I enjoyed the movie greatly, although it took a bit for me to realize what was going on with who (I’m a bit slow).
I hated the ending though. I really, REALLY did. If Cobb was stuck in limbo then I wish they would have at least shown if the entire plan worked. I do not like not knowing the end.
I also did not quite understand Cobb’s inception of his wife. Did he convince her that the world wasn’t real and that’s what drove her to think the real world wasn’t real? I don’t know.
Yep. He implanted the idea that the limbo world was really and the only way to leave was to kill herself. But it stuck in her head, and she basically carried it back to the real world with her.
I think one of my favorite things about this movie is the fact that there isn’t really any explanation about how the “dream-sharing” works. Pretty much any sci-fi movie would feature some narrative about how “In the year 2015 scientists discovered that by merging the quantum level of brain-waves blah blah blah.” This just goes “This a world where dream-sharing is real, it was invented a while ago, accept it and move on.”
Probably not. But we never saw a natural dream, each was a constructed reality designed to a specific goal.
Is Magnus Nolan any relation to Christopher Nolan? I guess I could look it up.
But yeah, I was wrong about the children not aging. In hindsight, I can recall the children at the end of the film looking differently than their earlier incarnations. That definitely adds to the ambiguity.
AWESOME frigging movie. 4 stars. Would have been near perfect if, after the credits, the top falls.
I thought the ending was ambiguous - the top seemed like it was about to fall.
However, I thought it had quite a DIFFERENT ambiguity than you did. You seem to think that if the top doesn’t fall, that Leonardo is still in limbo. On the contrary, I thought that if the top doesn’t fall, the entire movie, including the heist was a dream.
I forget who was the ‘designated dreamer’ for each level, so hard to answer. But I’m going to guess that Moll as the subconscious shade, was able to undermine all the levels to a different degree, with the limbo level being the level she had greatest control over (which Juno talked about). Saito ended up old because he and DiCaprio spend a very long time there, an/or because of being subconsciously primed by his statement about ‘growing old and resentful’.
Each level had a different objective, and needed a warning that the time was running out.
Those time differentials were for a normal session. If you recall, in each level, they both entered the dream state towards the end of their allotted time, and also, had to be waken up manually, which lessened the normal amount of time they would have had.
It’s not entirely clear what happened with DiCaprio and his wife. But within the heist, they were being waken up manually, before the normal alloted time, hence less ennui. Also, DiCaprio managed to keep his shit intact due to experience, but the Asian guy totally lost it until DiCaprio recited the special phrases that reminded him of things. If DiCaprio hadn’t interacted with him in limbo, he might have been mentally stuck there when his real body awoke.
I didn’t think of her as Juno per se, but yeah, Ellen Page seemed slightly out of place.
But they did need a new architect, or else they wouldn’t have had a convenient plot device for explaining everything to the audience…
That made me go hmm too. But I guess effects only work one level down.
Only the limbo was truly dismal. The rest were perhaps at worst, ordinary. But they were 1) lucid dreams and therefore somewhat realistic 2) designed by a specific dream architect 3) specifically within the movie they mention that the more normal the dream they make is, the less the subconscious extras try to attack the interloper.
Yes, that’s why he himself starts to doubt if it’s real, and starts the top spinning.
So… why did you see a movie that’s advertised as being about entering dreams??
Again, I didn’t interpret that as him still being in limbo. I interpreted that as the netire heist being some kind f dream…
She put her top, which was her totem (the thing which helps you know if you’re in a dream) in a safe, so she could forget it and the notion that she was in a dream. He found it and started it spinning, which triggered her subconscious to re-realize she was in a dream (because the top kept spinning instead of eventually falling). Unfortunately, when she woke up, her subconscious was still manipulated to think she was in a dream.
I remember being disappointed at the end of The Presitge that the denouement was so clear cut. I had precisely the same feeling at the end of this film, with the top continuing to spin with only a slight wobble of doubt, with the children being so small. That and Grandpa, a professor of architecture in Paris, now seems to be living in the United States. The end is a dream.
