Inception

[Oman]

Just got home from seeing this, and I honestly think that there is a critical assumption made by the movie: That there is reality. The idea that one level exists as "real" is pretty fundamental. The talk of the totem doesn't make any sense if they were never in "the real world" because then the idea that the totem works is unfounded. I think that part of the movie should be taken as read simply because any high-concept science fiction needs something that you can trust.

Spoiler: one addition to the above

If there is no reality, why does Mal not interfere with his day to day? As he says, that is the only way he can dream. If he were asleep at the time, surely he would get some kind of image of her, the others are all pretty invasive.

Spoiler: Regarding Cobb's issues.

So what gives Cobb the right to populate Mal into the dreams? They're not his dreams, he's not the architect, and he technically shouldn't be populating it. From my understanding there were three roles: The architect designed the world, and gave this to the Dreamer, who would create the world (altering the architect's dream as required per Eames' snow dream vent, and Arthur's paradox stairs), and then the Subject/Mark would populate it with projections. In all of these dreams (bar the possibility that it's not Limbo but Cobb's dream that looks like limbo) Cobb is neither the dreamer, nor the subject. He has no right to be influencing the dream, nor should he have the ability to produce personnel to inhabit it.

Spoiler: Not exactly a plot hole

The massive Chekhov's gun of Ariadne's totem, even showing us the weighting and the cuts she made. God this pissed me off.

Spoiler: just a thought on the end

I really want it to be real. I think he deserves as much. My heart broke when it did the zoom/pan to show the constantly spinning top, then did backflips as it wobbled. I just wanted it to fall. I think it's an interesting thing, of course, to have that kind of ambiguity but FWIW: One of the first shots of the film shows him in Limbo with the wedding ring, and there are several early shots with the ring. In what I deem to be reality (or you bastards would call Level Zero - the workshop, the plane, and the like) he does not wear it. In that final scene he does not wear the ring. Does that just show that he's let go? Or is it just another symbol contradicting with the others?

[Oman]

Also, did anybody else find that this was the kind of movie that got ruined by a huge audience? My theater was full, and the constant gasps and reactions from everybody else really pulled me out of the movie.

Six people in ours. My father and I, two teens making out in the back row, and two old ladies who sat RIGHT behind us of all places and tried to guess what was coming next all the time. "Oh he's in a dream" "I told you!"

[Oman]

2) Cobb and Saito have to wake up from the dream eventually. Even if they both lived a "eternity" in the limbo state, they have to wake up after some finite amount of time because their actual bodies are on the plane from Sydney to LA. The problem with going to limbo is that they risk becoming insane not knowing what reality is when they wake up. However, this is negated when they meet each other in the opening scene. They both remember their "arrangement" and that they are not in reality at the moment. At that point, they would simply have to wait out limbo or find away to kick themselves up through the levels. This may take awhile, but they have the time.

That's kinda the idea - that Cobb never really escaped limbo and what we see is his insane little vision of what's happening because he can't separate fact from fiction anymore.

No. Sooner or later, limbo ends because they wake up in reality 10 hours later. It is not infinite, even if it takes eons to end.

Wouldn't they wake up when they die of old age?

"Age" in limbo/dreams seems to be variable. It seems to be more a presentation than a reality, which works for me. It looks like age is more metaphorical, and how a person looks isn't related to either their real body's age, or their time in limbo. I could be wrong, but that is how I saw it.

Also answers anon's question.

[Oman]

I'm going to see this again, with a new bunch of friends. One is kind of hot, so I'm going to steal all of your ideas so that I look super smart.

Also, I'm going to try to go in with a new perspective, try to see something new in it. Maybe I'll consider if it all is really a dream and Adriane is actually just a cathartic influence or something.

[Oman]

I'm going to see this again, with a new bunch of friends. One is kind of hot, so I'm going to steal all of your ideas so that I look super smart.

Also, I'm going to try to go in with a new perspective, try to see something new in it. Maybe I'll consider if it all is really a dream and Adriane is actually just a cathartic influence or something.

