The "I've seen INCEPTION" thread (spoilers inevitable)

Cafe Society
181

Just saw it for the second time. I still enjoyed it and found it much more straightforward. I am convinced that Cobb is in reality at the end and during all scenes where he’s not expicitly in dreamland. I think the top at the end was just Nolan screwing with the audience. "It was all a dream…or was it?.

Did anyone notice that Cobb plants the same idea in Saito’s head that he did in Mal’s? This world isn’t real. Hopefully Saito won’t kill himself later.

I’m also a little more comfortable with the non-dreamy feel of the dreamworlds. The dreamworlds are designed by architects so they won’t have the totally random feel of real dreams. Of course sometimes subconscious things intrude, like the train that cuts through the city streets.

A poster earlier complained that limbo was supposed to be this place you were trapped in forever till your mind went, but that Cobb could negotiate it easily. This bugged me too, but then I analogized it to the wilderness. Drop an inexperienced city dweller in the Alaskan wilderness and they will wander hopelessly until they starve, freeze, or are eaten by a bear. Drop an experienced woodsman in the smae wilderness and he may make it back to town, even saving the newbie. Cobb was like the experienced woodsman.

182

A few random questions I have:

First, in the limbo flashback, Mal locks her totem in a safe. Cobb later retrieves it and supposedly changes it to something that would reveal she was in a dream. But, she was in a dream, and her totem would therefore have not worked anyway. So I have no idea what Cobb was doing.

Second, in one limbo flashback, Cobb & Mal lie down on train tracks to escape. They are their normal ages. In another limbo flashback, Cobb tells Mal that they did grow old together, which the movie shows. These two things are incompatible.

Any ideas on what I may be missing?

183

Nice Easter egg:

http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/article/edith-piaf-vs-inceptions-mind-heist

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This fits with the idea that in lower levels time slows down.

184

Mal had locked the totem away so that she wouldn’t see that it was spinning - she was trying to convince herself the dream was reality. Cobb unlocked the safe and discovered what she was trying to do, and then he began working to prove to her that she was dreaming. Since this was several levels of dreams-within-dreams, the thought was planted deep inside her and so she constantly believed she was dreaming up to her suicide.

185

Yes, US Immigration stamps passports. I returned from Heathrow on July 10 and have a stamp from when I went through US Immigration. Looking at my passport, I also have a US stamp from June of 2004, so they’ve been doing it longer than five years.

186

I think Michael Caine is Christopher Nolan’s totem.

187

That’s very odd. I assume you are an American. US Immigration has never ever stamped my passport. I last entered the US in April 2005 and left in May 2005, through Honolulu Airport both times, with my present passport, and nary a stamp. Just looked to be sure, and no. They did stamp my wife’s of course, as hers is a Thai passport.

188

Ariadne is an extractor: she gets Cobb to reveal that he performed inception on Mal, how he did it, and how it killed her. Grandpa introduces her as a novice, which she clearly is not.

I think the movie is set up to provide a possibility for all the things suggested. It’s an idea mobius strip.

189

I honestly have no memory of getting stamps at reentry but I just checked my passport and I have “Department of Homeland Security - U.S. Customs and Border Protection - Admitted” stamps from 2006, 2008, and 2009. I do not seem to have one from my 2005 trip to Singapore or from cruises in 2004 and 2009 that did go through customs on our return.

190

Not quite. Mal locked the totem in her safe without spinning it - it’s just sitting there, unmoving, when Cobb finds it. What Cobb does is pick it up, start it spinning, and then close the safe with the top still spinning inside.

Remember, the safe itself doesn’t exist any more than the rest of the dreamworld. Safes in general are explicitly described as an aspect of the dreamer’s subconscious - the place in their mind they hide their deepest secrets. They can hide these secrets so deeply that they themselves forget the secrets are there. (Importantly, this doesn’t negate the existence of the secrets themselves - after all, what is the subconscious but something we can’t voluntarily control or remember, but which deeply impacts our thoughts and decisions anyway?)

Mal hiding the top in the safe is both action and metaphor, representing her choice to believe in her and Cobb’s limbo world as “reality.” By locking the totem away, she no longer recognizes that she is within a dream at all.

Cobb spinning the top in the safe (and leaving it spinning) reverses that. Spinning the top is, itself, the inception he performs on Mal: essentially, he is reprogramming her mind to subconsciously believe that, no matter what evidence there may be to the contrary, she is always still in a dream.

