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

Cafe Society
81

They did get there by going down another dream level rather tahn dying (which is how Watanabe and Fischer ended up there) but it must still have been limbo because:

A) When they first discussed limbo the others said that DiCaprio was the only one who’d been there and back and when he tells that story it where he and Cotillard had spent decades and this is the same place that he and Ellen Page end up when going down to that fourth level.

B) Where he and Ellen Page went was the same place Fischer had gone when he died in the third level and that had been described as Limbo.

C) Wherever that was DiCaprio was able to get to Watanabe from within that level (and he had no mechanism for going to any other levels since it was already established that killing yourself in that level takes you up, not down).

82

I agree that the scene where DiCaprio shows up on the beach with his totem and a gun was limbo. DiCaprio was incoherent, and that makes sense because limbo was a place that is completely subconscious. The question was why Watanabe was so much older, and that is because he died before DiCaprio a level up. Watanabe dies in the frozen hospital while DiCaprio goes another level down and then dies. The whole time multiplier made him that much older.

Further, I thought the level that DiCaprio, Page, Fischer and Cotillard were in (with all of the decaying buildings) was not limbo, but DicCaprio’s dream a level down. He was the architect, in effect. I thought limbo was kind of abstract, where it was not really a level up or down.

83

:smack: Of course! I remember her talking about the letter she left with the lawyer and was thinking, bitch, didn’t she consider that if they both died then the kids would be left with a seeming legacy of murder-suicide parental deaths? Which was silly of me, of course, since she didn’t think her kids were real. I didn’t figure the hotel room into it, but that’s me, again missing the obvious. Thank you both.

Oh yes, same here. I’m enjoying reading everything by everybody.

There Will Be Blood has one of the greatest soundtracks in history, IMO.

84

If it isn’t limbo, then how did Fischer get there?

85

Mal (Dom) took him there from the third level.

86

OK I just saw it a second time, and, now I understand some things I didn’t the first time, but also now I’m confused about some things I thought I understood the first time LOL.

So I’ve broken each level of the heist down. I’ve filled in what I know, please fill in the blanks for me / correct any mistakes. Thanks!

Prelogue heist

Members: Cobb (& Mal), Arthur, Nash, Saito

The guardian is random Asian kid reading comic. Saito is the mark. We learn that the sedative for each person turns off sequentially rather than simultaneously.

Level 1 apartment - Arthur is the architect, but is he also the enactor? It’s explicitly said NOT to be Saito. Is his mistake about the rug due to him not researching the real apartment well enough, laziness with his design, or something else? Was the apartment in general (and Saito’s palace) constructed from real life research, or taken directly from Saito’s subconscious? It’s not clear whether they are woken up by the attacking mob, or simply from the sedative wearing off, although Arthur does seem to disappear before the mob can get to him.

Level 2 Saito’s place - Nash potentially designed the level but he is guardian this time so he can’t be the enactor. Arthur is shot, disappears, and wakes in L1. Cobb’s body is tipped over into a tub of water causing him to wake up to L1 also. Saito either has his sedative wear off or is affected by Cobb’s water or waking. We learn that if you die (on normal sedative) on a lower level, you only wake up one level above, rather than in reality.

MAIN HEIST

REALITY / plane -

Members: Cobb, Arthur, Ariadne, Eames, Saito, Yusuf, Fischer, Stewardess

Enter dream: Cobb, Arthur, Ariadne, Eames, Saito, Yusuf, Fischer

Guardian: Stewardess

Sedative used: Deep, requires tipping to wake, death sends one to limbo.

LEVEL 1 / taxi,warehouse,van -

Members: Cobb (& Mal), Arthur, Ariadne, Eames (as Browning), Saito, Yusuf, Fischer

Architect: Ariadne designed all the levels and taught them to the team except for Cobb, but originally she wasn’t supposed to come along, so it’s not clear who was originally going to enact her design, and who ended up enacting since she did come along for the ride.

It’s supposedly raining because Yusef drank too much in real life and has a full bladder, although they also say that it will help convince Fischer to take a taxi. It’s not clear why they didn’t just start out in the taxi. And Mal causes an unexpected train. Either previous extraction prevention training, Mal, or both cause them to be ambushed.

Designated dreamer: Fischer

The chasers: I think when they get ambushed someone shouts the name of the company, it’s assumed they are company men. Cobb claims they are Fisher’s projections with extra training. It becomes apparent that Mal caused the train. But it’s not clear if the shooters are really Fischer’s specially trained projections, or Cobb lied/was incorrect and they too are somehow under the influence of Mal.

Side effects:
From Reality: Rain caused by Yusef’s full bladder.

