Inception

[Purkake]

The (pseudoscientific) premise is that we're only using a small amount of our "brain power" when awake.

[Rosbjerg]

Pseudo-science aside, I guess that the senses on their own take up quite a fair amount of our processing power.. Being "freed" from them would give the brain a lot of breathing room.

[Thorton_AP]

At the same time, this is a universe where you can hook people up to each other and have them move into each others dreams.

 

I think some suspension of disbelief is necessary.

[Hildegard]

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

 

I kind of agree with this explanation, it's long but worth while reading if you liked the movie:

 

Every single moment of Inception is a dream. I think that in a couple of years this will become the accepted reading of the film, and differing interpretations will have to be skillfully argued to be even remotely considered. The film makes this clear, and it never holds back the truth from audiences. Some find this idea to be narratively repugnant, since they think that a movie where everything is a dream is a movie without stakes, a movie where the audience is wasting their time.

 

Except that this is exactly what Nolan is arguing against. The film is a metaphor for the way that Nolan as a director works, and what he's ultimately saying is that the catharsis found in a dream is as real as the catharsis found in a movie is as real as the catharsis found in life. Inception is about making movies, and cinema is the shared dream that truly interests the director.

 

I believe that Inception is a dream to the point where even the dream-sharing stuff is a dream. Dom Cobb isn't an extractor. He can't go into other people's dreams. He isn't on the run from the Cobol Corporation. At one point he tells himself this, through the voice of Mal, who is a projection of his own subconscious. She asks him how real he thinks his world is, where he's being chased across the globe by faceless corporate goons.

 

She asks him that in a scene that we all know is a dream, but Inception lets us in on this elsewhere. Michael Caine's character implores Cobb to return to reality, to wake up. During the chase in Mombasa, Cobb tries to escape down an alleyway, and the two buildings between which he's running begin closing in on him - a classic anxiety dream moment. When he finally pulls himself free he finds Ken Watanabe's character waiting for him, against all logic. Except dream logic.

 

Much is made in the film about totems, items unique to dreamers that can be used to tell when someone is actually awake or asleep. Cobb's totem is a top, which spins endlessly when he's asleep, and the fact that the top stops spinning at many points in the film is claimed by some to be evidence that Cobb is awake during those scenes. The problem here is that the top wasn't always Cobb's totem - he got it from his wife, who killed herself because she believed that they were still living in a dream. There's more than a slim chance that she's right - note that when Cobb remembers her suicide she is, bizarrely, sitting on a ledge opposite the room they rented. You could do the logical gymnastics required to claim that Mal simply rented another room across the alleyway, but the more realistic notion here is that it's a dream, with the gap between the two lovers being a metaphorical one made literal. When Mal jumps she leaves behind the top, and if she was right about the world being a dream, the fact that it spins or doesn't spin is meaningless. It's a dream construct anyway. There's no way to use the top as a proof of reality.

 

Watching the film with this eye you can see the dream logic unfolding. As is said in the movie, dreams seem real in the moment and it's only when you've woken up that things seem strange. The film's 'reality' sequences are filled with moments that, on retrospect, seem strange or unlikely or unexplained. Even the basics of the dream sharing technology is unbelievably vague, and I don't think that's just because Nolan wants to keep things streamlined. It's because Cobb's unconscious mind is filling it in as he goes along.

 

There's more, but I would have to watch the film again with a notebook to get all the evidence (all of it in plain sight). The end seems without a doubt to be a dream - from the dreamy way the film is shot and edited once Cobb wakes up on the plane all the way through to him coming home to find his two kids in the exact position and in the exact same clothes that he kept remembering them, it doesn't matter if the top falls, Cobb is dreaming.

