over the top would be tipping their hand, which is something you don't want to do when you're being sneaky.
Das Platyvark
2012-09-02, 09:55 PM
My personal epileptic tree:
When Cobb & his wife escape Limbo for the first time, it's not actually waking up. They're not connected to their magic dream box (granted, I don't know what bearing that has on things, but I'm assuming you need to be connected to it for things to work). They have not actually woken up, but are in another layer of Limbo which they are convinced is reality, which causes the totems to work—that is, they only function because that's the way he's familiar with, and because he wants them to
Regarding the ending: It's funny, I never really speculated either way seriously. I guess I just prefer the ambiguity.
Feytalist
2012-09-03, 01:53 AM
I'm not going to expand on the ending, everything has been mentioned already, essentially.
What caught me were certain elements in the movie itself. Given what we learn about the nature of dreams, certain elements in the movie take on larger significance. We're told that in dreams, people jump from one location to another without remembering the intervening distance. In the movie, the characters move from place to place in the same way. It's a cinematic tool, obviously (no-one wants to watch a bunch of people driving a cab around for 20 minutes), but in this light, it's revealing. We also know the dream turns hostile when the dreamer realises he's dreaming. In the movie, Cobb is constantly pursued by nameless agents ("Cobol Corp"? Really?). We also know elements of the real world intrude into dreams, and a vague, almost-heard music is played constantly throughout the movie. So, the movie itself is possibly a dream. But who's dreaming it? Cob? You? ...Mal?
Or possibly the movie is a lateral view at film-making itself. It adds a whole other dimension to the movie. Masterfully crafted.
Killer Angel
2012-09-03, 02:01 AM
The movie ends with him leaving the totem behind, because he's stopped obsessing.
well, he was effectively "testing" the reality, spinning the whirligig, so he wanted to be sure. But seeing the childrens, he simply forgot about it.
The director is quoted as saying he believes that the main character is finally in reality and home with his family.
At least, I remember it's M. Caine's convinction.
It's purposefully left up to interpretation whether he's still in the dream or in reality.
Basically, this. I'm slightly more in the pessimistic side, but who knows?
Yup. This is my take, too. If he's in a dream, he's gonna wake up eventually, anyhow.
There is the danger of going insane. He could live 200 years in a dream, wake up, spend 200 years in another dream, and wake up in the real world with 430 years of memory. That probably wouldn't be so healthy.
But then again, the whole point is that obsessing about it will certainly drive him insane or kill him, so he picks the option that clearly offers a greater quality of life.
And yes, I would love to see a movie about exploiting subjective reality. But this is not what this story is about. This is the story of the existentialist crisis, which does use action and special effects to amazing effects, but it is better to stay focused on the main issue and not stray too far away into other things.
That thing about falling in dream is indeed a bit murky. I think the basic idea is that in dreams you always wake up before a fatal fall. And also in reality, you wake up when shaken.
I think it's consistent, but not well explained:
- Dropping the van from the bridge and rolling down the hill does not cause anyone to wake up. They all keep sleeping, but their dream is weightless.
- In the Lovenest, Cobb isn't just dropped, he is submerged in water. As with Cobb and Fisher in the bar, water in one dream becomes visible in the next dream level. Being dropped into the bathtub creates the floodwave in Saitos castle. The wave drowns Cobb and he wakes up.
- The elevator drop does not get the dreamers out of the Ice Fortress, it gets them out of the Hotel by killing them in the hotel, causing them to wake in the Van.
Regarding the ending: It's funny, I never really speculated either way seriously. I guess I just prefer the ambiguity.
It's an existentialist movie. The ambiguity of the ending is the entire point of everything.
The question is: "How can I know that everything around me and all I believe in is real?". And the answer of the movie is "You can't. Learn to live with it."
Actually, the earliest works on existentialism by Kirkegaard even make it a major point that the only rational thing to do is to kill yourself. Everything that followed in the next two centuries was essentially about finding something else that might work.
Omergideon
2012-09-03, 08:59 AM
I honestly hated the ending the first time I saw it. Now granted his walking away was a good thing and very characterful. But I personally found Cobbs enture story the most dull part of the film. Too predictable for my tastes.
Most importantly though the "is he out" aspect of the ending is so overplayed in any dreamworld, VR world or other such tale I have gotten bored with it. Nolan is better than that kind of cliched ending.