Death: Saito is shot. Death on this level sends one to limbo, although death can be postponed somewhat from the perspective of the dying by entering a lower dream level. It seems like Cobb might also drown, but by this point he’s in limbo anyway.

Waking: It’s not clear how they wake up from this level. Fischer and Eames (as Browning) are just sitting on the beach. Ariadne and Arthur swim away. Cobb and Saito are drowning. Possibly it’s a natural awakening, from the sedative wearing off.

Enter dream: Cobb, Ariadne, Arthur, Eames (as Browning?), Saito, Fischer

Guardian: Yusef

Sedative used: No one dies on the next level, so it’s not clear if that is forbidden or not. But the van gets tossed around an awful lot, so presumably it’s the same deep sedative as Reality.

LEVEL 2 / hotel -

Members: Cobb (& Mal), Arthur, Ariadne, Eames (as Blonde and then Browning), Saito, Fischer

Architect: Ariadne designed this level, but it’s not clear who is enacting. The room their equipment is stored in seems to be dependent on the random number Fisher chose in the previous level, so that aspect must have been designed while they were in the previous level.

Designated dreamer: Fischer? It’s not clear who they set up as designated dreamer in the van, although Fischer’s projection of Browning appears on this level. If projections can only appear one level down, it must be Fischer. If they can appear further down than that, then it’s not clear.

The chasers: Fisher’s projections with extra training again? Also company men? I don’t remember Mal showing up, unless the shooters are somehow hers.

Side effects:
From Reality: None.
From level 1: Gravity is affected by the van tumble and the van free fall. The hotel is shaken when the van crashes off the bridge, and when it crashes into the water. The song is heard by Arthur on L2 when Yusef places the headphones on him in L1.

Death: No one is killed, unless they were somehow killed in the elevator. No one is woken up by the van tumble though, so presumably the strong sedative was used, and therefore death would send you to limbo

Waking: It’s not clear how they wake up from this level. They seem to wake up around the time that three things are happening - after the van hits the water in level 1, after the elevator gets a push from explosives on level 2, and after the snow fortress explodes on level 3. I suppose any of these 3 could have done it. Or possibly Yusef planned the timing of drive off the bridge exactly to hit the water right as the sedative would be wearing off.

Enter dream: Cobb (& Mal), Ariadne, Eames (as Browning), Saito, Fischer

Guardian: Arthur

Sedative used: The L2 sleepers get tossed around quite a bit, and Fischer’s death in L3 send him to limbo, so it would seem to be the deep sedative again.

LEVEL 3 / snowfortress -

Members: Cobb (& Mal), Ariadne, Eames (I don’t remember if he was still Browning), Saito, Fischer

Architect: Ariadne designed this level, but it’s not clear who is enacting. She originally planned for it to be a hospital, but due to the last minute decision to go “Mr Charlie” they go into Fischer but tell him they are entering Browning. We also get clues that Eames added the ducts, although he may have added them in the pre-heist designing stages.

Designated dreamer: Fischer, although he was told they were entering Browning, so he’s been primed to be adversarial to his own subconscious.

The chasers: Fisher’s projections with extra training again? Or generic snow fortress guards? It’s not clear why what was supposed to be a hospital is now a snow fortress, unless that’s Fischer’s idea of what Browning’s head would look like. Mal shows up just in time to shoot Fischer before he can open the vault.

Side effects:
From Reality: None.
From level 1: Gravity does not seem to be affected by the van tumble and the van free fall. But there is an avalanche when the van crashes off the bridge. The song is heard very faintly by some of the team.
From level 2: There don’t seem to be any effects from the L2 spinning or loss of gravity. They hear the song, loudly this time, when Arthur puts a headphone on someone (who?).

Death: Saito dies, but he also dies on L1, sending him to limbo. Fischer is shot, also sending him to limbo, although he is later revived. Cobb is left still dreaming when the level ends. It’s not clear whether the snow fortress explosion wakes them up, kills them, or is irrelevant.

Waking: It’s not clear how they wake up from this level. They seem to wake up for any of the 3 possible factors that woke everyone up from L2 (van hits water, elevator accelerates, snow fortress explodes either killing or tipping them). Or again, possibly Yusef planned the timing of drive off the bridge exactly to hit the water right as the sedative would be wearing off in L1.

Enter dream:
Cobb (& Mal) and Ariadne enter conventionally
Saito enters through L1 death
Fischer enters through L3 death, and is revived later to L3
However, it’s not clear whether Cobb & Ariadne hook up only to each other, or whether the dead/dying/unconscious Saito and/or Fischer are also hooked up

Guardian: ? I think Ariande pushes the button herself, and counts on Saito and Eames to watch over them.

