Thoughts on “Inception” *Spoilers*

July 16, 2010 in Blog

Saw a midnight screening last night and have been thinking about this film non-stop since.  First off, I loved it, in a rather drab summer movie season, Inception is a great example of solid, thought provoking AND mainstream entertainment.

Now, on to my thoughts of the film.  MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW.

First off, I have more questions than answers.  I think a 2nd viewing will be in order in the next week or two to really sort things out.  One of the great things about this movie is its holographical nature, the film itself functions as an Inception with the fantastic final shot that plants a doubt, which combined with a number of fuzzy ‘moments’ in the film make you question what you just saw, and what you remember.  An idea is planted in the audience, the film “does” what it’s “about”.  Brilliant!

‘Now, to the fun stuff.  Immediately leaving the theater I thought 2 things:

1) The top keeps spinning.  He’s still in the dream.

2) Something was up with Ari (Ellen Page) and Saito (Ken Watanabe), particularly the former, as she planted a number of seeds in Cobb’s head.  I think there was a 2nd layer of Inception happening, definitely involving Ari, possibly involving Saito, and made even the rest of the team.  It’s Saito that plants the idea to Cobb that he can “go home” and see his kids, and it’s Ari that plants the seed that he’ll need to confront Mal in order to do it.  For a ‘new’ architect, she picks it up suspiciously fast, she’s constantly trying to get to deeper levels of Cobb’s subconscious, and she was ‘recommended’ by Cobb’s Father (or Step Father, can’t remember which).  She manages to convince Cobb that she needs to be on the plane and needs to enter into the dream with him.   I think Michael Caine/Cobb’s Father hired Ari to ‘incept’  Cobb.  Why else would he be at the airport at the end?  Was Ari’s line that she thinks Cobb will “be alright” he acknowledging she think the inception worked?

Beyond that, I just have lots of questions about moments and details:

  • The top.  Cobb said a totem needs to be something hyper personal, yet he’s using Mal’s the entire time.
  • Seito interrupts Cobb’s test spin in the bathroom, RIGHT after he’s taken the super sedative in the chemist’s creepy basement.  How’d he get to the bathroom?  We never actually see him ‘wake up’ from that…
  • Memory vs. Dream is brought up a few times.  How do we know Cobb’s memories of Mal and the window weren’t dream, and not memory?
  • We see images of Cobb and Mal grown old in their ‘universe’.  Yet when they lie on the train tracks they’re young.    Did they ever grow old together, or was that ‘memory’ just the ‘dream’ he told her when he proposed?
  • The awesome possibility that Mal was right and that she got out when she jumped.
  • The kids don’t seem to grow up.
  • It’s unclear whether or not Seito uses the gun at the end.   Perhaps the sedative wore off and they just woke up?
  • Seito is super old because he dropped into limbo minutes before Ari/Cobb in snow time.  Because of the exponential layering of time, that few minutes was years in limbo (layer 5?) by the time Cobb found him.
  • Mal shows up in just about every layer we see, if the space is set by architects, but populated by the dream, it has to be Cobb’s dream right?
  • Other than the chase through Mumbai, after the plane Cobb is NEVER actually in danger.  They’re never hunting him, because they’re his projections?  He’s never shot at once if I remember correctly.
  • Cobb can’t dream without a machine anymore, and says he can’t create/architect anymore.  Because it’s his dream?
  • I don’t remember them specifically, but there’s at least 2-3 phrases repeated a number of times.  (you’re waiting for a train, the seito/cobb dialogue)
  • Cobb tells Ari how his totem works.  Big no no.

Kicks, Layers, Russian Dolls, & Limbo

Limbo: It’s not a layer as much as confusion.  It’s not being able to discern between waking and dreaming anymore.    The mind gets confused.  You can get there by A) Dieing while under heavy sedation.  You die while body is under heavy sedation.  Since you’re body can’t actually wake up, the mind is left in a state of confusion, wakes up in limbo, and doesn’t know its not reality.  Time approaches infinity there, so 50 years can be just a matter of minutes.

Cobb and Mal apparently get there by going to deep with dreams in dreams and by using memories as the building blocks for their dreams.  After a while, Mal can no longer tell she’s in a dream….Cobb has to convince her to commit suicide by planting a doubt in her mind via inception.