Still liked the film, just not the ending.
Philistine
2012-09-03, 09:29 AM
Here's something that's been bugging me: they were supposed to have subjective days in the third layer, so why does that one seem like the most time crunched?
Mostly it's because Yusuf drove off the bridge, back up in the first layer, way too early - almost as soon as they went under in the second layer. What should have been minutes to him, hours to Arthur, and days to the rest, got cut down to seconds/minutes/hours. There's also a certain amount of skipping the boring parts, as Eames tells Cobb he started to hear the extraction music "20 minutes ago" but wasn't initially sure what it was.
As far as the ending scene: I remember hearing that there was a different set of actors playing Cobb's children in the final scene where he sees their faces. These children were a little bit older than the ones he kept seeing throughout the movie. To me, this is quite a revealing bit of information.
Yeah, that much is actually given to us in the credits. OTOH, we know that Cobb, Mal, and Saito aged normally while in Limbo - because they subconsciously expected themselves to, I suspect - so even that isn't necessarily a definitive indicator. Suggestive, but not conclusive.
Raimun
2012-09-03, 10:07 AM
The man spinned a top but ignored the toy after seeing his children once again.
Milo v3
2012-09-04, 09:12 AM
Personally I think its a dream; because of the prior mentioned transitions between scenes functioning as dreams do.
But also, I'm pretty sure I saw some of the extra's reused in the "real life" scenes. This could have been an error though, or maybe not....
Xondoure
2012-09-04, 01:17 PM
Personally I think its a dream; because of the prior mentioned transitions between scenes functioning as dreams do.
But also, I'm pretty sure I saw some of the extra's reused in the "real life" scenes. This could have been an error though, or maybe not....
Perhaps it's the other way around? An amazing extra attention to detail which I doubt they used would have been for all the extras to show up in the real world before the dream world (dreams use recycled faces.) But I don't know if they went that far.
Maxios
2012-09-04, 04:05 PM
Good movie. At least, the second half of it (which was the only part I saw) was pretty good, even though I didn't know anything about what was going on.
supermonkeyjoe
2012-09-05, 06:20 AM
The whole film is massively ambiguous and poorly defined in places which I think works very well seeing as the whole thing deals with the subtlety and reality of dreams.
The one thing that I never seem to see brought up which seemed a big deal to me is the fact that Cobb was using his Wife's totem throughout the whole film, wasn't that one of the big no-nos?
Quote:
Ariadne: Didn't Cobb say never to do that?
Arthur: So now you've noticed how much time Cobb spends doing things he says never to do.
It's on purpose. :smallwink:
Perhaps it's the other way around? An amazing extra attention to detail which I doubt they used would have been for all the extras to show up in the real world before the dream world (dreams use recycled faces.) But I don't know if they went that far.
Best argument against it:
In the final scene, the children look similar to the memory children, but they are actually dressed differently. If they were actually imagined, they would most proabably be wearing the same things they always had.
Knight13
2012-09-05, 10:15 AM
using his Wife's totem throughout the whole film, wasn't that one of the big no-nos?
Someone else knowing about your totem is only a problem if you're worried them copying it in a dream (because the whole point of a totem is so that you have positive proof that you aren't in a dream). The real Mal is dead and the dream Mal knows everything that Cobb knows anyway, due to being part of his mind.
Milo v3
2012-09-05, 07:18 PM
In the final scene, the children look similar to the memory children, but they are actually dressed differently. If they were actually imagined, they would most proabably be wearing the same things they always had.
Though, if his brain is trying to convince itself that it is in real life, then it may have created them wearing clothes that are different to the normal clothes we see them with.
The clothes they are wearing might a pair of clothes they wore before Cobbs was forced to leave. Perhaps before they went into limbo, giving Cobb the impression that everything was normal.
CarpeGuitarrem
2012-09-05, 07:30 PM
Personally I think its a dream; because of the prior mentioned transitions between scenes functioning as dreams do.
But also, I'm pretty sure I saw some of the extra's reused in the "real life" scenes. This could have been an error though, or maybe not....
Side thought: it's rather funny how well the dream metaphor explains a lot of conceits of movies in general (like re-using extras or scene jumps). I ponder upon the possibility that Nolan was intentionally using it as a commentary on moviemaking.