191

Maybe it just depends on individual reentry sites? I used to go through LAX quite a bit, but the last time was April 1999. Never got stamped there either.

192

You know, I thought I got stamped when I went through LAX, but I just checked my passport and there’s no stamp. I guess it does just depend on where you land.

Since Cobb is landing in LAX though, it might be an error or just an editorial choice. It does feel more satisfying to see someone stamping the passport though. There’s a sense of finality to it.

193

[quote=“TheTerribleTako, post:192, topic:546913”]

That’s what I figured it might be. Bang! Stamped in. Home free. But post-9/11, I could see where practices may have changed but not made it out to the boonies of Hawaii. Not exactly the same thing, but I recall another movie that ended with a dramatic pullback of the inside of the international terminal at LAX, except someone had just left on a domestic flight; the international terminal looked better for this purpose.

194

I kept a close eye on the “smashed up room, jumping” scene. The room behind Mal is not smashed. She rented the room across from Cob so he couldn’t stop her jumping. She smashed up Cob’s room to frame him for her murder.

195

so… a few thoughts. i think i have it all figured out pretty tidily, so have at it.

1st thought - totems - leo’s totem is something of much contention. the fact that he uses mal’s totem lends itself to questions of what’s the REAL totem? imo this can be easily explained away if you can accept that leo has MANY totems (tells), most of which have already been pointed out. i’m just merely saying it doesn’t have to be one or the other. the top, the wedding band, and ghost Mal are all totems. heck, the looped staircase, zero G, and the levels themselves are all totems, if you know to look for it. leo himself said - architects don’t model the levels out of existing places or else you won’t be able to distinguish the dream world from the real world.

2nd thought - dying vs dead. just like how sleep has progressions (1,2,3,4,REM), dying is a progression of fading into unconsciousness, organ failure, clinically dead, and past of resuscitation/gone-for-good dead. you go into deeper levels of dreams in Inception by going unconscious either through the dream machine or as Fischer did in the snow fortress via natural means. SO… fischer in going unconscious descends into unconsciousness leading to level 4. saito’s slow/steady blood loss up in level 1 allows him to slip quickly (in the context of stage 3 time) through unconsciousness into death/limbo. So… in my understanding - unconsciousness slips you into deeper and deeper levels, theoretically forever. dying detours you straight to limbo.

3rd thought - level 4 (not limbo). it’s been established that different levels are dreamed up by various members of the group. 1st level youseff, 2nd gordon levitt, 3rd forger. Level 4 is simply another dream, this carried out by Leo’s subconscious Ghost Mal. the subcon is able to be the dreamer since level 4 is teetering on the edge of limbo (entirely subcon). Level 4 has to be its own level and not limbo because… ariadne and fischer are kicked up and you don’t get kicked up from limbo.

4th thought - limbo. Limbo is a place so deep that you forget you’re in a dream all together. only with a trigger like a totem would you even have a chance of remembering what’s really going on. saito’s aging was proof about how deep he bought into the lie, however some are ignoring the fact that Leo himself was disoriented too. he was glassy eyed, and shoving gruel into his mouth instead of focusing on saito. saito really saves the day by noticing the top which triggers his memories (totem alert) and his speech about obligations (kids totem alert) in turn triggers leo’s memories. then it’s obvious that saito shot the both of them back to reality.

5rd thought - the “reality is really a dream” opinion is bunk. Leo dreams into deeper layers repeatedly throughout the movie. you can’t sleep from limbo into deeper limbo. if you can, then that means there’s an infinite number of limbos. if that were the case, there is no difference between dream levels and limbo. if the two are one and the same, then dying in any level would wake you up instead of sending you into limbo. of course if you go extreme-meta and say the rules of limbo are just dreams to begin with, that explains away everything but i feel like if you’re going to undermine the entire canon of the movie just to prove a point.

