It doesn't matter whether it was real or not. Cobb wanted it to be reality and that's why he didn't wait to see if it stopped spinning or not.
He didn't die in the first level of the dream though. The kick was to get everybody up to the first level, which was the chemist's dream. From there I'm sure they all had an exit strategy that got them out of the dream before Fischer woke up like they did at the beginning with Saito. It wasn't necessary to show it.
This is a great point that the reality cobb wanted is all that mattered. He was happy in the end, and for once at the end of a movie, the exact truth wasn't so important to many viewers.
It's not that he didn't care if it stopped spinning or not. Otherwise, he never would have spun it in the first place. He simply got distracted by his kids.
I think the idea is that he cares until he looks up and sees his kids' faces. From that point he ceases to care because he has what he wanted all along, whether it is real or a dream.
this movie is good.. but not great. it doesn't quite reach the levels of forrest gump, schindler's list, lord of the rings. it doesn't have that epic, greatness feel. but its a good movie. makes you think and all, but definitely not the best movie of all-time.
So, one website refers to the fourth level (the one where Ellen Page and Cobb go to "kick" Fischer and revive him) as limbo. I know it's the same limbo world that Cobb created with his wife, but didn't they set up a dream in the snow world? Isn't this really just a fourth dream level with Cobb as the architect and dreamer and Fischer and Ellen Page as the additional inhabitants?
I think I'd interpret limbo as your own personal dream state....I think Fischer was caught in Leo's limbo because he was killed by a projection in Leo's mind, and Ellen Page was sharing the dream with him. And it's why Saito was in a completely different place. But it does make you wonder how Leo was even able to find Saito and how long it took...and if he didn't find him in time, would both of them be in some kind of coma when the plane landed? But then was the plane even real?
Yeah, I just realized that Fischer was actually dead in the third dream as opposed to seriously injured, so he would have had to fallen into limbo, but how did Ellen and Leo get there? They just wished it? This was probably quickly explained and I just missed it.
Limbo is not a 4th level of dreaming. They explain it as the place you go when you die while in sedation. Your body is too far under to wake up, so your conscious just goes into your deep subconscious (or something like that). In that place it is almost impossible to remember what is real and what isn't, and the only things that are there are what has been constructed by those that are sharing the limbo. As such, they basically fall into the world that Mal and Cobb created, because none of the other people in the crew have been to limbo, so they haven't filled it with anything. But presumably Saito does his own "architecting" and creates the stronghold we see at the beginning and end.
Well I think it's just one of those aspects of the film where you have to stretch you imagination a bit. The logic makes sense in a way...Leo believes that Mal kidnapped Fischer, through her actions of killing him in the dream state...and really her presence was his own projection...so really Fischer is trapped in Leo's tangled emotional state. So it'd make sense if Mal - and really Leo - brought Fischer down into Limbo, Leo would know where to find her, and therefore him as well. Leo himself though didn't technically fall into limbo when he went to rescue Fischer, they had another machine with them. But then limbo isn't really explained in depth. Again does each person have their own limbo, or can it be shared, and how can you find someone who's trapped in limbo, like Saito? Wouldn't the possibility of dream worlds in which the dreamer could reside be infinite? If you think about it, it's rather convenient that Saito ends up in a dream world that wasn't even constructed by his own subconscious. But then maybe Leo is so powerful at extraction/inception that he was able to bring Saito's mind to that place. Or perhaps, for Fischer, it wasn't quite limbo for him at all and it was just a projection from Leo's mind. Leo's subconscious eventually overwhelmed the dreamworld that they created... the train at the beginning of their journey, his kids in the bar and then Mal ultimately shooting Fischer. He was fighting back those projections, those memories, throughout the whole movie, but ultimately it enveloped him and the rest of his team to the point where he had no choice but to confront it.
No. The first level is Yusuf's dream that was built by Ariadne. Remember them talking about why was there a train and they were saying it wasn't in the original plans? The whole point is to make Fischer think he is in his own dream. His subconcious fills the dream world with the soldiers and such (he's the subject) but the construction was theirs. They can't enter into Fischer's own dream. Otherwise they wouldn't know what they would find and wouldn't know what to do.
1. How did Leo know he Incepted his wife? If it was on the subconscious level . . shouldn't he have not remembered that? 2. What happens if you die at the subconscious level? You kick out? Rocket River
Depends on what level of dream you're in, along with the strength of sedatives used. Either you wake up exactly one level above the current dream (the kick), or you fall into limbo.
What I don't understand is why Saito as soon as he wakes up from his dreams, pick up the inflight phone to call "his connections" supposedly giving Cobb a free ride back to the U.S. Let's not forget in the beginning, Cobb was actually trying to mess with Saito's mind, so Saito still had a grudge against him and apparently didn't trust him at all. The whole reason why he came along for the ride was to make sure that Fischer gets incepted, instead he gets shot in the heart and becomes a useless body (almost ruining the entire mission on couple occasions) in the dream world. And to top it off, hes 80 years old in limbo - and almost lost forever. So the question is... How did Saito know that the target "Fischer" has been incepted? Didn't he see Fischer die in level 3? I don't think he was alive when Fischer was jolted back to life. Saito was dead way after Fischer went into the safe to pull out the windmill. The guy invested a ton of money/time to get this mission completed. In his dreams, wouldn't he have known that the mission was botched? And if you were Saito wouldn't you be pissed off at Cobb and the crew? Also Saito and Cobb were the last ones to wake up... even if he "forgot" about his dreams, I don't get why he would immediately call his connections without some sort of verification that the mission was a success. This leads me to believe the entire movie was a dream.
Saito didn't hold a grudge. Don't you remember how he told them that this was an "audition" and that he was disappointed at first until he realized it was a dream within a dream and then he was impressed with them?
You could just as easily argue that only the ending was a dream. That Cobb is still stuck in Limbo, never found Saito and constructed this scenario about waking up and re-uniting with his kids, in order to not lose his mind.