Dreams within Dreams are like Russian Dolls.  The transclude the layer above it.
Example #1: Initial Saito Heist

Layer0=Waking (Train), Realtime
Layer1=Dream (City Riot/Affair Hotel) Timex10
Layer2=Dreamx2 (Saito’s conference room in fortress) Timex100

Example #2: Fischer Heist (assuming the ‘plane’ is reality)

Layer0=Waking (Airplane), Realtime
Layer1=Dream (Rainy City / Van), 1minLayer1time = x(Realtime)
Layer2 =Dreamx2 (Swanky Hotel / Elevator), 1 minuteLayer2time = x(1minLayer1time)
Layer3 =Dreamx3 (Snow Fortress), 1minLayer3time = x(1minLayer2time)
Layer4=Dreamx4 (Limbo?)

So here’s how I understand it:

Ari and Cobb use the dream machine to go into Limbo because they need to bring Fischer back to level 3 to open the safe and complete the inception, before the sedative wears off and the kicks ripple through the layers.

The super strong sedative they’re using puts the brain into a forced deep sleep to stabilize the dreams inside dreams.  Yusef concocts it specifically so it DOES NOT impair the equilibrium function of the ears, or the ‘falling awake’ dream function, thus ‘falling’ can still wake you up, but death/suicide can NOT.  Under the sedative, death/suicide pushes you into limbo, since the physical body is still drugged, the mind wakes up into nothing, and it becomes nearly impossible to tell the difference between dream and reality.  The time distortion isn’t clear, but it appears to be quite significant in limbo.

Falling, on the other hand, can still trigger the equilibrium of the ears and corresponding section of the brain, meaning its still a ‘safe’ way to wake up within the dream.  Falling pulls you back A SINGLE layer.

Examples:

So:

Layer0 = Sedative wearing off is limiter for the wakeup.  Roughly 10 hours.
Layer1 = The van falling WAKES up everyone asleep in the van, so they’re awake in Layer1 when the sedative wears off.  It’s also possible it wakes up Yusef early and that he’s not heavily sedated, just normal sedated. Yusef warns joseph with music
Layer2 = The elevator wakes up everyone asleep in the hotel, so they’re awake when the layer 1 kick happens, so they can be awake when the sedative happens. Joseph warns eams with music
Layer3 = There was initially no kicker for this level, as it was supposed to be as deep as they would go.  This is where Fischer’s inception takes place. eams warns ari/cobbs with explosion

Layer4/Limbo =

So, when Ari and Fischer jump off the building, it’s the FALLING that brings them back to the snow level.  The fall wakes them up before they ‘miss’ the kicks at the rest of the levels.

Everything is rushed because of the surprise attacks in Layer0, and thus Yusef drives off the bridge so they don’t get shot too early, which would put everyone in limbo.

Love to hear more thoughts other’s have!

7 Comments
  • Rubypup

    If Mal's sucide actually woke her up to reality, then presumably, Cobb is still aslieep next to her in reality. Why didn't she just kick Cobb by making him fall?

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Jason-Lange/704870174 Jason Lange

    The movie isn't really about 'dream-states' as most people experience them. It's about the specific practice of retaining consciousness in dream states (lucid dreaming), and how that can be manipulated very specifically for espionage in the unique “dream-share” technology they've created.

    The dreams are so fixed and unshifting because they're the “dreams” of trained lucid dreamers. It's part of the espionage.

    There's a reason the 'dreamhost' and the 'subject' are two different people. By having the dreamhost be a trained lucid dreamer, they can remain conscious during the dream and maintain a 'controlled stable' environment that they bring the 'subject/target' into. The subject/target isn't aware he or she isn't in their own dream, so they're mind projects/creates objects into it.

