Inception isn't science fiction (spoilers)

http://blog.samstokes.co.uk/post/890499536/inception-isnt-science-fiction-spoilers

by samstokes • 16 years ago

56 73 16 years ago

blog.samstokes.co.uk

adelevie3• 16 years ago

The best interpretation I've seen is that the entire movie is an allegory about movie-making. The "shared dream" is very analogous to a movie.

Stokes' interpretation doesn't look deep enough. He attempts to figure out what is really happening before, after, or even during the movie. I find more use in interpretations that try and figure out what something means and what the underlying message the writer/director is making (if any).

Stokes focuses too much on plot and not enough on meaning. Reminds me of people who think the Six Sense is awesome (pretty much everyone) because of its amazing plot twist. But that's all it really had--not too much meaning. A movie worth analyzing shouldn't just stand on plot alone. Thankfully Inception has both an awesome plot and some decently profound meaning.

Tycho9• 16 years ago

But where does Cobb's rampant guilt and Fischer's paternal reconciliation fit into this metaphor for filmmaking? And what does it tell us about filmmaking that would make this worthwhile?

I think it's safer to say the concepts of creation and inspiration are common to dream making and filmmaking and leave it at that.

adelevie3• 16 years ago

http://chud.com/articles/articles/24477/1/NEVER-WAKE-UP-THE-...

Not that these excerpts really do the analysis justice, but:

>Except that this is exactly what Nolan is arguing against. The film is a metaphor for the way that Nolan as a director works, and what he's ultimately saying is that the catharsis found in a dream is as real as the catharsis found in a movie is as real as the catharsis found in life. Inception is about making movies, and cinema is the shared dream that truly interests the director.

>The whole film being a dream isn't a cop out or a waste of time, but an ultimate expression of the film's themes and meaning. It's all fake. But it's all very, very real. And that's something every single movie lover understands implicitly and completely.

To answer your question more directly, the familial issues in the plot are a vehicle for emotion. These emotions are just as real in a dream as they are in a movie, as they are in real life (to borrow from the analysis' phrasing).

barrkel2• 16 years ago

I thought it was a rather pointless puzzle. I'm lost as to the profound meaning you're alluding to; is it doubting reality, that it may be a dream, etc.? That's a long way short of original, and besides, it was done much better recently by The Matrix. The plot, however, was clearly less than awesome, with much of it seemingly existing to justify special effects and repetitive fight scenes, providing cheap tension. (The same could of course be said of The Matrix.)

The whole concept of Inception, of course, is unremarkable. Ad-men have been putting ideas in people's heads for some time with quite a degree of sophistication, and magicians have been doing similar for far longer; done well, marks are fooled by both without realizing how or when.

Reading the movie as an allegory of movie-making I think is a stretch. There are matching elements, in particular, not changing the world too much or provoking antagonism; but the whole plot theme of father / child guilt is rather out of place, as is the recursive breaking into of fortresses.

eru3• 16 years ago

The one thing that I liked about the movie was the absence of white and black morality. There's no villain, and the protagonist's aren't good guys either.

samstokes4• 16 years ago

+1. I think I did look beyond just the plot (after all, I suggested none of the plot actually happened), but agreed, it adds an extra dimension to consider the message of the film as well as the themes it explores.

chc2• 16 years ago

One thing I learned as a film major is that there's a subset of film critics who will believe every good movie (especially one with any theme of "creation") is a metaphor for moviemaking. Infertile couple? It's about the director's struggles with the movie studio. Mad scientist genetically engineers a monster? That's clearly how the director feels about his creations once they're in the public eye. These critics are right sometimes, but I think there's a large element of "When the only tool you have is a hammer…" at work as well.

nprincigalli• 16 years ago

Likewise, there are moviegoers for which every good movie is a metaphor for the entrepreneur's saga! :)

muhfuhkuh2• 16 years ago

The best interpretation I've thought of after watching it (and talking with my wife for hours after) was that Saito is the architect and he wanted to get back at Cobol Industries twofold:

1) By getting Cobb to convince Fisher Jr. to feel like his daddy loved him and wanted him to be his own man and dissolve the business to start his own empire and

2) Get back at Cobb for trying to steal his secrets for Cobol by _incepting_ the little seed of "you want to go back home to your kids" in his head and making that his obsessive ends to justify all means. Saito, meanwhile, was willing to wait the dream equivalent of _eighty years_ to exact this revenge. Then, as DiCaprio fulfills his promise and gets Saito in his 80-year Limbo, Saito fulfills his promise, architects a layer where Cobb does reunite with his still-young-as-Cobb-remembers-them children, and the spinning totem wobbles but doesn't actually fall, then the "I N C E P T I O N" credits roll, because Saito ran the inception on Cobb.