There's a number of sources out there that give very strong evidence that he totally did and that it was possibly even the primary subject of the movie.
Lord Tyger
2012-09-06, 02:08 PM
Most of the film is actually Inception being performed on Cobb. When he goes under in the Chemist's Dream Den, he 'wakes up' runs to the Bathroom, and attempts to spin the top. However, he never gets it going. Between there and the end of the film, he never spins it in 'reality', which is important because there is no reality there. It's all an attempt to move him past his self-inflicted punishment which makes him a liability to his partners.
JoeMac307
2012-09-06, 03:12 PM
Most of the film is actually Inception being performed on Cobb. When he goes under in the Chemist's Dream Den, he 'wakes up' runs to the Bathroom, and attempts to spin the top. However, he never gets it going. Between there and the end of the film, he never spins it in 'reality', which is important because there is no reality there. It's all an attempt to move him past his self-inflicted punishment which makes him a liability to his partners.
That has always been my take on the movie. Cobb can't deal with the death of his wife, so he creates an incredibly deep set of dreams, layer on layer, so he can plant an idea in his mind that would let him finally free him from his guilt and go on with his life (real or imagined). I think the majority of the movie is a dream, and that the reason Cobb can't be an Architect anymore and needs Ariadne to be the Architect is because he's already created the first layer or two of the dream, and he needs a dream construct (Adriadne) to create the deeper levels so he won't be aware of their contents, which is necessary for the inception to work.
That theory is mentioned sometimes, and while there is a possibility for it, as there really is for everything in this movie, I don't think there are any reasons why this should be the case from a storytelling perspective.
What does it add to the story if two thirds of the movie take place in a basement in Mombasa and how does it change the meaning of everything that follows?
The movie doesn't hit you over the head with an explaination at the end, but there wouldn't be any point to this scenario being the case.
Scowling Dragon
2012-09-06, 04:37 PM
I liked the movie. It was an action film with a plot more complex then "Kill evil terrorists"
I felt quite happy for the businessman at the end. He gets what he always wanted in life. Following his own path and acceptance from his father.
JoeMac307
2012-09-06, 06:20 PM
That theory is mentioned sometimes, and while there is a possibility for it, as there really is for everything in this movie, I don't think there are any reasons why this should be the case from a storytelling perspective.
What does it add to the story if two thirds of the movie take place in a basement in Mombasa and how does it change the meaning of everything that follows?
The movie doesn't hit you over the head with an explaination at the end, but there wouldn't be any point to this scenario being the case.
I'm not saying that this is the "correct" or "better" theory... I'm not just saying that was my immediate, gut reaction to the film... that is what first "made sense" to me when I walked out of the theater... not really defending it one way or another, mostly just happy that I wasn't the only one who came to that conclusion
I liked the movie. It was an action film with a plot more complex then "Kill evil terrorists"
I felt quite happy for the businessman at the end. He gets what he always wanted in life. Following his own path and acceptance from his father.
It's a movie in which the action serves to illustrate a bigger point. Usually action scenes bore me and in some movies I even skip over them because the entire narrative content is "A and B fight, A wins". I like the small skirmishes in The Fellowship of the Ring, but I don't even have Return of the King on DVD.
In Inception, the action is a visualization of mental processes and they tell us what the characters are feeling and thinking. That's where I can get invested.
JoeMac307
2012-09-07, 09:07 AM
It's a movie in which the action serves to illustrate a bigger point. Usually action scenes bore me and in some movies I even skip over them because the entire narrative content is "A and B fight, A wins". I like the small skirmishes in The Fellowship of the Ring, but I don't even have Return of the King on DVD.
In Inception, the action is a visualization of mental processes and they tell us what the characters are feeling and thinking. That's where I can get invested.
Sometimes action scenes if done well can be real eyecandy, though, even if they have no deeper meaning in regards to the narrative than "A and B fight, A wins". I agree, most are really boring if they drag on too long, but some can be fun if done in a novel way.
Examples of action scenes I enjoy are the chase scenes in Bullitt and The French Connection, and the fight scene in the bamboo forest in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. They aren't very narratively compeling per se, but they sure are beautiful to watch.
The Dojo scene is also cool, even though that one is more for over the top fun. :smallbiggrin:
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