If you really want to get trippy, you can ask if he actually ever woke up from when he tested Yusef's stuff for the first time. He has to splash his face with water and drops his totem without ever spinning it. Mal also flashes on screen for a brief second then.

Did so. I actually had this thought while watching the movie: that everything post that first attempt was not real. But it still doesn't work for me. For one thing, I don't believe that Nolan intended for the film and the story to deceive like that. To go in with that opinion robs me of the reality behind the characters, the catharsis. It also removes all of the drama and tension of the story. I also think the "flash" of Mal there is very different. It's not a projection, it's an image. When I look at the others he sees something that triggers her, when that one occurs it's just a flash. Also, isn't that a really powerful scene early where he spins the top with the gun against his face and when it falls he exhales and puts it down. That is so strong, but too early for a first timer to understand it.

Also something that came to light the second time was how incredibly subtle the film can be with some things. The best example is a speech Mal makes about Limbo being the real world and Dom is constantly telling her it can't be true, that the woman he was talking with wasn't his wife, but a projection. That is essentially a roles reversed look at the conversations they had when she was alive. Someone convinced of a false reality, and the other trying to tell them otherwise ("Don't you think I know my own children"). The film doesn't dwell on this, and instead it brushes right past it, but it's still given enough of its own time to work.

Something that really (REALLY) pissed me off is the amount of repeated phrases through-out. "Waiting for a train" "Old man, filled with regret" and all those. They get really tedious towards the end, especially the second time, because there is so little variation on them. They are almost (but not quite) rote each time, and different characters finish them off at will. It's not good writing. I appreciate call-backs as an element of storytelling, and they suggest a circular (or at least repeated) nature, but one at the start, calling back at the end, or somewhere in between would have worked well. There was just such an overwhelming amount of these.

I didn't realise the first time how awesome the score was. Though I must watch that Youtube video.

From a story/technology perspective, can someone confirm my understanding of this: Limbo exists as an empty version of a shared consciousness right? It's a deep unconstructed dream, essentially. It's like if they had any level without an actual "dreamer". So the issue with Limbo is that it's so deep that there is the threat of losing a grip on what reality is. But it's not hard to get out of. In fact, you can get out just like any other level, kick or death. The issue was that because of the sedative set for 10 hrs, Limbo would have been a really fucking long time for them all, so death was a threat because that long increases the chance of losing said touch on reality. So if a group went under again, same sedative, but set for like...30 seconds, and all shot themselves within the first 20 seconds, they would have a few hours in limbo without danger of the "scrambled egg" thing? Like the brain turning to mush is more a factor of inability to conceive reality (which is a factor of time) rather than just a factor of the physical world of Limbo itself?

New Questions! How do Cobb and Ariadne get to Limbo that time? They just go down another level. That seems pretty weird that the next physical level is Limbo. It doesn't make sense that they don't just go into another level of either Ariadne's or Cobb's mind.

Does it shit anyone else that they mess up the terms "subject" and "dreamer" at one stage. They say they're going into Fischer's dream "He thinks we're going into Browning's but we're actually going into his" "He's going to help us break into his own subconscious?" Well, yes, but they never were in Fischer's dream. He populated it, but it was still Eames' dream. The very next line of dialogue is "Eames, this is your dream, you draw security." Nolan, this movie is confusing enough without your characters fucking up your own basic terms.

Why do they plan to set up a kick on the ice-fort hospital level? Firstly they never planned to go any lower, and secondly, the two were going to Limbo, where the kick wasn't necessary because once the time ran out on the sedative, they could die. But mostly it's the "when did they deem it necessary?"

[Oman]

There is a big difference between an uncomfortable bump (median strip etc) and a sensation of falling. It's prolonged.

Have you ever gone over a hill really fast in a car, or had that moment of freefall before a harness caught you while rockclimbing, and the bottom of your stomach drops out? That's what it's all about. The body going "HOLY SHIT!"

[Oman]

I laughed out loud.

At the first one, not the second one.

Plus Uno.