Ta-da!

adelevie3• 16 years ago

I hope this was meant to be funny :)

muhfuhkuh2• 16 years ago

Nope, and the fact that you don't dispute it with anything but a smiley leads me to believe that you believe my belief.

I N C E P T I O N

Dunbar• 16 years ago

I'm not sure that the Inception on Fisher Jr. ever actually occurs, as I doubt that Cobb ever escaped Saito's dream from the beginning. It is suggested in the movie that the subconscious attacks the architect of the dream first. In the beginning of the movie the last we see of the first architect is him being bundled away by Saito's goons. Saito then crafts an excuse for Cobb to end up at peace, lost in his own subconscious. The Saito living in limbo could be a projection in the same way that Fisher Jr. creates a projection of the guy the forger was mimicking.

Tycho9• 16 years ago

No no no... "inception" happens when they plant an idea inside a safe/vault inside someone's dream (inside someone's dream, inside someone's dream), rather than extracting one. Cobb doesn't undergo inception, he just works out his problems as the plot develops with some help from Ariadne. Why? Because it would be a dull and empty plot if all these characters were brought together simply to perform a job. Furthermore the film makes clear that Cobb learns to reject he projection of his wife, so it makes no sense for him to then embrace projected children instead at the end. The children represent reality not just in physicality but in the emotional truth that underscores the film. That's why he spins the top then ignores it soon as his children appear - they're a more certain anchor for reality.

mberning• 16 years ago

The safe doesn't have any special significance. What is significant is that Cobb takes the totem which is at rest and puts it in motion. Presumably when Mal goes back to retrieve her totem she finds it to be spinning, thus causing her to question which reality is real. She could have stored it in a cardboard box, it would have made little difference.

Tycho9• 16 years ago

I believe you are mistaken. The film never shows Mal returning to the safe to find the top (why would she?). The safe is part of her mind which, if you will, contains the IsReality boolean variable. Cobb changes the IsReality variable by finding its location. Then it's possible for him to convince her that they should kill themselves and wake up. But inadvertently he destroyed her mind because subconsciously this switch had been flipped.

Of course the safe had special significance! Safes were of crucial importance throughout the film. (you might ask yourself why it wasn't in just a cardboard box)

philwelch4• 16 years ago

"Because it would be a dull and empty plot if all these characters were brought together simply to perform a job."

What you describe is a very common trope for heist movies, and Inception--despite its depth--satisfies on that level, just as The Matrix satisfies as a sci-fi shoot-em-up despite its depth.

A lot of the best movies satisfy on multiple levels this way.

Tycho9• 16 years ago

They never make movies about 'just another job,' which is what this would be if not for Cobb's psychodrama/inner-conflict and Ariadne's attempt to help. Although I suppose the goal of inception would make it unique from the characters' perspective but that's too weak because it means nothing to the audience beforehand.

samstokes4• 16 years ago

+1 but disagree.

Re the rule that inception requires a vault to plant the idea inside - on the one hand, if the whole concept of inception is something dreamed up by Cobb, then that rule can be broken (dreams are rarely consistent). On the other hand, that's why it's so significant that Ariadne's role is the creator of mazes (specifically, mazes which Cobb's conscious mind can't solve): she creates a maze he has to break into in order to confront his issues at the centre. If he did so without first struggling to get there, he wouldn't accept it as his own victory: just like Fischer had to pull off an increasingly elaborate heist in order to believe his own inception.

Re accepting his dream children after rejecting his dream wife: I think the difference is that his real children are still alive and need him. His guilt over Mal's death keeps him distant from them - literally in the film/dream, but maybe metaphorically in reality. Maybe he's been emotionally distant from his kids since her death, and the dream is his mind's attempt to fix things.

harlowja• 16 years ago

Obligatory code that runs the plot. http://github.com/karthick18/inception

pbw• 16 years ago

"And then he woke up" is the ending to every 5th graders first ambitious story. I don't buy it.

