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So the big, lasting piece of the discussion is the last shot and what the cutaway from the totem means. Was it all a dream? Or has Cobb returned to reality? I have seen 6 separate explanations of the film.
1. All of Inception is Cobb's dream.
2. Everything after Cobb's sedation test is a dream.
3. Saito pulls a "Mr. Charles" on Cobb.
4. Adrienne is a therapist and is the architect to cure Cobb.
5. We see reality during the film, but the end is Cobb stuck in limbo or a dream.
Yet with a film that has 5 distinct dream layers, there is a deeper level that no one is considering. So I shall consider it.
Cobb's children are older, as we see in the casting of the children. The kids are cast in two different sets, two years apart. So the children Cobb encounters at the end have aged. Would they not have stayed the same if it was memory or dream? Cobb has won and entered back into his reality. The happy ending is his.
Yet Cobb's reality is Christopher Nolan's dream. It is a reality within a dream, and we, as viewers, are experiencing that reality through the sharing of Chris Nolan's dream.
We cannot see the final totem fall. It spins perfectly in the dream state infinitely and never even wobbles. In this case, it wobbles, and we are abruptly "awoken" not before it falls, but as it falls.
The cut signifies not that Cobb has indeed returned to reality, but that Cobb and we as viewers have both returned to reality.
Cobb is the protagonist. We experience the film through him, so we share his totem. Once it is established how the totem works, we have begun to share it since we know its secret. Notice that Nolan does not let it fall when he is splashing his face--it doesn't seem to make sense in the context in the film, other than to confound, but instead, I think it is meant to preserve Cobb's reality and our dream state as viewers.
So at the end, the totem spins. If it falls, we are in reality (the real world), and it proves that Cobb is in his reality. So it wobbles and as it falls, we are thrust back into a darkened theater and do not get to witness Cobb going back to the table and seeing it on its side.
I do not believe for one second there is an "open ending" to the movie. Nolan doesn't appear to work that way with his other mind-benders. So I would like to think that as complex as the film seems,there is a definitive answer to this "maze," but as we learned in the film, only the architect (Nolan) knows that path through the maze so that projections or dream-sharers (us) cannot navigate it easily. The film is the maze of his dream.
Either way, Nolan has done quite a trick--performed "inception" on us, planting an idea that grows like a virus . . . the ending was his idea, but has created an outpouring of theories (including this one) that makes us think the ending was our idea. Neat. I believe it when I hear it took him 10 years to finish writing this movie. It seems that damn complex to me.
Any other good ideas out there? Let's shoot some holes in my meandering theory until I can see the film another time or two. Fire away in comments.
7 comments:
#2, he has those flashes after the test in the basement and then he's "up." I turned to Stacey at that point in the movie and said something along the lines of "I don't think he's awake."
Great post, Fred. I've gone back and forth with different theories, but in the back of my head I've been wondering if there was a forger or a Mr. Charles involved here. The link you posted explains it perfectly, and that's what I'm going with: Saito pulls a "Mr. Charles" on Cobb.
I've been trying to think of the last movie that made me think as much as this one. There are a few: The Prestige, Gone Baby Gone, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, etc. But I'd say the one that stands out is Primer. If you enjoyed thinking through Inception, I'd highly recommend Primer.
Primer is a mind-bender. Jamey, if you like The Prestige film (also directed by Nolan), check out Memento or Following or even better the book The Prestige by Christopher Priest.
I agree with Jamey here Fred Mr. Charles was throwing me off a few times because I was really wondering if it was him or just the forger the whole entire time which make me wonder if Mr. CEO had hired Mr. Charles to be on his team which is why Mr. CEO wanted to go with them in the first place
It's theories like the ones you discussed here that make me realize that I am not a deep thinker. I completely bought in to what I'm sure the director intended - That the events truly happened and the only debate was whether he was in the real world at the end or not. Like a sheep being led... I've got to get some critical thinking skills!
I don't believe that it was a dream at the end, and he had actually returned to reality. The reason I believe this is because Cobb stated that the top was Mals' and once a totem is touched by someone else it is useless. Therefore if totem was Mals' it would have made no difference if it kept spinning or not at the end, because the totem could not measure whether or not it was a dream. I believe Cobb's true totem was the faces of his children. Cobb tells Adrienne that a totem has to be physical in shape, however it was stated in the movie that Cobb usually does not implement his own rules. Having said this it can be easily understood why Cobb would have chosen his kids as his totem. Whenever he was in a dream he would never be able to see the faces of his children, however, at the end of the movie, his kids turn around and he can see their faces clearly.
I just watched it for the second time. The end is definitely reality. There are two main reasons to support this theory.
1) I'll start with the wedding ring. Nolan was clever to create a secret totem for the audience. I'll admit, I wasn't the first to notice this, but I have verified that he only has a ring on while dreaming.
2) Cobb's totem is his children's faces. At the end, it doesn't matter to Cobb whether or not the top falls, because he looks up and see's his children, immediately knowing that it isn't a dream.
In addition, the "inception" on the audience is the same as the inception that Cobb performed on Mal. The idea that "this world isn't real". Nolan cleverly plants this idea into the viewers head so that by the end of the movie, we, like Mal & Cobb, question reality.
To be sure, we must check our totem, the wedding ring. And sure enough, Cobb isn't wearing it, so it is in fact reality.
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