Sedative used: Saito and Fischer get there by death. Ariadne and Cobb’s bodies are disturbed except by perhaps loud noise, so they might not need a deep sedative. And Ariadne (and potentially Cobb, possibly Saito, and with some extra help from defib Fischer) is able to wake up to L3 by suicide, so again the deeper sedative seems unlikely.

LEVEL 4 and/or LIMBO / Limbo city, Saito’s beach palace -

Members: Cobb (& Mal) and Ariadne enter L4 by dreaming, but end up in the same place as Fischer and Saito who are supposed to be in Limbo

Architect: Ariadne only designed down to level 3. Either she or Cobb must be the enacter, unless they are also hooked up to one of the dead guys. It was explained earlier in the film that Limbo would either be a formless realm of the subconscious, or would contain the projections of any dreamers who had experienced limbo before. Cobb had built a city with Mal at this deep a level previously, so all the dreamers get sent here. Though Saito seems to construct his own little place on the beach here based on his place from the first heist.

Designated dreamer: Cobb has the most influence, but could easily be Ariadne, or possibly one of the dead guys.

The chasers: The city is completely empty of anyone besides the dreamers, the dead, and Cobb’s projections of Mal initially. Later in Saito’s area there are Saito’s guards and Cobb’s kids.

Side effects:
From Reality: None.
From level 1: This all happens after the van has left the bridge, so only potentially, when the van hits the water, might cause the city to start to fall apart, or them being submerged in water causes them to keep washing up on shore.
From level 2: I don’t think they noticed anything that was happening in the hotel.
From level 3: The city shaking might be not from the van and instead from the ruckuss in the snow fortress. The lightning seems to be from the defib. I don’t remember the song playing.

Death: Ariadne dies directly and this wakes her up to L3. She kills Fischer and this wakes him up also to L3, although this seems to require the defib and maybe also the 2nd kick. Saito and Cobb seem like they might potentially be planning to commit suicide. Whatever they do, they wake up all the way back to reality.

Waking:
Ariadne and Fischer are able to wake to L3 by dying (plus defib maybe for Fischer)
Cobb and Saito it isn’t clear. It’s implied they might shoot each other, although it’s possible they have just waited long enough (Saito is old) for the sedative to wake up naturally. After all, they wake up directly to reality rather than L3.

Enter dream: No one goes any further, although there might be some subtle barriers between Fischer’s limbo and Saito’s.

Guardian: None really, although Cobb stick around to save Saito’s state of mind.

Sedative used: None.

I think the biggest mysteries here are:

  1. Why is the sedative used on L3 the only one that isn’t the deep limbo causing kind? In other words, why is suicide successful on L4/limbo?

  2. Who all was hooked up to the dream machine on L3? Just Cobb and Ariadne, or the dying guys too?

  3. What were the wake up methods for each level? Did they have to be awoken by the guardian of each level, or did what they did in their own level cause them to leave it, or did one method of waking at a single level cause all the levels to dissolve at the same time?

  4. If they had stayed at the fortress long enough, would it eventually have also gone into freefall? Is the freefall of the van what actually woke them all up (rather slowly it would seem) on every level? They discussed missing the first kick, and how that would mean they wouldn’t have a way to tip over in L2 due to loss of gravity, so presumably they depending on being able to use the tipping method in L2, and explicitly did not consider freefall of the van to create the same sensation as tipping. Also, they did not wake up from the van tumbling earlier, so it would seem that this is also a different thing than tipping.

  5. Why was limbo the same as level 4, and not at, say, level 12? Or did the dreamers only get to limbo by hooking themselves up to someone who was already there?

87

Also…
6) The ending was ambiguous - it looked like the top was about to fall but we don’t get to see it. Assuming that the top never falls, which dream is he still stuck in, and if it’s one of the earlier ones, why did we get to see his top fall on some occasions? Also, does the totem let you know if you are EVER dreaming, or only if you are in someone else’s dream than your own?

88

Obviously it was meant to be ambiguous - that’s the whole point. It elicited some groans from the audience but I think it was the perfect ending.

Anyway I just got back from it and haven’t read any of the other replies (except this one right above me that I’m replying to) but it definitely gets my vote for Mindfuck of the Decade. I’m not much of a Leo DiCaprio fan but with all the buzz about how great it is of course I had to go see it, and I wasn’t disappointed - Leonardo notwithstanding.

89

Maybe I missed something in the dialogue when Fischer was killed but that doesn’t make any sense to me. And still doesn’t explain why the world where they went (that he built with Mal) was given as the explanation for when Dom had been in Limbo before.

I guess I’ll have to go see it again.

90

Ambiguous, yes; vague NO. Assuming he was still in a dream at that point, there are only a few points in the story where that could have started. When he and Mal were originally in limbo? When he visits Yusef? In the limbo of the final job?