I did think the little dream machine in the movie looked like game console. You and several of your friends slide in the IV to play a round of, what exactly?

I thought the movie portrayed a pretty decent game already, just getting from one level to the next. More: http://www.kmeme.com/2010/07/inception-game.html

cobralibre• 16 years ago

As a meditation on the way in which our creations are inexorably haunted by the personal, Inception works.

As a movie about dreams, it's a missed opportunity. We find dreams compelling because they're profoundly uncanny in a way that we can never fully express; and I think most people would agree that when we dream there is a loss of agency, that dreams simply unfold before us. But there's hardly anything dreamlike about the movie at all, unless you're a lucid dreamer. Inception models a dream as a location rather than as a series of emotionally charged impressions, and it employs a Hollywoodesque narrative grammar rather than dream-logic. It's essentially a heist movie.

Another way to put it is that when I was watching the movie, I kept thinking, "That's so not real." Which is a funny way to respond to a movie about dreams. I hate to be that guy, but I think you're better off reading something like Kafka's "The Judgment" or maybe even watching a good horror movie.

philwelch4• 16 years ago

From Fischer's perspective there is the loss of agency and helplessness, the series of emotionally charged impressions. But fundamentally the absurdity of dreams is not well shown, and the resemblance to lucid dreams is if anything fitting from the perspectives of those who are dreaming lucidly.

samstokes4• 16 years ago

+1 but doesn't reflect my experience.

> when we dream there is a loss of agency, that dreams simply unfold before us

I never feel that way while dreaming, even though when I wake I realise I was basically on rails the whole time. The closest I've experienced to this is that sometimes in my dreams I am simultaneously reading a book and a character in the book - as the former I am a passive observer, as the latter I (feel as if I) have agency.

> unless you're a lucid dreamer

Inception is explicitly inspired by lucid dreaming (the concept of the totem is very similar to a trick people use to train themselves to dream lucidly). However, even though I've only once or twice had a lucid dream, I found a lot about the film reminded me of dreaming in general.

eru3• 16 years ago

I have some experience with lucid dreaming. And the movie is nice entertainment, but real dreams don't work that way. Even lucid dreams.

First: Dream time is approximately real time. (There have been studies to confirm this. Exercise to the reader: How would you design such a study? (Drop me an email if you want to know how the scientist did it.)) Second, you can tell you are in a dream, if: (a) Flipping a light switch doesn't work, strangely your dream imagination can't cope with rapid changes of illumination. (b) Gravity works strange. Try jumping up and down. When you can stay airborne for more than a second you are probably dreaming. (c) If, in general, strange things happen. There are some more signs that you find in dreams.

Fortunately, habbits you have in reality carry over into dreams. So if you make it a habbit to check for dream signs in real life, you will probably check them in your dreams too, and recognize that you are dreaming. Enjoy! (Although I often feel the urge to wake up, once I realize that I am dreaming. It takes a while to resist it.)

apsurd• 16 years ago

Still reading but, first and foremost, I think the opposite of his conclusion on what the ending meant is more obvious. It was clearly about to fall over ... =)

carterschonwald• 16 years ago

i second this sentiment (though the metaphor for film making interpretation is also quite nice.).

by this interpretation (the straightforward naive one), Inception is likely the best "hard"/logically consistent science fiction film to have characters that are very engaging and well realized of the past half decade.

If you've not seen Inception yet, fix that soon!

megablast• 16 years ago

I really liked inception, but felt that the character development wasn't there. All the characters except Cobb exist only superficially, as if they are just dream projections. We never find out what anyone else wants, why they are coming along on this mad scheme.

Still a great movie.

sabat3• 16 years ago

I "third" this sentiment. This was Nolan teasing us a little bit, but at the very last second, the top was starting to fall over. The true indication that this was reality is in Cobb's ability to see his children's faces.

sabat3• 16 years ago

Fun ideas, but this is over-analysis. The movie is as it appears to be. There is no justification for taking a minor aspect of the plot (that the dream-sharing device is only briefly explained) and using it to concoct a whole new layer underlying the movie. The spinning top at the end is a red herring -- it's Christopher Nolan having a little fun with us. The true indication of what happened, that Cobb has reached reality, is in his ability to see his children's faces at last. That's the give-away.

waterlesscloud2• 16 years ago

I think the ending is several things at once, which is why I like it.