 

That Cobb is dreaming and still finds his catharsis (that he can now look at the face of his kids) is the point. It's important to realize that Inception is a not very thinly-veiled autobiographical look at how Nolan works. In a recent red carpet interview, Leonardo DiCaprio - who was important in helping Nolan get the script to the final stages - compares the movie not to The Matrix or some other mind f*ck movie but Fellini's 8 1/2. This is probably the second most telling thing DiCaprio said during the publicity tour for the film, with the first being that he based Cobb on Nolan. 8 1/2 is totally autobiographical for Fellini, and it's all about an Italian director trying to overcome his block and make a movie (a science fiction movie, even). It's a film about filmmaking, and so is Inception.

 

The heist team quite neatly maps to major players in a film production. Cobb is the director while Arthur, the guy who does the research and who sets up the places to sleep, is the producer. Ariadne, the dream architect, is the screenwriter - she creates the world that will be entered. Eames is the actor (this is so obvious that the character sits at an old fashioned mirrored vanity, the type which stage actors would use). Yusuf is the technical guy; remember, the Oscar come from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and it requires a good number of technically minded people to get a movie off the ground. Nolan himself more or less explains this in the latest issue of Film Comment, saying 'There are a lot of striking similarities [between what the team does and the putting on of a major Hollywood movie]. When for instance the team is out on the street they've created, surveying it, that's really identical with what we do on tech scouts before we shoot.'

 

That leaves two key figures. Saito is the money guy, the big corporate suit who fancies himself a part of the game. And Fischer, the mark, is the audience. Cobb, as a director, takes Fischer through an engaging, stimulating and exciting journey, one that leads him to an understanding about himself. Cobb is the big time movie director (or rather the best version of that - certainly not a Michael Bay) who brings the action, who brings the spectacle, but who also brings the meaning and the humanity and the emotion.

 

The movies-as-dreams aspect is part of why Inception keeps the dreams so grounded. In the film it's explained that playing with the dream too much alerts the dreamer to the falseness around him; this is just another version of the suspension of disbelief upon which all films hinge. As soon as the audience is pulled out of the movie by some element - an implausible scene, a ludicrous line, a poor performance - it's possible that the cinematic dream spell is broken completely, and they're lost.

 

As a great director, Cobb is also a great artist, which means that even when he's creating a dream about snowmobile chases, he's bringing something of himself into it. That's Mal. It's the auterist impulse, the need to bring your own interests, obsessions and issues into a movie. It's what the best directors do. It's very telling that Nolan sees this as kind of a problem; I suspect another filmmaker might have cast Mal as the special element that makes Cobb so successful.

 

Inception is such a big deal because it's what great movies strive to do. You walk out of a great film changed, with new ideas planted in your head, with your neural networks subtly rewired by what you've just seen. On a meta level Inception itself does this, with audiences leaving the theater buzzing about the way it made them feel and perceive. New ideas, new thoughts, new points of view are more lasting a souvenir of a great movie than a ticket stub.

 

It's possible to view Fischer, the mark, as not the audience but just as the character that is being put through the movie that is the dream. To be honest, I haven't quite solidified my thought on Fischer's place in the allegorical web, but what's important is that the breakthrough that Fischer has in the ski fortress is real. Despite the fact that his father is not there, despite the fact that the pinwheel was never by his father's bedside, the emotions that Fischer experiences are 100 percent genuine. It doesn't matter that the movie you're watching isn't a real story, that it's just highly paid people putting on a show - when a movie moves you, it truly moves you. The tears you cry during Up are totally real, even if absolutely nothing that you see on screen has ever existed in the physical world.

 

For Cobb there's a deeper meaning to it all. While Cobb doesn't have daddy issues (that we know of), he, like Fischer, is dealing with a loss. He's trying to come to grips with the death of his wife*; Fischer's journey reflects Cobb's while not being a complete point for point reflection. That's important for Nolan, who is making films that have personal components - that talk about things that obviously interest or concern him - but that aren't actually about him. Other filmmakers (Fellini) may make movies that are thinly veiled autobiography, but that's not what Nolan or Cobb are doing. The movies (or dreams) they're putting together reflect what they're going through but aren't easily mapped on to them. Talking to Film Comment, Nolan says he has never been to psychoanalysis. 'I think I use filmmaking for that purpose. I have a passionate relationship to what I do.'

