That’s what I thought at first…but didn’t they say that limbo could potentially drive you crazy? I mean, it didn’t happen to any of the characters that we know of, but when they explained what limbo was, that was the danger mentioned, right? So if Cobb intentionally hangs out there for several dream years-even if it’s just a good night’s sleep in real time, doesn’t he run the risk of being insane when he wakes up? Or did I not understand what they meant?
Great film, saw it on a transatlantic flight this week and even without the scale of a large screen I thoroughly enjoyed it. (and I would love to see the “folding Paris” scene in Imax.)
I think Leonardo DeCaprio is ageing in a very interesting way and the more I see of him the more I am impressed. A fine actor.
I’m not going to delve into the intricacies other than to say that it seems clear that the director has purposefully left enough ambiguities in there to allow multiple interpretations. I’m all in favour of that.
Like “the Usual Suspects” we just don’t know what is real and what is fabricated.
Oh, and another question—we know that Adriadne’s name is an allusion. But what about the names ‘Dom’ and ‘Mal’? They’re just a little weirdish-short, monosyllabic-is that intentional? ‘Mal’ is a prefix that means ‘bad’ or ‘evil’ in english, I think-are we supposed to make that connection? Or are they just supposed to have vaguely jarring names? Or am I over-analyzing?
I do enjoy that.
Whoa. I suspect that seeing it on a plane, when the lead characters wake up on a plane (or do they?) after their mission, could be delightfully disconcerting.
Mal - Short for Molly. “Mal” means “bad” for obvious reasons. Also, pronounced “Moll”, a common name for noir femme fatales.
Eames - Architects/industrial designers Charles and Ray Eames
Dom - route terms means “God” or champion (dominate).
Cobb - like “cobweb”. Or meaning, conspicuous person.
Ariadne - from labyrinth myth
Arthur - King Arthur rumored to sleep forever rather than die. Arthur Schopenhauer said “Life is like a dream”.
Yusuf - prominent dreamer and dream interpreter in the Quran (Joseph and the technicolor dreamcoat in the Bible)
Robert Fischer - “Phishing” a hacking technique like inception. Bobby Fisher chess genius.
Browning - Robert Browning wrote poems “Bad dreams”.
Saito - Japenese for “website”. Can also mean “purification” (as solver of Cobb’s legal issues).
Interesting, thanks! But some of it does seem a bit of a stretch–in particular, Browning and Saito. I mean, I would hardly call the way Saito offers to fix Dom’s legal problems ‘purification’.
errrr, I’d like to say yes but…I never even thought of that. How the hell did that not even register with me?
Copious alcohol and an interesting film tend to dull ones perception maybe.
Or maybe it was all a dream…
Two things:
(1) I think Dom’s totem has absolutely zero capacity to act as a dream-o-meter. First of all, it wasn’t his totem; it was Mal’s, so there isn’t an “unknowable” quality about it. Secondly, it’s unknowable quality is totally knowable – he tells Ellen Page its secret. In a dream, it keeps spinning; in the real world, it falls. What’s to stop someone from Architecting (pardon my verbing) a dream and giving Dom a top that falls immediately? Nothing.
(2) Which sort of brings me to my second point, and is why I quoted Larry Mudd: I think Dom is definitely dreaming throughout the entire movie, and I think everything that happens – EVERYTHING, from first shot to last – was created by Ellen Page at the behest of Michael Caine to implant an idea in Dom’s head. Someone upthread mentioned the litmus test of “How did you get here?”, which Dom fails as he is washed up on a beach out of nowhere at the beginning of the movie. Also, the shadowy cabal chasing him, Saito being right there at the perfect moment at the other end of an unlikely alley in Mombasa of all places… too weird to be real.
I haven’t fully fleshed it out, but the two key points to me are: (1) at the deepest, deepest level, Dom finally admits that Mal – the woman who pops up in every other level – isn’t real and (2) Ellen Page was instrumental in getting him to admit that. In other words, she Incepted (again, I verbed there) the idea in Dom’s head that Mal is gone. I envision a True Real World where Dom isn’t on the lam for Mal’s murder but instead was exonerated, but he’s still so guilt-ridden and despondent that he keeps jumping into multi-leveled dreams to spend more and more time with his projection of Mal, to the detriment of caring for his kids. Enter Michael Caine, the concerned grandfather who, even in Dom’s dream, pleads with Dom to come back to reality. The only way Michael Caine can figure to effect that change is to have Ellen Page Incept the idea into Dom’s head that Mal is gone, make Dom think it is his own idea (a la the Fischer plot), and then have him finally swim out of the depths of dreams. I think I’ll appropriate the recent idea in this thread that the fade to black at the end of the movie is Dom finally waking up to the True Real World, where he has his kids, doesn’t have Mal, but is finally at peace with that.