One, it's a red herring as you say, though I'd put a slightly different spin on it. Cobb has chosen his reality, he's had his catharsis and made a very intentional decision to let Mal go. That's true regardless of if the ending is a dream or not.

Two, it's an intentional denial of catharsis for the audience. It's a setup without a payoff, tension without release. Here's the interesting part about that- the audiences I've seen it with provide their own physical catharsis, their own reality-based relief of tension, by laughter or by applause. These physical reactions both release the real physical tension that has built in their bodies and also returns them to the real world, outside of the filmic dream.

Three, it captures the feeling of a certain kind of dream. How many times have you dreamed of almost having the answer, of almost knowing something you want to know...and then abruptly waking up? Yes, exactly.

It's the best ending shot to a movie in quite a long while.

barrkel2• 16 years ago

My personal catharsis was a grunt of "hmph". For a split second I considered the "question" of the spinning top - is this real or not - then noticed that I didn't care, that it was a banal and uninteresting question, because the question relied on its very existence for its interestingness, as either answer - it's a dream, or it's the final reality - were both cop-outs, were both unsatisfying and cheaply done. "It's all a dream" is the most childish of story resolutions, while the idyllic literal interpretation of the shown ending is unacceptably saccharine for something purporting to be adult entertainment.

As to feeling that you have the answer in a dream, that's down to the extreme suspension of disbelief the dozing mind is capable of. That suspension was something that a movie allegedly about dreams hardly ever brought up. If some character can dream up bigger guns, and another character a freight train in a city street, then why not more? And why are the defensive projections of the dream's owner so tame, merely human, when they could potentially be changing the whole world? And if being weightless at one level creates weightlessness in the next level down, why isn't it transitive? And wouldn't dreaming that the entire building / local area / whatever starts accelerating skywards at 9.8 meters per second per second restore gravity? Why can't that manipulation be used as "the kick"? Seems like a simpler manipulation than what the architect was up to.

mortenjorck• 16 years ago

The top is quite simply the movie's final inception.

Only this one is placed in the mind of the viewer.

shin_lao2• 16 years ago

spoilers

I disagree..

Remember Africa? He was in France, then in Africa, magically. Dreamy...

Remember how he escapes from his "enemies" stuck between two walls? Typical of a dream.

And then magically, Saito appears to save him. Again, typical of a dream. The whole movie is a dream, at the end he allows himself to see his children face because he's at peace, but he's still dreaming.

Tycho9• 16 years ago

The real scenes in the film are made intentionally dreamlike at points to emphasise the idea that Cobb hasn't sorted his life out and hasn't "come back to reality", still obsessed with his lost wife.

That plus reality in Hollywood films is seldom very real anyway and usually involves cuts to faraway locations.

aquateen• 16 years ago

First person to under-analyze Inception.

gibsonf1• 16 years ago

Except that the children haven't aged and are wearing the same clothes as in all his images of them, meaning that he is still dreaming. The top spinning without falling is just to make sure the audience realizes that Cobb does not make it out.

logicalmind2• 16 years ago

Actually, if you look at the cast you will see that there are different children (different ages) who play the children at the two different points in the movie:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1375666/fullcredits#cast

endtime• 16 years ago

>The spinning top at the end is a red herring -- it's Christopher Nolan having a little fun with us. The true indication of what happened, that Cobb has reached reality, is in his ability to see his children's faces at last.

That's the most absurd rationalization I've heard all morning.