 

In a lot of ways Inception is a bookend to last summer's Inglorious Basterds. In that film Quentin Tarantino celebrated the ways that cinema could change the world, while in Inception Nolan is examining the ways that cinema, the ultimate shared dream, can change an individual. The entire film is a dream, within the confines of the movie itself, but in a more meta sense it's Nolan's dream. He's dreaming Cobb, and finding his own moments of revelation and resolution, just as Cobb is dreaming Fischer and finding his own catharsis and change.

 

The whole film being a dream isn't a cop out or a waste of time, but an ultimate expression of the film's themes and meaning. It's all fake. But it's all very, very real. And that's something every single movie lover understands implicitly and completely.

 

* it's really worth noting that if you accept that the whole movie is a dream that Mal may not be dead. She could have just left Cobb. The mourning that he is experiencing deep inside his mind is no less real if she's alive or dead - he has still lost her.

[LadyCrimson]

...A lot of people disliked The Usual Suspects for similar reasons (that it was likely all a lie). Such never bothers me, personally. I like being surprised like that sometimes.

 

If it takes the van 2 seconds to tip and fall into freefall, (I don't remember the formula specifically) that event will get stretched out throughout many more seconds (minutes in the movie).

 

I don't relate well to tables & figures being applied to movie-fake-science.

 

But I still don't think it's consistent. I already know the concept/idea the movie is trying to make you swallow, but what you're saying is the explanation does not, imo, refute the inconsistencies within the movies concept of dream layers, itself.

 

Such as why making a turn in a van cause a ripple in a coffee cup/sonic boom in another layer. and why the ripple in the cup/sonic boom doesn't also take minutes to finish its ripple, if time is so stretched out in the deeper layer - the van whipping around a corner takes a couple seconds too, right?

 

Edit:should clarify, not actual sonic boom. But thumps. Guess u could say it's from the building shaking in response but still time issue. Also, I'm not saying inconsistencies ruin the film or anything. But imo there are some & they can't be explained away...they're just there, like in any sci-fi movie. heh

Edited August 3, 2010 by LadyCrimson

[Deraldin]

Much is made in the film about totems, items unique to dreamers that can be used to tell when someone is actually awake or asleep. Cobb's totem is a top, which spins endlessly when he's asleep, and the fact that the top stops spinning at many points in the film is claimed by some to be evidence that Cobb is awake during those scenes. The problem here is that the top wasn't always Cobb's totem - he got it from his wife, who killed herself because she believed that they were still living in a dream. There's more than a slim chance that she's right - note that when Cobb remembers her suicide she is, bizarrely, sitting on a ledge opposite the room they rented. You could do the logical gymnastics required to claim that Mal simply rented another room across the alleyway, but the more realistic notion here is that it's a dream, with the gap between the two lovers being a metaphorical one made literal. When Mal jumps she leaves behind the top, and if she was right about the world being a dream, the fact that it spins or doesn't spin is meaningless. It's a dream construct anyway. There's no way to use the top as a proof of reality.

 

Watching the film with this eye you can see the dream logic unfolding. As is said in the movie, dreams seem real in the moment and it's only when you've woken up that things seem strange. The film's 'reality' sequences are filled with moments that, on retrospect, seem strange or unlikely or unexplained. Even the basics of the dream sharing technology is unbelievably vague, and I don't think that's just because Nolan wants to keep things streamlined. It's because Cobb's unconscious mind is filling it in as he goes along.

 

There's more, but I would have to watch the film again with a notebook to get all the evidence (all of it in plain sight). The end seems without a doubt to be a dream - from the dreamy way the film is shot and edited once Cobb wakes up on the plane all the way through to him coming home to find his two kids in the exact position and in the exact same clothes that he kept remembering them, it doesn't matter if the top falls, Cobb is dreaming.