    When cobb draws the circle in the beginning, he's showing that normally in dream-states a single person is both simultaneously creating the world and populating it. It's a circuit of form on one side and content on the other, with the mind constantly in a validation loop, checking “am I here”, and then simultaneously creating it's own conditions to make sure the answer is a yes. Every night all of us fall into dream states, and whether we remember them or not populate a world that our mind simultaneously affirms as being real. (unless you're lucid, at which point the unconscious mind stops creating and the conscious one starts to)

    Extraction cheats by making the “form” half of that circle come from a trained dreamhost and inviting the target into that dream space. Non-lucid targets don't have the capacity to retain their awareness in dreamspace, so the mind continues with it's “am i here” validation check and if yes populates the world with content/projections. The content/projections validation check manifests itself as the suspicious 'projection people', who when they feel “this isn't real” attack and kill foreign invaders, sort of like white blood cells.

    So if I'm creating the form of your dream, and I “create” a safe with secret documents X in it in that dream, you're unconscious/non lucid mind isn't able to realize it didn't make that request (ie has “bought into the reality”) and fills it with said secrets. Thus it's ALL about controlling the dreamstates and not letting them get out of hand.

    Thus, things only get “dream like” and wonky in the dream world when the dreamhost begins to wake up/is impacted by the outside world or loses lucidity and forgets it's a dream.

    In the end it's not that Nolan got “dreaming” wrong, it's just that he's focused on a very specific type of dreaming (conscious/lucid).

    Lynch's work is more representative of another type of dreaming: unconscious/free association (Mulholland, Inland Empire). his catching the big fish book is all about dipping into the subtle realms of dream states and plucking out the random stuff the mind creates unconsciously.

    I can totally dig someone having a preference for that “style” of dreaming as it opens up the visual and imaginary realms more. But that's not what nolan was going for!

    However, it would have been cool if he had taken it a bit farther to what some would say is the deepest and most mature form of lucid dreaming: remaining conscious in your dream WITHOUT trying to control it.

  • Coupacoupon

    One thing has been puzzling me. How do they dream within a dream? How do they take the sedative solution with them to inject in the sublayers? I guess that theoretically if the chemist went with them, he could make the sedative within the next layer to get them to the following . . . but that isn't what happens. Does the architect merely put it into the dream? But if that is the case, then how does she create it and why would it work? I mean if the architect merely has to think it for something to happen, then any guard projections could be gotten rid of merely by thinking it, so there must be so grounding in reality even in the dream state. Am I missing something?

  • Jessica

    cobb got shot in the third or fourth layer (that's an assumption that he was really shot) – there was no kick so he couldn't have woken up into reality. we were told killing him wouldn't have thrown him back into the appropriate layer, only the kicks could do that. so by default he's not physically dead, but mentally stuck in the dream state because he was shot on a low layer. not to mention it was a series of kicks that allowed the others to come back in the proper order, he didn't have any of that. yeah/no?

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  • Switchhc

    Okay, just saw this and have my theory. MAJOR SPOILER WARNING.

    Everything from “waking” up in the train onward is one massive dream/con. We're not shown continuous action of what's going on in the train. We're told by Cobb and Arthur that they have Saito on the train and are trying to hack his thoughts via their two-layered dream. Saito even gives a nice speech about how smooth and smart they are except for the carpet. Of course, he's really conning them.

    Saito saw all of this coming. He had his people, including that Asian* kid on the train, push all four of them (Saito, Cobb, Aurthur, Asian kid, Nash) directly into another dream – of the train, and the world then expanded out from there. Nash was probably in on it – this is why we never see him actually harmed. Proof: Saito looks satisfyingly down at his hand, noticing that there are no injection marks.

    Everything from this point onward is one MASSIVE con designed for inception – to give Cobb (and the audience) the false belief that Cobb is acting within a world where he can get back to his children. Saito does this for exactly the reason that Cobb and Aurthur purportedly approach him in his dream in the opening scenes – to protect himself from those who would invade his dreams. His final act is merciful – to return Cobb to his “children.” Of course, this means that Cobb won't ever desire to come after him again.

    Other major things follow from this. 1. Saito was impersonating Cobb's father. 2. Ariadne works for Saito. 3. Fischer was likely a con-within-a-con. Explains the shockingly bad acting from Cillian Murphy. 4. Yusuf works for Saito.

    Of course, Saito and Ariadne either have hearts of gold or stone in this explanation – by helping Cobb resolve “Mal” and reunite with his “children,” they both set him at peace and render him harmless. In what vegetable state are they maintaining his real body, I don't know. Of course, he might live and die a lifetime in only a few minutes. What a fun movie!