Mmm… love Levitt. Hard to believe he was the obnoxious kid from 3rd Rock From The Sun. He is one tall, dark drink of water. Love him. I’d love to see him as a “bad guy.” The Riddler would be a good role for him.
I loved the movie. I liked the ambiguity at the end. I don’t want to read too much into it. I like leaving it ambiguous. I was on the edge of my seat, and very invested in the characters and plot. Loved it!
Not that I’m endorsing the general idea, but if they were, hypothetically, to bring back the Joker for Batman 3, I would be totally OK with Levitt playing the part. As already mentioned, he even looks a helluva lot like Ledger, and could have the chops to honor Ledger’s take on the character without coming off as an imitation.
The top as totem doesn’t make sense according to the logic of totems as exposited by the characters in the movie. A totem is supposed to have a unique, unpredictable property in the real world that no architect would know to replicate in a dream world. Hence, the loaded die, etc. But the top has a unique property in dreams that can’t be replicated in the real world.
It appears that the spinning of the top can’t be taken as a reliable indicator of anything. Cobb tells himself that it indicates something–but Cobb is decieving himself.
Put this together with the identical appearance of the children at the end of the movie–their clothing, posing, etc–as compared to their appearances in the rest of the movie, and it seems clear that the whole film depicts Cobb’s dream.
The concept of Limbo also doesn’t seem to bear out in the film’s events in a way accurate to its description in exposition. Supposedly, if you die while sedated, you end up in a chaos, trapped until you finally wake up. But we never see that chaos–it’s thoroughly sensible dream-world architecture all the way down. Yet, I do think the movie depicts Limbo. The entire thing is set in Limbo. The chaos is the chaos of not knowing the difference between dream and reality, even when you know there is such a distinction to make. (Normal dreams aren’t in limbo, because in normal dreams you don’t even realize there is a distinction to make. You just have your dream, then you wake up. In limbo, you know you might be dreaming, and are constantly trying to wake up, and are never sure if you’ve succeeded.) If killing yourself while unable to wake up puts you in limbo, and if, once in that state (as we see depicted in the film) you still find yourself in a fairly sensible dream-world architecture, then what happens when you kill yourself while in that state? Instead of waking up (since you can’t) it seems you must instead go to levels even deeper. Getting out of a dream while unable to wake up just puts you into a deeper dream.
I think this is what happened to Cobb. He’s in limbo, working through psychological issues, trying to be awake but unable. And maybe some of the other characters are from the real world, trying to help him out of the dream (but I wouldn’t stake any money on that–they may all just be projections of his, part of his dealing with the whole dream/reality issue). After all, plenty of characters exhort him to do things like “come back to reality,” most esp his dad and Mal. (And the scene with him talking to his kids on the phone–probably just projections but maybe he’s hearing his kids sitting by the hospital bed he’s laying on while in a coma. “You’re never coming back, are you dad?”)
Ultimately, though as you can see I’ve got a theory about “what’s really happening” in the film, I think the best thing with this kind of movie isn’t to ask “what’s really happening” but just to ask what the events depicted mean for the people depicted. Did the top keep spinning in the end or not? As I argued above, even in the film’s logic, it can’t really matter. And ignoring the film’s logic, I would still think it can’t really matter. Cobb has come to a place where he can be happy independently of the question whether he’s dreaming or not. (Note he ends up ignoring the top). That’s his big transformation. The question isn’t whether he’s dreaming or not, the question is how should we feel about him no longer really caring?
Never-the-less, a lot of people would not be satisfied believing that they may be in a dream.
“It’s not real!”
It seems to me that people equate “not real” with pointless, or at least, just not as valuable.
Maybe Cobb has decided that a dream world can be just as important or meaningfull as a “real” world, I dunno.
But that psycological speed bumb will be there for most people.
Heck, most people struggle with trying to find meaningfull lives in meat space. Does wealth = success? Does love? yada yada.
the more i think about and read what other people think about this movie, the less i like it. it’s intentionally ambiguous, almost calculated to get people back in the theaters for repeat viewings. being clever and coy is one thing, being manipulative is another. there are tons of contradictory points made, and that simply isn’t ok in a movie like this where context clues are vital to making sense of things.
contradictions:
kicking in level 4. why did ariadne throw fischer off the balcony? a “reverse kick” ? why not reverse kick to begin with? it would cut out the need for synching the kicks all together.
the end being limbo. it can’t you don’t dream in limbo. there is no lower dream level than limbo. if the final scene was limbo, then it means there are dream states lower than limbo, which defeats the purpose of limbo.
institutionalizing of totems. like a magic trick, it seems like totems are just a flashy coin that the audience is supposed to fixate on and not pay attention to the strings being pulled on the side. at the end, we’re fixated on the wobble and the ages of children in the credits than focusing on what the story dictates.
also, i’m pretty sure the different kids were used for the beach scene vs the end scene. those kids at the end scene are IDENTICAL to the kids shown earlier.
My wife asked me if there were two Mals. The one would be Cobb’s Mal - the dream-memory he keeps trapped by guilt, reliving key moments. She’s the hysterical one.