My question is whether every second of screen time is a dream of some sort.
Except the top did fall at other times in the movie.
I’ve looked it up so I know that using the Edith Piaf song as the musical cue was written into the original script well before casting, but it was a bit distracting and meta-seeming to use that in a movie with Marion Cotillard.
The ten people or so I went to see the movie with all thought the ending was ambiguous; as in, the top looked like it may stop spinning soon, but the scene was cut off before we knew for sure.
I thought the top was more than slightly wobbling. It seemed like it was about to fall to me, though I realize that it was meant to be ambiguous. And I don’t think Grandpa was living in the US. Cobb had said on the phone to the kids that he would give something to Grandpa to take to them, then when he saw Grandpa in his office, he gave him a bag of stuffed animals to take to them when he next went to visit. Grandpa was just there visiting.
I was thinking about that too, about Cobb and Leonard both feeling guilty about their wives. But it also struck me in both movies how much that you can’t trust your own brain. Leonard from Memento can’t form new memories, and can’t totally be sure that his memories he has are correct, and in Inception there is all the emphasis on not being sure whether a dream is real or not. And in Memento, Leonard chooses to deceive himself, thinking that it will make him happier, and in Inception it could be argued Cobb does the same thing.
I don’t think the ending was as ambiguous as many people think.
If I recall the top was weighted so you couldn’t even get it to spin for more than a second in the first place. The whole “wobble” thing people are seeing is just how tops spin.
One thing to consider is that he’s gonna spend some time with his children and walk back into the dining room. If the top is still spinning he’ll know that he’s still in dream.
I loved this and can’t wait to see it again. I think it’s worth an IMAX viewing next time. While I still wish I’d gone in not knowing anything at all about the plot, even something so simple as the fact that it had something to do with dreams, I’m very glad I’d stayed away from all previews and reviews and articles. It was fantastic seeing all the scenes for the first time fresh on the big screen and the plot unfolding with no idea whatsoever what might be coming next. Even the cast was a surprise to me. I had no idea that Marion Cotillard, Michael Caine, Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Cillian Murphy were in the movie. I didn’t know about and didn’t recognize Tom Berenger or Lucas Haas at all.
I know what you mean. When I first heard Piaf I recognized her immediately, and I wondered if Marion would show up as an inside joke.
I need to see it again. Very soon.
Some of us aren’t enlightened; what’s the connection between Piaf and Cotillard?
Enh, nm. Long Live Wikipedia!
Since the token is a way to identify if you’re in someone else’s dream, if the top didn’t fall, whose dream would Dom be in?
Ooops, sorry, I wondered if I should add a link or something.
For anyone who might be interested, here’s the song that Piaf was singing in the film, with pictures of both Edith and of Cotillard as Piaf.
wipes away tears My god I love that song.
Btw, I don’t speak French but I believe the song is about Edith Piaf having no regrets for how she lived her life. I’m sure some could tie in having no regrets to the movie too. Why pick that song, other than the fact that it’s a fucking great song, of course, instead of something else? Does anyone see a link?
I need to know the answer to this question.
When I go to the movies with my husband, it falls on him to explain it to me.
This time, I went with my best friend, which means it falls on me to explain it to her.
She is still calling me with questions. That means it falls on you dopers to explain it to me.
Thanks.
Loved the movie by the way, but the quoted question has me scratching my head.
If the top was going to spin forever, as it does in a dream state, it wouldn’t have wobbled at all. It would have just continued to spin perfectly. Yes, it’s slightly annoying that it cut before the thing fell, but we’ve seen what the top looks like when it spins in a dream, and it didn’t wobble then.
I think if he was still in a dream, then the idea is he was still down in limbo, but unaware of it. Remember that as you get further down, time slows, to point where limbo is nearly infinite. Remember that Saito went all the way to being an old man. So he’s in limbo, still on the flight, and the whole scene with them waking up never really happened.
Which I choose to believe did happen, and he is awake in the end.