 

Just a couple thoughts:

 

For the suicide, she's sitting opposite their window so that she is easily visible, yet unreachable should Cobb attempt to stop her from jumping. Calling this scene a dream based on her sitting opposite their window is more of a stretch than I am willing to buy. Going back to the top, it's important to remember that Cobb uses the top, but it was never actually his. It's supposed to be his wife's totem. I believe the current discussion has Cobb's real totem being his wedding ring, which interestingly enough only shows up in the dream sequences and not in "reality".

 

The "dreamy way the film is shot" in the ending? I don't even know how to respond to that, however this person needs to go back and watch the ending again. The kids were in the same (or a very similar) position, but they weren't wearing the same clothes and they were also played by actors that were approx 2 years older.

Edited August 4, 2010 by Deraldin

[Orogun01]

Pseudo-science aside, I guess that the senses on their own take up quite a fair amount of our processing power.. Being "freed" from them would give the brain a lot of breathing room.

Is more like having two different sets of brains, one conscious and the other unconscious which deals with everything from involuntary movement to subconscious processes.

While you are conscious the cognitive brain is dominant and focused on a small amount of processes, during R.E.M the brain still processes information some of it dreams. The concept behind Inception is more akin to lucid dreaming than to the matrix.

 

I don't relate well to tables & figures being applied to movie-fake-science.

 

But I still don't think it's consistent. I already know the concept/idea the movie is trying to make you swallow, but what you're saying is the explanation does not, imo, refute the inconsistencies within the movies concept of dream layers, itself.

Quite frankly there isn't much science to this movie, specially when the human brain is like the great big ocean: we know very little of it. Inconsistencies between science and movies is very common, just take a look at the science behind Star Wars or Star Trek.

Such as why making a turn in a van cause a ripple in a coffee cup/sonic boom in another layer. and why the ripple in the cup/sonic boom doesn't also take minutes to finish its ripple, if time is so stretched out in the deeper layer - the van whipping around a corner takes a couple seconds too, right?

 

Edit:should clarify, not actual sonic boom. But thumps. Guess u could say it's from the building shaking in response but still time issue. Also, I'm not saying inconsistencies ruin the film or anything. But imo there are some & they can't be explained away...they're just there, like in any sci-fi movie. heh

Ok in contrast with my previous statement i'm going to try and give a scientific explanation; the real reason is probably to make it cool and perpetuate the weirdness behind the whole setting.

 

Is probable that the technology that brings the cognitive brain to the subconscious level as a side effect also takes all the information on one level as real sensations. Since is a shared dream it must have input from all participants and in this case there still was someone on the previous level having sensations. Don't know what to say about the time inconsistencies though.

[Oblarg]

I just saw the movie, and it was good. Not worthy of the mountains of praise it's receiving, but certainly enjoyable. It's compressive how coherent it is given the ambitious setting.

 

That aside, there are indeed plot holes, most of which seem to stem from the entire idea of "limbo," which on the whole seems to be a bit half-baked compared to the rest of the setting.

[Tigranes]

Just saw it. I'm pretty walled off from movie critiques, amateur or professional, at the moment so I've only read responses here, but I can definitely say it's a very very good movie that I don't mind giving thumbs up to. That's because I liked how it knew what it was and what it wanted to do, and did it with confidence, polish and style. It was an exciting action thriller of a movie that also, on multiple levels, wanted to provoke thinking about a single concept, and it did it well. It didn't end up taking itself too seriously and going over the top like the Matrix series did, and it blended the two halves of its being seamlessly.

 

I think Hildegard's explanation is quite good, actually - while watching I didn't really consider the meta-aspect and focused on the narrative, but Nolan/DiCaprio's comments that he cites are persuasive. I think there's an inherent danger in the method of examining the movie's elements for evidence of the reality of the verisimilitude as a whole, though: Deraldin's point about the ledges is the most blatant. If you are going to examine the movie in that 'meta' sense, and look at the meaning of a text as a film as well as the text as a verisimilitude, then you have to accept the practical imperatives of film production as well. This applies more to the OP's thoughts, but things like the fact that the movie's cuts never show Cobb & co. get from place to place - well if it did, it would be a very boring film (unless you happen to be used to the pacing of early century cinema). Possibly there are junctures at which the logic of the film as a produced text and the logic of the text as an exploration of reality did intersect, i.e. the converging walls in Mombassa. It's difficult to figure out: Saito's comment about buying the airline could either be an Ocean's 13 tribute moment of flair, a proof of the tendrils of dreamlogic in action, or both.