In essence, I think the titular Inception refers to Dom’s Inception, not Fischer’s. Of course, down this road lies solipsism – I like to think Arthur, Eames, Ellen Page et al. exist in the True Real World, and the versions we see throughout the movie are Wizard-of-Oz-like reflections of their real-world characters, except they can shoot amazingly better than Bad Guys, fight in Zero G, kill dozens of minions while skiing, etc. But I suppose the entire cast could be dreamy homonculi. Hell, even Ellen Page could be fake, and Michael Caine could be the puppet master.
Heh, I imagine Fischer – if he could recollect his dreams perfectly – must have been very confused when he awoke on the plane from his four-level dream. It was pretty complicated – but if I’m right, it pales in comparison to Dom’s dream! Not only did Dom experience Fischer’s four layer dream, but the entire bit with the audition for Saito, the run through Mombasa, escaping Cobol*, seeing the Chemist’s surreal dream chamber (which Dom in the True Real World probably patronizes, come to think of it), visiting Michael Paige, swimming to aged Saito, going through the mirrory Parisian cityscape with Ellen Page – all part of one epically crazy dream. I dig that!
P.S. If I’m wrong, then someone has to tell me why Dom didn’t age but Saito did. If I’m right, then it’s a dream so it doesn’t have to make perfect sense 
[sub]* Is the use of the name of a programming language for the shadowy cabal supposed to clue us in that what Dom thinks is the real world is really a simulation?[/sub]
Agreed. The behavior of the top totem is not consistent with either Dom’s explanation of the purpose of a totem or the other two totems we see.
If the point of a totem is to determine whether or not you’re in someone else’s dream, then it needs to have some special property that couldn’t be simulated just by seeing it. Levit’s character has a loaded die, and Page’s has a bishop with a slug in it, and only they know the weight distribution. But Dom’s makes no sense. You don’t need to know anything special about a top to know that it doesn’t spin forever.
The question that’s still in my mind is: Does Dom know that he has an unreliable totem, or does he not. If he knows, then he’s actively decided to subvert his own potential to know whether he’s in another’s dream. I don’t think that leads anywhere particularly interesting, so I like the alternative.
If he doesn’t know, then I like Larry Mudd’s interpretation of the title. Just as Dom incepted Mal with the idea that her world wasn’t real, she incepted him with the idea that his is. When we see him spinning the top in reality and holding a gun, he’s not making sure he’s out of the dream, he’s hoping, every time, that it will keep spinning, and that he can rejoin Mal by killing himself. But even though he’s in his own dream state, he’s arbitrarily decided that that level is reality, and in reality, the top stops.
I think the (implied but unspoken) point of totems is that they can only tell you if you ARE in a dream, not if you definitely are not.
The totem has a property that only you know about. So if it fails to have that property, you know that you are in a dream. If it has the property, on the other hand, then either you are not in the dream, or someone has discovered its property, or some amazing coincidence has occured.
quixotic78, that’s really cool. I really think you’ve got something there! I thought it was “Cabal” (a conspiracy or group of schemers) and not “Cobol” (the programming language), but I could be wrong.
the “only you know” is only a safety precaution. it’s not inherent to what a totem is - like how airbags and ABS are a good idea to put on a car, but by definition, don’t need it.
the totem is just an object. in this case, it’s a top. you keep it around with you. you’re in a dream and you want to check. you think in your head, “this is the infinity top. it’s going to spin forever” and since it’s a dream… it will. you don’t tell anyone because if you’re in someone else’s dream… they think “hey. i want to trick this guy. i’m going to will his top over so he’ll think he’s in reality when in fact he’s in a dream”.
this is what mal did to herself. she toppled her top, so she thought it was reality. leo started the top up again to convince her that it was a dream and that they need to wake up. the unforeseen consequence was that mal now thought EVERYTHING was a dream and killed herself.
that’s why leo doesn’t want to know what ariadne’s secret is. he doesn’t want to be able to somehow mess with her reality like he did with mal.
@ qixotic re: aging saito died 2 levels (as i understand it) above limbo. the difference between 3 minutes in the snow level and limbo turned out to be… 30 years?
Exactly. There is never any guarantee that you are NOT in a dream, only proof that you ARE.
Sorry to resurrect this thread, but I thought I would mention a new development concerning stamping Americans’ passports upon reentering the US. My wife and I entered the US through JFK Airport in New York City early last month. They let her stay with me in the line for US nationals since we’re married instead of making her go into the separate foreigners’ queue. We talked to the Immigration offical together. He didn’t stamp my passport, just gave me a “Welcome back,” but he did stamp my wife’s Thai passport.
Ummm . . . But he stamped a Thai passport not an American one.
Yes, but that was the whole question. In the movie, Leonardo DiCaprio, whose character is American, gets stamped into the US by US Immigration. Other Americans in this thread say they too have been stamped back into the US. I have never been stamped by US Immigration, not ever, including last month.