The other would be Real Mal, who realized that they had both escaped limbo, but had gotten lost and really were still dreaming. She jumped from the hotel, did wake up, and kept coming back in to try and rescue him. Basically my wife wondered “What if Mal was right all along?”
It was an interesting premise. That let us explore all sorts of other possibilities (that may or may not be actually intended and supported by the movie).
About the spinning top in the hotel room:
Someone upthread mentioned we saw the top spinning for awhile before falling when DiCaprio was alone in his hotel room following the failed caper/audition on the train with Lucas Haas. Can’t remember the the post exactly right, but it was questioning whether spinning meant dreaming or not.
Things to consider. The real-world top was weighted so it should fall over almost immediately. Cobb was trying to spin it over and over and yes, we did see it spin for a little while before falling over, but it was hard to tell if it fell over soon enough to be the weighted real one. Cobb was also sitting there repeatedly testing the top with a gun in his hand, holding it up right beside his face.
To me, that suggests that when he is awake in reality, he isn’t actually 100% sure he’s in reality or not. He was testing the top over and over, suggesting he’s unsure. He was testing it over and over with a gun right by his head. If it spun for X number of seconds too long, would he have shot himself to wake up?
I have to disagree with a lot of you. I think in the end he is in reality, back in waking life, and that all the scenes that appear to be in waking life are in waking life. I think it’s just a straightforward heist movie, except that the heist is in an unusual setting, to put it mildly. As with a few other heist movies, some secrets the leader doesn’t tell his crew cause complications–like in Ocean’s Eleven when George Clooney didn’t tell his crew about his relationship with Julia Roberts–but they overcome them. We don’t see the top at the end fall down, but we don’t see it spin forever either. I think the last shot is Nolan just teasing his audience.
I agree but if the movie wasn’t compelling and interesting and well-made, you wouldn’t be going back to see it again. There’s no rule that everything has to make sense, in fact I find some of my favorite movies leave things out or leave it to the view to make his own judgement.
I wonder if Chuang Tzu was referenced in the movie somewhere. 
themes, values, and morals can be twisted, i’ll give you that. but plot points and the overall story? it’s one thing to make the actions questionable like say… denzel in John Q. however in Inception, the audience is thoroughly confused* as to what the heck ACTUALLY HAPPENED.
even in a mindbender like the Matrix, by movie’s end most viewers had a pretty good grasp of what happened, who’s fighting who, and what the resolution was. other movies that are hard to follow during - memento, fight club, etc - are also resolved by movie’s end. inception doesn’t make us debate truths like “what is reality” because we’re too fixated on the totem clues (or at least i am).
*confused in the sense that there is no real consensus. most people are certainly convinced about their particular POV but the diversity in POV’s show that the movie was completely confusing.
I don’t think there is that much confusion. They planned a caper: Get Fischer to the dream place where he can hear the message, “be your own man,” get it done before the clock ticks down to zero, and get a reward for success. I don’t think there is anyone who doesn’t understand the caper, or the countdown, or whether or not they were successful. Our gang of corporate spies did indeed accomplish their mission and Leo got to go home.
The only debate is whether or not the above plot was set in reality or if it was another dream within a dream. Either way the caper was successful and I don’t think there is much confusion about that. It wasn’t that hard to follow.
Malthus - I loved that butterfly quote. Are you familiar with “La Vida es Sueno” by Calderon? [see http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_is_a_Dream
It’s about a prince who doesn’t know if he is awake or asleep. It posits that Life is a Dream and dreams themselves are but dreams; also that “Life is a dream from which only death awakens us”. This was one of the first things I thought of after seeing the film.
By the way, if it is all Cobb’s dream, then plausibly Cobol corporation is his subconscious protective projections just like in Fischer’s dreams–but if that’s the case, then Cobb’s protector projections have turned against him.
Which would make sense, actually, if he’s in limbo and thoroughly self-decieved.
Why no - I’ve never heard of it before.
I see there is a translation on Project Gutenburg …
And if they’re trying to kill him, they could be trying to get him to wake up. :eek:
That’s a possibility that occurred to me early on in the movie–that Mal was actually still alive and that this would turn out to be an effort by her and all the other characters to retrieve Cobb from dreamland.
Also, just so I’m clear on this point, Michael Caine played Cobb’s father rather than his father-in-law, right?
No, Caine is the father-in-law, Mal’s father.
Really? I was confused about that as well. The only specific information I remember was Cobb saying he was the children’s grandfather. I kind of assumed he was Cobb’s father. Otherwise one would have thought there would be some tension between him and Cobb about Mal’s death or at least some scene explaining why he believed Cobb was innocent.
The production material all lists Caine as Cobb’s father-in-law. See here, also.
OK but it wasn’t made explicit in the film itself was it? Come to think if he was in fact Mal’s father, that may be another hint that he was a projection. Mal’s real father would likely have been angry at Cobb for his daughter’s death. Even if he believed Cobb was innocent of murder he would held him at least partly responsible for the suicide. Creating a projection of a forgiving father-in-law perhaps helped Cobb cope with his guilt.