Inception, Finally

[sub_divided]

I know it's redundant to endorse the movie at this point, but: it's much better than you'd guess from the trailer or (non-spoiler) synopsis. Those make Inception look like a heist flick that takes place in the subconscious - which it still is, kind of - in a way that seems like a huge waste: enter a world of constructed reality, where normal rules don't apply, just to conduct very boring corporate espionage?

But it turns out the the heist plot is just the excuse - though it has a very moving resolution, I cried - and the real story is about Cobb, the main character's, issues stemming from previous work as a dream-extractor. And this story (Cobb's) fully realizes the wonderful/awful potential of being able to spend an infinite amount of time in a private shared world.

In other words - and without going into details - Nolan is playing with very powerful forces here; and as always, his execution is good enough that you can focus on the ideas without being tripped up by how they are presented.


Thoughts
Firstly, this movie contains a lot of exposition. Nolan is lucky that he can hire actors like Ellen and Leonardo, who look sympathetic, engaged, and totally serious while they are explaining that in order to wake up from heavy sedative, you need to be simultaneously jolted in the Real World *and* on all levels of the Dream.

People who were like "this movie didn't make sense until the last two minutes" were probably objecting to how weird this rule is - or maybe to the fact that it's a bit ridiculous for a movie that takes place in a lawless place (dreams) to have so many rules in the first place. XD On the whole, the movie does a good job of explaining what's happening on screen while it is happening.

I'd like to believe that Cobb goes back to reality at the end of the movie, though I know it's not likely, with his kids looking exactly the same as they did years ago. But as Kara said, whether it was reality or a dream doesn't matter: the important think is that Cobb didn't wait to see whether the top would fall, he didn't care.

Following from that, the reason he didn't stay with his wife wasn't that he prized "reality" over the dream-world, but that the version of his wife in the dream-world was a diminished version of the real person he'd known - that she wasn't good enough.

But if his children were dreams, they were good enough??? What happens when they grow up and he can't imagine them grown up? That's why I prefer the ending to be reality and dislike Chris Nolan's deliberate attempts to be ambiguous here. Because we all know, right, that ambiguity is just a way to keep the people who prefer to see an optimistic ending happy while secretly not believing yourself that the optimistic ending would really happen.

Anyway at least Sato came back to reality in order to fulfill his promise to Cobb and be young again, and Fisher came back to reality in order finally live outside his father's shadow - triumphantly. I was impressed by how natural this idea - which sounded quite ludicrous when they were hashing it out beforehand - really seemed when implemented by Fisher himself.

Following on that theme, I can see how the dream world would come to be more compelling than reality. It's not like dreams are easier, or safer, or even more exciting than reality, but that you don't have to see through all of the details for the dream to work out as planned - if you're good, your subconscious and the target's subconscious will help you by changing reality so that your half-baked, improvised ideas actually work as planned. So it's a world where - once you've learned the tricks of lucid dreaming, and if your subconscious doesn't hate you - you can get what you want, always.

Again, can I just emphasize that this totally contrived plot - Fisher doesn't once mess with the script the dream-extractors have laid out for him, except for his mental security, which doesn't count, as it is reflexive - is still remarkably emotionally moving. XD; By the end, I was really glad that Cobb had insisted they plant a positive idea in his subconscious, and not a negative one. Because Cobb would know, wouldn't he...

I feel like there should be a warning on this movie for suicidal people. WARNING: Movie contains themes of reality being a dream you need to kill yourself to wake up from.

In conclusion, I think I would have liked any movie that presented such a complicated and "logical" metaphor for: codependence, shared worlds, murder-suicide pacts, and shared/drugged dreaming.


Plot holes
There's no way Arthur could have gotten them all out of the room, in free fall,and to the elevator to plant the bomb, while also grappling in mid-air with security forces, in three minutes.

Why does the kick have to be simultaneous? Why can't you wake up on a deeper level, then on the next level, then on the next level, in sequence?

