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chuckroI saw Inception, I enjoyed it (though not quite as much as The Prestige), and I recommend it. And I feel the need to ramble about what was going on.
Okay, so, the movie can be interpreted a bunch of ways depending on what parts are dreams versus "reality". My possible interpretations depend on a reliable narrator--that is, that everything we are shown on screen "actually happened" from someone's point of view. If you assume the details shown on screen are inaccurate, everything goes out the window.
1. It was all really as presented. Cobb found Saito in Limbo, pulled them both out, woke up on the plane, met his father and went to see his kids, and the top fell over right after the camera cut away. Pros: Happy ending. Support: Apparently the promotional tops the studio gave out could spin for a solid minute and a half if you spun them right.
2. It was as presented, up until the point Cobb woke up on the plane. He and Saito were still in Limbo, and he dreamed the entire ending sequence. The actual ending was that while the job went off as planned and Fisher split up the company, when they landed Cobb was arrested and Saito was a vegetable. Support: This would explain why Cobb's father was there when he was supposed to be teaching in France, and why the top didn't fall.
3. The "top level" is still a dream: Mal was right, they were still dreaming when they got out of limbo, and she woke up by killing herself. Except for the earliest flashbacks, the entire movie was Cobb's dream and the "projection" of Mal was actually her going in to try to get him out. In the end, he rejects that, and either #1 or #2 happens, but either way he's still dreaming. Support: Mal herself mentions how much his reality of being hunted matches being attacked by projections.
4. The "top level" is a dream, but the ending was in reality. The entire story, including the flashbacks of Mal, are a dream Cobb had on the plane, which he inserted the other passengers into. Mal may be dead, divorced, or non-existant and he's married to someone else. For some other reason, Cobb has been away from his kids for a while and returning to see them. Support: Explains the action-movie, hunted nature of the entire film; explains why no one on the team speaks to each other after the flight. Several exchange glances and Saito makes a phone call, but none of that is particularly out of the ordinary for strangers interacting.
5. The plot is "real" up until sometime after we last see the top fall, before they get on the plane. The rest of that is an inception Adriane is performing on Cobb, probably at his father's behest, to get him to let go of Mal and come back to his children. The murder charges probably aren't real in this case--he was just staying away out of guilt--and the ending may be real. Alternately, #1 or #2 could be accurate, but Adriane was also incepting Cobb in addition to the inception on Fisher. Support: Adriane's constant prying and pushing, and accompanying him into limbo near the end. It seems to go beyond mere concern and her skills seem far beyond someone introduced to this technology only a short time before.
6. Cobb didn't incept Mal; he incepted himself. He convinced himself that there were dream-layers, there was a dream-limbo, and that there was a "reality" at the top. Actually, this existance presented in the movie has infinite layers, and you move through them by dreaming or dying, and in some of those layers you can be a god. Mal was right that she needed to die to escape an unreal world; Cobb had convinced himself not only that he was in the real world, but that there was a real world at all. (A lighter version of this tags onto #3.)
As I noted to Jethrien: I wonder if Nolan et al actually has an idea of what he thinks is "really" going on, or if he intentionally lets it stay open-ended so as to not color any of the possibilities for the audience?
Okay, so, the movie can be interpreted a bunch of ways depending on what parts are dreams versus "reality". My possible interpretations depend on a reliable narrator--that is, that everything we are shown on screen "actually happened" from someone's point of view. If you assume the details shown on screen are inaccurate, everything goes out the window.
1. It was all really as presented. Cobb found Saito in Limbo, pulled them both out, woke up on the plane, met his father and went to see his kids, and the top fell over right after the camera cut away. Pros: Happy ending. Support: Apparently the promotional tops the studio gave out could spin for a solid minute and a half if you spun them right.
2. It was as presented, up until the point Cobb woke up on the plane. He and Saito were still in Limbo, and he dreamed the entire ending sequence. The actual ending was that while the job went off as planned and Fisher split up the company, when they landed Cobb was arrested and Saito was a vegetable. Support: This would explain why Cobb's father was there when he was supposed to be teaching in France, and why the top didn't fall.
3. The "top level" is still a dream: Mal was right, they were still dreaming when they got out of limbo, and she woke up by killing herself. Except for the earliest flashbacks, the entire movie was Cobb's dream and the "projection" of Mal was actually her going in to try to get him out. In the end, he rejects that, and either #1 or #2 happens, but either way he's still dreaming. Support: Mal herself mentions how much his reality of being hunted matches being attacked by projections.
4. The "top level" is a dream, but the ending was in reality. The entire story, including the flashbacks of Mal, are a dream Cobb had on the plane, which he inserted the other passengers into. Mal may be dead, divorced, or non-existant and he's married to someone else. For some other reason, Cobb has been away from his kids for a while and returning to see them. Support: Explains the action-movie, hunted nature of the entire film; explains why no one on the team speaks to each other after the flight. Several exchange glances and Saito makes a phone call, but none of that is particularly out of the ordinary for strangers interacting.
5. The plot is "real" up until sometime after we last see the top fall, before they get on the plane. The rest of that is an inception Adriane is performing on Cobb, probably at his father's behest, to get him to let go of Mal and come back to his children. The murder charges probably aren't real in this case--he was just staying away out of guilt--and the ending may be real. Alternately, #1 or #2 could be accurate, but Adriane was also incepting Cobb in addition to the inception on Fisher. Support: Adriane's constant prying and pushing, and accompanying him into limbo near the end. It seems to go beyond mere concern and her skills seem far beyond someone introduced to this technology only a short time before.
6. Cobb didn't incept Mal; he incepted himself. He convinced himself that there were dream-layers, there was a dream-limbo, and that there was a "reality" at the top. Actually, this existance presented in the movie has infinite layers, and you move through them by dreaming or dying, and in some of those layers you can be a god. Mal was right that she needed to die to escape an unreal world; Cobb had convinced himself not only that he was in the real world, but that there was a real world at all. (A lighter version of this tags onto #3.)
As I noted to Jethrien: I wonder if Nolan et al actually has an idea of what he thinks is "really" going on, or if he intentionally lets it stay open-ended so as to not color any of the possibilities for the audience?
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Date: 2010-08-09 05:24 pm (UTC)I cannot remember ever having the question of whether I am currently dreaming or not. It doesn't occur to me to ask in dreams. Although I do have memories of other dreams while dreaming - I will think about things that occurred in previous dreams while dreaming. About 50% of the time, I remember it was a from a dream, and 50% of the time, I think I'm remembering something real. ("Hmm, I've got deja vu. Have I seen this giant floating house with wings before? I feel like I saw it before last week. Did I actually see it, or did I just dream that? I guess I must have dreamed about something just like this giant floating house with wings that I am now totally seeing in reality.")
I will sometimes wake up and realize that I have dreamt about locations that I had dreamt about the previous night. But at no point while I'm dreaming will I think that what I'm experiencing at that moment is a dream.
I think perhaps I have an overly vivid imagination.
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Date: 2010-08-10 01:37 pm (UTC)The problem I've always had is that lucid dreaming means you're right on the edge of waking up, so "pushing" too hard towards what you want to dream about will just push you all the way into waking up.