[Oman]

Bullshit.

[Oman]

I'd go gay for Ellen Page.

Totally.

Oh hi new fantasy, didn't see you there. We have an awesome new future!

[Oman]

I'd go gay for Ellen Page.

Totally.

Oh hi new fantasy, didn't see you there. We have an awesome new future!

Your mind is the scene of the crime,

if you know what I'm talking about

.

Heh, I wrote that pretty drunk, but great line Flay.

[Oman]

Watched a camrip of Inception, agree with Nuwen. Nice premise and everything, but the message of "ideas are contagious" is too weak to be the focal point of a whole movie, not to mention it didn't really fit the complexity of the setting. The complexity of the dreamscape seemed to serve as a distraction from the realization that there is no depth or worthwhile substance here. This masterpiece of a frame would've deserved more than shallow armchair philosophy.

I did like it though, very shiny, nicely directed, the acting was good, and the catharsis at the end was pretty intensive. I intend to watch it in theater, the camrip doesn't do it any justice I'm sure. It'll be perfect for a date, although I'll need a girl who's easily impressed by shallow intellectual masturbation.

It is not good for a date, I saw it with a girl who was moderately attractive, by the end of our discussion I was thinking "oh you are silly". Not that it was a date, but she's just no fun.

Anyway, yeah, camrips have ruined several movies for me, don't know if anyone has a better thought on that.

[Oman]

I might be missing something, but I'm reasonably sure that if you are in Paris and fly eastwards, you'll reach Japan without needing to enter the United States.

If you have visa problems to get into the US for being wanted for murder, I'm pretty sure countries with extradiction agreements with the US would put you into a nice little room when your American criminal record beeped their databases in immigration.

Well, Japan would.

It's mentioned that there are no extraction treaties, or that those were difficult to enforce. If it matters, you know that Inception's world doesn't have to be the same as our world, right? Or that they can shift it forward and backward in time to make the movie work. Sometimes you just take a plot device as read.


I dislike your theory for other reasons, because I think it takes movie tropes and makes them part of the plot, which I think is not the best idea.

[Oman]

Yeah sure, dude. All I mean is that talking about how things "conveniently" fall into place like it's part of the story. Everything always falls into place like that in most movies. Isn't it convenient that they repossess Robin's house

exactly

as he gets home in Robin Hood: Men in Tights. Isn't it convenient that House always has something occur in his life that sparks inspiration with a patient. While I'm on House: Isn't it convenient that the patient has personal problems that both contribute to their illness AND relate to the B-story?

If we take a starting point A and a goal Z, then we watch the characters go through B, C, D etc to get there. What your theory states is that the things that work in their favour do so because of deus ex machina essentially, with one of the characters having that hand of god.

I dislike anything that says "the movie lied to me" because I think that while you need to find your own reading of it, there has to be a valid truth in the movie. I agree that it's worth considering philosophically "am I butterfly dreaming I'm a man?" but practically, I'm not calling in to work and saying "sorry boss, you're not even real, you're a butterfly's dream". To pull that back to the movie, I think the inherent idea that there is a base level of real world that exists is integral to the story. To any story. By your reading can't I say that it wasn't even Cobb's dream, it was actually Michael Caine's character's, or fuck it, why not Martin Scorsese's or Pamela Anderson's by the same justification.

I think the movie was very clear that it wasn't leading us down the garden path. Nolan never lied, he was deceptive to begin about dream or reality, but the characters or circumstance always revealed the truth. At the end, it was very (very!) clear that it wanted us to make our own decision on the dream/reality thing (even though it was obv real ). To make the leap that the whole movie was a lie is a big one, and one I'm not happy accepting off the evidence you gave.

[Oman]

I agree with RC, the gossip, arguing, and general hair pulling from the ending probably makes a few more dollars.

[Oman]

Couldn't you say that about almost any movie. And the fact that the flight that they took counts as transportation. Planes are transport, and he was in one, and they showed it. Oh, and on a train. Oh and a helicopter. Shall we continue?