Why bring the chemist? Unless because he asked to come - and having the extra hands along did turn out to be a boon, except for Sato who was a liability - the "no room for tourists" lampshades this line so you don't mind so much.

Even everything being so orderly is explained by the fact that it is a consciously constructed world, to which the subconscious of the target is brought. But Kara was like, still, if that was me I would have filled up the orderly world with much weirder shit.

I'm with Sabina in not really getting the urge to write slash for this movie, though... for one thing, Arthur and Eames have sort of blurred together in my mind, and I can't remember which one was responsible for what or what they looked like or what their personalities were supposed to be or anything like that. XD; Maybe if they'd been played by more famous actors.

Comments

[sub_divided]

I was wishing too hard for a happy ending to do much predicting, XD. But I know which one I'd rather have - the one that fits the Heist movie framework (team pulls it off and retires... until the next "last" job), not the one that fits the horror movie framework (am I dreaming? am I awake? oh, I'm awake now... OR AM I).

Huh. Yeah, you could have a point there - dream-extractor teams can study the subject's objective reality, and recreate that fairly convincingly in a dream, but they have no idea what's in the subject's subconscious mind. The mind would probably immediately attack a foreign weirdness.

On the other hand, that only explains why the dream landscapes are orderly - it doesn't explain why the subject always seams to populate them with ordinary things. I mean, if someone made a nice New York for me to dream in, who's to say I wouldn't fill it with Godzilla?

Yeah really, how are they going to go in without the person who knows how the mazes work! Is it because she's a GIRL???

You might... be on to something with the dead wife thing. :p

[lacewood]

I would've definitely preferred the movie to end in reality - unless they make a sequel where MAL has to extract DOM from this dream, but what are the odds of that? XD

I suppose they might have wanted to keep her out of it because she's still a college student and not yet up to gunning for a career in crime or something, but HOW were they going to enter HER dreamworld without her? Guys, what the hell.

Seriously, at first I was just like, maybe for your next movie you could try a plot that doesn't revolve around dead ladies, Nolan? And then I thought about it some more and realised, dead married (or going to be married) ladies and it started to feel a little more specific and disturbing. XD

[tsubame]

Re: Ariadne . . . actually she wasn't supposed to be part of the team, since the Architect isn't actually needed for them to enter the dream. All she had to do is design the levels and then teach them to the dreamers-- that was stated in the beginning. The reason she came was because she convinced Cobb to bring her ("either you bring me or you tell one of them about your messed up brain" was the gist of it, I believe).

[lacewood]

But this is kind of strange, because how does the dream world, designed and built by the architect, exist if the architect's own mind isn't present in the shared dreaming then? Does it exist in the minds of the other team members instead? What if different team members remember different details differently, whose would take precedence? Or does a specific team member then have to remember and take on the architect's world?

(Come to think, the team is shown meeting in the dream world prior to the mission, presumably to familiarise themselves with it. But if Cobb is so afraid of knowing the layout, shouldn't he have avoided exactly this?)

Probably I'm just overthinking this, that's the problem with the movie trying to set down specific "rules" but not explaining the full structure (if it exists). XD;

[tsubame]

I don't remember everything from the movie explanations anymore, since it's been a while since I saw it. But it seems that there's only one dreamer, and the other people are just wandering around in that person's dream. So the architect teaches the world to the dreamer. Presumably they're all trained and have experience in holding dreams together and not forgetting the important parts. Those who are wandering around in the dream can also add to it-- the guns, Cobb's freight train and Mal, et cetera. That was my understanding, at least . . .

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, that's what I got out of it too. Ariadne designed the layouts; in the month leading up to the heist she taught them to the chemist (city level), Arthur (hotel level) and Eames (snow level). Everyone's subconscious is linked together, so they are all populating the dream (though ideally not with anything weird that will tip off the target), but only person is actually responsible for the physical layout.