If you go back and watch the movie again, there are a number of clues that the entire movie is a dream (mysterious, nameless agency chasing Cobb, the sudden importance of an irrelevant power company's heir, Cobb getting trapped between closing walls as he flees, etc.). In fact, that when he finally "sees" his children they start out following exactly the same scene he kept hallucinating seems to be the bigger giveaway. In any case, why does Cobb insist that seeing their faces will mean he's really awake? That sounds like the kind of nonsense one might believe in a dream.

thewhitewizzard• 16 years ago

Spoiler Alert The spinning top is not a red herring, it tells us much about the movie. My questions is why is he using Mal's totem throughout the whole movie ? He manipulated it when it was in Mal's Safe and everyone in the group there knew how it worked. This makes it an useless totem. He could not figure out if he was in a dream . The ability to see the faces of the kids doesn't dictate he is in reality, it only shows that he is in a place where his mind is ready to accept him seeing his kids.

sabat3• 16 years ago

Update: there's some intel from a costume designer that does seem to add new insight to the meaning of the last scenes. Link here: http://io9.com/5602799/did-inceptions-costume-designer-just-...

klenwell• 16 years ago

The it's-all-a-dream interpretation is the only one that makes sense from a science-fiction point-of-view, however unsatisfying it is from an artistic perspective. The slightly wobbling top at the end points, rather overtly, to the real answer: it's meant to be ambiguous.

That said: WTF? We've got to bring down a company on the verge of being The Most Powerful Corporation in the World. So let's use this highly radical, unproven and improbable, voodoo-science inception approach. Oh, and by the way, we have to plant a mole within the highest ranks of the multinational beast within the next, say, two weeks, so we can get valuable information that is necessary to penetrate and manipulate the fragile psyche of our target.

Cut-scene: it's done. This is logic that only makes sense within the context of a dream. The sort of dream Coleridge, or Rube Goldberg, would have.

Science generally favors the application of Occam's Razor: buy the airline and crash the damn plane with the kid on it. Or just send in the ninjas. The ensuing infighting among the various executive factions vying for the top spot after junior is offed will ensure that any plans Acme Energy Inc had for world domination are put off course indefinitely.

Inception was entertaining. But Memento was the more philosophically interesting film. That's a film that truly merited this kind of philosophical scrutiny. Remember Sammy Jankis.

wlievens2• 16 years ago

There have been plenty of (non-aweful) movies with more unprobably plots than that, that weren't in a dream of any kind.

I think that stating that the entire plot is a dream just because the main plot is not realistic is akin to denying the film's right to being science fiction!

edanm3• 16 years ago

If you enjoyed this film and interpretation, I really recommend watching The Prestige, then reading the following:

SPOILER ALERT

The Prestige has a much better "alternative ending" theory, because it is not well known and very unexpected.

The Prestige ends with all the questions supposedly answered, i.e. the twin thing, the machine that Tesla made, etc. Except that, there is one alternative: the machine never existed! Throughout the entire film, Michael Caine's character keeps insisting that there is only one way to do a transportation act, and that is with a lookalike. We already know that Hugh Jackman's character has a lookalike.

We also never see more than one "replica" of Hugh Jackman. The only time we actually see replicas being created is during the memories written down by Hugh Jackman, except, they could be fake!

In short, it's possible that Christopher Nolan has managed to fool pretty much every audience of The Prestige into believing in Science Fiction, when there is a perfectly logical explanation for the entire film that doesn't require magical explanations. But like the film repeatedly says, "Audiences want to be fooled".

ubernostrum2• 16 years ago

Except not really; the novel it's adapted from doesn't leave any opportunity for ambiguity, and even in the film, as Jackman's character dies Christian Bale walks past the rows and rows of tanks holding the dead duplicates. If there were never any real duplicates and the whole thing was faked, there's no explanation for those tanks to be there.

gwern• 16 years ago

Indeed; my first thought was the bodies. Likewise, if there aren't hundreds of clones, the poignancy of the whole 'paying the price' theme is lost. One twin's death is less tragic than knowingly inflicting hundreds of drowning deaths on oneself.

On the other hand, the parent's post illustrates how easily the film could be changed into a different interpretation, one which is arguably better.

(This isn't quite as good as the reinterpretation of _The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya_ in which Kyon is God, since it requires some changes in the movie, but then, it requires much less careful analysis to prove it.)

edanm3• 16 years ago

The tanks don't actually have any bodies in them, at least not bodies that you can see. I checked once: all the tanks hold lifeless human-looking blobs, but you can't see them. Except for the last tank, but that could be the body of the actual double.

The reason the tanks are there is for the same reason the diary was written: to fool Borden.

There are even some people who say that there are differences in makeup between the real Angier and his look-alike, and that you can see that the only real, visible body in the tanks is clearly the twin. Can't say I noticed it myself.