6th thought - plot hole; ellen page’s emotional yet inexplicable leap from the balcony - again, as it is with most of the movie - the discrepancy comes in the difference between level 4 and limbo. gordon-levitt plants charges to ignite a kick that would wake up the crew from the snow level. sure. i get that. why does the forger plant charges to kick ariadne/fischer? because they’re in level 4 right? he puts ariadne and leo on the sleep machine - knowing full well they’re going into level 4 and needs a kick to wake up. ok. once there, to escape ariadne feels the need to… jump off the building? why? if it’s suicide, she’s operating under the assumption she’s in limbo. if that’s the case, why plant charges? if she’s jumping off to simulate the freefall of a kick… WRONG. you can’t kick yourself. you need the level above you to kick you, which the forger does with the charges. i mean, visually it’s a stunning scene and evokes a good chunk of emotions but logically speaking… it makes no sense.
OPINIONS: wow. what a thriller in every sense of the word. the plot was pretty straightforward with exception to level 4 and limbo. visually it’s stunning with FINE attention to details (notable - tiny droplets of zero-g blood floating out of ken watanabe in the hotel). the music and sound effects were outrageously effective, and the action scenes are phenomenal. to call it a ripoff of the matrix is an insult. what, no movie made after the matrix can have interesting fight scenes without it ripping off the matrix?

i have some beef with the handling of level4/limbo. it was just poorly handled and i hope it wasn’t intentional as to be clever or to stimulate thought. i mean, making people ponder the essence of “reality” is one thing but to make people ponder the nuances between dream level and limbo is pedantic.

i DIDN’T like the wink at the end with the top and the wobble was needlessly incendiary. a more poignant ending would have had leo look at the top and decide to not spin it at all. once it’s spun, the die is cast for him. he’ll find out if he’s dreaming or not even if the audience doesn’t. in not wanting to find out sets the audience up for a real debate on the reality of “reality” without mucking it up with mindless chatter about wobbles vs continuous rotation.

*bonus conspiracy theory - maybe not the entire thing was a dream but everything from the mogadishu basement was. leo did “wake up” from it but as he was in the bathroom spinning the top, watanabe interrupts and leo knocks his top over, and doesn’t see if it’s continuously spinning or would stop on its own. and if iirc it’s the last time that the top is used.

196

I thought the pace of the movie was a little jarring. It went from action scene to introspection, back and forth, back and forth, in an odd manner. There’s a zero-G fight scene going on, then we cut to DiCaprio whining about his dead wife, then over to action with the van, back to more whining. Heh.

Still, I enjoyed the film.

197

I really liked the film and I admit I lean towards to the “all a dream” theory. For one thing a lot of the scenes in the “real world” seemed very over-the top: the helicopter scene with Saito. the chase in Africa, as was the idea of a single corporation on the verge of becoming a “superpower”. As Mal suggests near the end it does all seem like a paranoid fantasy on the part of Cobb. And it’s really hard to tell when the “real world” starts which as we are told is the quality of a dream.

198

Couple observations:

  1. Is “the real world” a dream or not? My stepson says the wedding ring Cobb wears is a clue so I guess I need to go back and rewatch the movie. For me, early in the movie Cobb & Mal are experimenting with a dream inside a dream but they only wake up once. At the time, I thought this was just skipping waking up in the intermediate dream. But the second time we see the exposition, Nolan has shown us the team going through the stages but then Cobb and Mal only woke up once. Cobb’s not in limbo but he is still dreaming. Other clue. He can’t dream except through the machine.

  2. the totem: If #1 is true, why does it fall the other times. Because it wasn’t his totem! It was Moll’s (in his subconscious) at least until the end. Then again, it may fall like some have noted (because it’s not his totem) but the cut is Nolan telling us it is a dream as if it spun forever.

  3. How can Cobb, Ari and Saito go into limbo and come back the normal way (the drop)? Because they are in Fischer’s dream and he is not sedated at that level. Notice they sedated him at all of the other levels.

  4. Suppose 1 is correct and Cobb cannot stop dreaming. In other words, Mal was right and can’t wake him up. Is Mal not a subcon but actually her trying to make contact with Cobb by entering his dream?

199

Wow, it really kicked ass this past weekend at the B.O.

I suspect the availability of the film on IMAX helped, but I still don’t think anyone would have predicted it would’ve beat the Jolie film.

200

I think she was creating scenery. The result of the two mirrors was what appeared to be a long tunnel of those metal support arches. When she breaks the mirror, the image became the (dream) reality, a bridge with those arches, which wasn’t there before. She used a “tool” (the mirrors) to shape (in Cobb’s mind) what she wanted him to see, although this took a minute to complete. She admits that it also matched a bridge from her own memory, as well.

Later, she just “raised” a foot bridge straight out of the river bank, and you notice that the projections got more hostile quicker, with such a blatant show of non-reality.