91

jackdavinci, you talk a lot in your (excellent, BTW!) summary about the sedative used on each level. I may be bringing a little bit too much RL in here, but do they even use ‘sedatives’ on the various dreaming levels? Your physical body is already asleep, and your brain is in a dreaming state; another sedative, except perhaps as a prop in the dreaming, to convince the mark or whoever to nod off, would seem to be unnecessary.

Side question: did they sedate themselves? There was a sequence showing Fischer being drugged with the water, but we don’t see the team dosing themselves before ‘jacking in,’ to borrow a cyberpunk term.

92

Who cares? I think you’re overthinking it.

93

Just saw it, liked it. The one thing that bugged me was that the entire mission was to make Saito richer, to break up Fischer’s corporation. I wish that plotline focused instead on Fischer’s relationship with his dad. That Fischer Sr did indeed want his son to aspire to something greater than his inheritance. In the end, Fischer was ultimately deceived and that stole a lot of the impact from the great scene between him and his dad in the snowy hospital. In reality, Fischer’s dad could very well have thought he was a failure. But eh, I guess that’s the whole point of the inception.

Saito is Japanese.

94

No, that made it even hotter. See, they didn’t care about Fischer, of course. They weren’t ‘good guys’. They were thieves, and flawed thieves at that. But the beauty of it is, the thing they were scheming up on turned out to be a good thing for Fischer. Rather or not his dad thought he was a disappointment is immaterial. The real point is, Fischer stood up and made a man’s decision…to make his own empire. That is a good idea. Regardless of whether is was his own concept or an inception. IMO.

95

How do you know that he didn’t? Just because the inception was an orchestrated “deception” doesn’t mean it couldn’t have been the actual truth as well. If that’s the interpretation you prefer, then go with it.

96

The machine sedates, and keeps sedated, all the users. In the case of Fischer, in reality and in level 1 he had to be sedated manually (first by drink, second by a vial poured on his hood). In the third level, he hooks up to the machine willingly so manual sedation isn’t needed. If you look closely, there are two wires to each wrist - presumably one is for the mind connection and one is for the sedative. Of course, the machine within the dream and the sedative are just symbolic props, but which prop sedative is used matters because it determines whether you are allowed to die or not on the next level, as well as whether strong stimuli other than the “kick/tipping over” on this level will wake you up from the next. Especially since the ‘limbo’ level seems to change the rules about dying…

Obviously I care LOL. If you don’t know the answer, or don’t care about the question, feel free to ignore the question. I’m not sure why you felt the need to insult my question rather than just ignoring it… The rest of the film seems carefully orchestrated, so it seems reasonable to wonder about the meaning of the ending. If the top never falls, what does that mean for the rest of the movie - it means that at least parts of it have to be reinterpreted. And I’m wondering which interpretations are logically possible, and/or thematically relevant. I enjoyed the movie at face value the first time, but now that I’ve seen it again, I’m really curious about how it all works.

97

Well, you’re trying to extract meaning that isn’t there. I’m sure if you asked the screenwriters what the ending is supposed to mean in exact terms even they wouldn’t be able to tell you (it would be a line about the theme of questioning reality or somesuch). That’s the sign that you’re overthinking it.

98

Well OK. I think that the intricacy of the rest of the plot makes it likely that there is meaning there. But it’s possible there isn’t. But it’s still worth it to me, exploring the possible scenarios. Because it doesn’t matter what was in the mind of the writer as the meaning of the scene - it’s still completely possible to interpret the scene based on the rules established by the movie.

99

jackdavinci, The folks in the snow fortress die when they blow it up. The folks in the elevator die when gravity comes back after/as the van hits the water and the elevator crashes. Death + kick = +1 level, even with “deep” sedative. I think you’re getting unnecessarily caught up in what kind of sedative was used in each level. The only time we see people go up a level is kick + death. It was not revealed how anyone gets back to reality, and it’s not really important. I’m assuming they just wait it out, as we see everyone wake up as if from a normal sleep.

I don’t recall how Ariadne goes level 4 --> 3, presumably suicide during the kick. Saito died well before the kick, and Cobb died after, sending them to level 5.

I haven’t given it much thought yet, but I don’t have the escape from limbo straight in my head yet. Level 4 is limbo, but Saito got there by dieing and Cobb got there by dreammachine (?). They both die there, kickless, and go to level 5. But when they die there, they presumably stop dreaming.

100

Just my theory - I think the entire thing was a Cobb dream (perhaps the ‘original’ with Mal). I’m not sure if Saito or any of his ‘team’ were anything other then his projections.

The reason for this is because the movie starts in mid-action, which is exactly what Cobb says occurs during the beginning of a ‘dream’.