As for the book, still haven't read it, but it doesn't matter: from what I've heard, the book also doesn't have the whole "killing doubles" theme, since the replicas are lifeless anyway. But it doesn't matter, the film is its own story.

I got this whole theory from this forum post, which you should read for a better explanation of everything: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/vine/showthread.php?t=531777.

samstokes4• 16 years ago

+1 for recommendation of The Prestige.

Mulholland Drive is also a film worth watching if you enjoyed Inception.

shin_lao2• 16 years ago

Mulholland Drive is IMHO very superior to Inception in every aspect (for the record, I really enjoyed Inception).

Mulholland Drive is also much, much darker which might not be to your taste.

omellet• 16 years ago

Or if you like hot lesbian sex. Just sayin'

dan00• 16 years ago

In a way it's funny if people over-analyse a movie. If they put more meaning into the movie than the director has intended.

Why just can't the reality shown in Inception be the reality, and the spinning top at the end just a gag, in the way that the director doesn't show us long enough the spinning top to see, if it falls or not?

So the spinning top at the end could be seen as an encouragement to think about your own reality.

Ardit20• 16 years ago

That is quite a literary interpretation. I think the dream expresses much deeper truths through the metaphors.

The ending ends that way because the producers clearly wanted us to question as to which is reality. Remember when he says do not create places from reality into dreams as that is the best way to lose which is reality and which is a dream. Also, when he meets his older self and tells him he has to jump. That indicates that the "reality" on which the film begins is not really reality, that his wife was probably right. But how can she be right when the spinner does stop spinning and yet in the end when we are brought to the same reality it does not stop spinning?

This contradiction is supposed to be there as it communicates this entire confusion as to which is reality and which is an illusion we have created for ourselves. Speaking of its applicability to the real world it speaks of brainwashing, propaganda, and formation of our own perceptions, how we can through them create a different reality and be lost in there, yet also struggle to find the real truth. The film, through the metaphor, communicates perfectly this entire confusion and it ends with such contradiction because ultimately we as humans and our thinking can not acquire perfection as to what is truth. We are blind in the end to inconsistencies within our illusions, hence the always spinning spinner.

Its a good film, but in the end I think it is really rubbish. The subject is awesome, but it does not go deep enough. The ending is too subtle. There probably should have been some sort of almighty intervention like in the ending of Don Juan for it to become a classic. To allure in the end that there are great forces out there which we depend on and only through taking a leap of faith in ourself can we acquire reality.

Tycho9• 16 years ago

The spinning top at the end is not meant to make you question the reality, it's meant to question your reasons for believing he's in reality and find a more satisfying/compelling reason. Whether a top spins or not is an unsatisfying answer to any deep question - the reunion with his children is more meaningful. I think we all know we are not dreaming at this moment for a myriad of reasons, but the strongest is probably that other people seem real to an extent that you'd never get in dreams.

I'm starting to repeat myself now in this thread so I better check out (...before I become an old man, filled with regret...).

eru3• 16 years ago

> The ending is too subtle.

I found the ending to be quite anvilicous. They should have shown the spinning totem for a much shorter time, to make it ambiguous whether it keeps on spinning. (Also you can save it by pretending the protagonist's father spun it again off-camera.)

chopsueyar• 16 years ago

Well, this would explain why nobody is floating around in the snow mountain fortress.

dejb• 16 years ago

Surely all or most of these interpretations have been considered by the director and have been actively and deliberately intertwined into the story. The budget was $160 million so think of how many startup ideas could be funded with 10% of this amount. So it's easy then to imagine a team of geniuses working to plant the seeds for all these interpretations and ideas in our heads. That, coupled with the art of convincing somebody to fund the movie, is Inception.

chc2• 16 years ago

I really doubt a "team of geniuses" collaborated to "plant the seeds for all these interpretations and ideas in our heads." For one, that isn't how movies are generally made and seems like a pretty boring way to approach making a movie like inception. For another, there's no "team of geniuses" credited — just Christopher Nolan.

simonjoe• 16 years ago

The author is a moron. This movie is amazing, but it's also insanely straightforward. It doesn't require that kind of analysis; almost nothing does.

I'm growing increasingly disheartened at the blogosphere simply because it gives people as stupid as this author a way for even stupider people to reinforce his bad behaviors.

Inception isn't science fiction (spoilers)

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