 

In the end, I'm not sure about the fact that the entire movie is meant to be seen as a dream: what I think is most likely is that first, there is a movie narrative where there is a reality and then there is dreams; and then, Nolan continues to manipulate his text for the purposes of his message and theme by creating a set of moments that provoke the verisimilitude of the movie's reality (the most obvious being the ending, in case someone missed all the other ones). Simply put, the distinction between reality and dream within the movie-world is very distinct: the distinction between reality and dream of the text as a whole is not.

 

What does this mean? I think it makes it even more interesting, actually. This is I think the key difference between the suggestion of the original Matrix, which was, basically, "the world you live in NOW could be fake". DiCaprio's emphatic and virtually unwavering belief in the reality of his own world, and the symbolic victory of that belief over Mal's doubts, establishes very clearly that the limbo simply cannot be reality, that in the movie-world there is a reality and there are dreams. It's nowhere as clear cut whether the movie as a whole is a dream. And that's because in the world we live in, there will always be ambiguity and doubt. To me this fact that reality/dream is clear cut within the movie, but doubtful outside, points to a somewhat different interpretation.

 

To me, the film is a provocation about the power of ideas, and the subjective power they can exert over our minds on the very base levels of our (sub)consciousness. The film's central message is what DiCaprio repeats twice - ideas are like a virus. The film is saying that though the technology of inception is not real, our mind is subject to control and influence through ideas and thoughts: that we can be governed by prejudices, schemes of perception and regimes of truth that are so deeply ingrained in our consciousness it is almost impossible to determine their origins or distinguish whether they are 'ours'. We can see this in the way planted thoughts and experiences drive Fischer to an cathartic emotional experience, and the result of it is that his entire subjectivity has changed - different motivations, perceptions, plans, everything. One of the key things that grounded his entire person had been shifted, and that had changed his entire being - showing the degree of influence ideas can have on us. Certainly this is compatible with the 'cinematic experience / comment about cinema' interpretation, as well.

 

This is too rambly, but it's late...

[Raithe]

On another slightly perception thing.. Forgetting the whole was the entire film a dream or not...

 

The totem's as used weren't a definitive "reality/dream" identifier... they were meant to be warning items that someone else was creating the dream.. which had to mean if the totem didn't feel or act "right" then it meant that person wasn't in reality, and wasn't in their own dream.

 

Arthur's "only I know the specific weight/balance of this loaded die, and no-one else handles it and would know how it feels."

 

Also represented by the way Sato realises it's a dream within a dream because the carpet isn't a proper wool... (hm, an entire carpet used as a pseudo-totem.....)

 

They never said that Cobb was using the spinning top as his own totem.. just that he liked playing with his ex-wifes totem and kept it with him..

[kirottu]

I

[Hurlshort]

Was anyone else shocked by Tom Berenger's looks? I know he is older now, but he always struck me as a Sean Connery type who ages but never really looks old. That's out the window now!

 

So if the kids really were older and in different clothes in the last scene, then I say it is reality. Otherwise I assumed he was in limbo.

[Orogun01]

Was anyone else shocked by Tom Berenger's looks? I know he is older now, but he always struck me as a Sean Connery type who ages but never really looks old. That's out the window now!

He has gained weight, other than that he kind of looks the same.

[LadyCrimson]

Was anyone else shocked by Tom Berenger's looks? I know he is older now, but he always struck me as a Sean Connery type who ages but never really looks old. That's out the window now!

He has gained weight, other than that he kind of looks the same.

The weight plumped out his face (some are more prone to that w/weight gain than others) which does make him look different. Kind of has that shiny surgery-lift look a bit, too. I don't think he looks horribly old or anything but not the picture of robust, natural health like he was at one time.