My interpretation was: Spoiler When I watched the Prestige for the first time, it was about when the assistant was going to take the daughter to the park for a walk that I realized that they were twins, so when watching this movie I kept that in mind (as well as Memento) and was looking out for clues about 30 minutes in. A lot of people have already mentioned some of them such as Spoiler the spinning top that doesn't get the chance to finish and Spoiler the line that Saito says about the leap of faith matching the future line of his wife's . Some other ones I noticed were Spoiler in the souk chase scene DiCaprio seems to evade the real goons in about the exact same way that they avoid the fake goons in all the other dreams, and finally Spoiler when he goes into that alley to escape them, it seems to close up on him, a claustrophobic moment that is a classic experience in dreams and one I know I've experienced in many of my own dreams, in fact Spoiler the entire concept of a "chase scene" is really one that has its origin from our own dreams. Someone you dread is after you, time is running out, and despite your attempts to escape your legs start to feel like lead. Has not everyone of us experienced this kind of dream? I have many many times. Also, something started occurring to me that had previously been done in a Futurama episode, of all places, where Spoiler Fry was in a coma or died from a hallucinogenic bee sting and Lela kept having nightmares about him coming back, but then in the end she realized that he had been alive and had actually been praying to her the whole time while she was in a dream-state coma. For the entirety of the movie I then thought that that was the plot, that Spoiler Mal was the one who had returned to reality and DiCaprio the one who was still stuck in limbo looking for the way out. As the story later explained how such things as the token came to be, it seemed less likely that this would be the case, but at the very end a few things reaffirmed my idea that Spoiler at the very least the entire movie as DiCaprio envisioned it was a dream, and it was only to be determined to what depth the components in that dream had any basis in reality whatsoever. 1. Spoiler When DiCaprio confronts his wife at the final level, she says to him that this whole wild goose chase of international espionage and dream thievery is absurd, which it is of course, and one that is too fantastic for reality. Also, it's revealed that the token was in fact hers and not his, which throws into question any kind of meaning it could have had in the first place. My understanding of how the token works is this: Spoiler If you are in a dream still and you spin the token, in theory the focus with which you put upon it should be adequate enough for you to bend the reality of your dream to make that token spin indefinitely. If it's reality of course you have no such power. But what if you intend for it to stop spinning while in the dream? It's effectively useless if you don't actually know you're in a dream in the first place. 2. Spoiler Many scenes in the end are left unfinished such as the one where Saito has the gun and is about to wake himself up by shooting them both, or at least giving the gun to DiCaprio to shoot them both. The awakening without an ending is characteristic of a dream, and even in the end reality we are left with an unfinished plot; we have no idea whether or not the inception has worked nor do we have time to dwell on it, because the dream has to move on. 3. Spoiler As others have alluded to, the scene in the end with the family seems too false to be true. Nolan offers us no other insight into DiCaprio's children and the fact that he would see them exactly as he had remembered them makes it highly suspect that they even exist at all, and certainly not in this way DiCaprio dreams them to be. As a final note, Spoiler the way the entire film was shot is one that hearkens back to a dream. It may the case for moviemaking in general, but things that DiCaprio points out in his conversation with Ariadne such as how they can jump from place to place without remembering how they got there are just everyday shortcuts that movies tend to take, but seem more pronounced and intentional in this movie. The rapid travel from city to city, the glossy all-too-fantastic plotline of traveling around the world extracting secrets from peoples' heads, and even the neat way that DiCaprio and his team slick their hair back as if they were still in the 50's, all lend a feel to the entire base "reality" of the movie as instead being a fabrication of DiCaprio's mind, an adventure that exists solely in the dream world. And as a concept, the idea of being stuck within a dream is also one that has been documented; time can have no meaning in a dream state and a story like this could theoretically go on for a very long time before awakening. My final options for interpreting the story all involve the entire movie being a dream, but there's just too little information given . 1. Spoiler Mal is real and alive, Cobb is in a dream and Mal is the violent force within his dream trying to get him to wake up. 2. Spoiler Mal is fake, a figment of Cobb's imagination, there is no such thing as the technology for people to share dreams, and he is stuck in his own dream. 3. The most likely one: Spoiler We will never know what was real and fake outside of Cobb's mind because the point is that there is no difference. Perception is reality so it's futile to play these mind games trying to figure out what is what.
Spoiler Was anyone thinking about Lost when they said they were going to carryout the job on a flight from Sydney to Los Angeles? I told my friend when we left the theater that it would've been great if the dream scam had been to make they guy think he crashed on an island where strange mystical things happened.
Whoa double dreams... all the way, double dreams Almost a triple dream, what doess this meaaaaaaaaaaaan?
Doesn't mean anything. There are no "original ideas" everything is started from another idea. To create an apple pie from scratch...
I notice the people who aren't liking it only think of it as "a movie about people who enter other people's dreams" and aren't really thinking about the real plot: A movie about a man consumed with guilt. Cobb's guilt is essentially the main "bad guy." Also, when trying to name what movies it's similar to, none of the complainers mention one of the more obvious ones: Synecdoche, New York. I'm not saying you guys only watch crap movies, I'm just saying I can be petty too.
To people saying this was wayy overhyped, I'm not sure anyone on these last few pages is saying it was a landmark piece of filmmaking that exposed deep human truths or anything, just that they had a good time relative to their (reasonable) expectations of what the film would be like. A lot of movies ask you to suspend disbelief, but few are willing to meet you half way and at least construct an internally consistent logic upon which the story can unfold in a meaningful way. Inception does that. Was it silly, contrived, a little clinical? yeah, but you knew what you were gonna get, and it was executed well in line with the director's other movies, though The Prestige was kookier fun and BB/TDK had the inherent benefit of being about Batman.
Such an awesome movie...easily one of the best of the year. Nolan just does not disappoint. The characters deep, the storyline complex, the action authentic. And I love that it is open to much interpretation. It was hard not too buy into the hype that was coming from this film, but it delivered.
Spoiler To get away from the discussion of the ending's ambiguities for a moment and talk about the overall accomplishment Nolan had here, I'd like to go back to something tehGlide just mentioned and talk about the universe Nolan created. I think so much of it is ingenius, really. He creates this environment in the dreams that follow certain rules, and none of it really feels contrived or false in any way, to me. The way he takes from real idiosyncracies of dreaming, like dropping into the middle of a conversation and not questioning how you got there, not being able to remember a previous "dream level" being similar to trying to remember a dream after you have awoken and finally the idea of a "kick" that gets you out of your dream. I also think the limbo notion was a good one. They had to create the rule that a person had to be under sedation in order to reach the triple layered dream state which ultimately set up the limbo idea, but that limbo reality was absolutely necessary to creating any real drama in the movie, since if the worst thing that could happen if someone gets killed is they wake up...big deal. Nolan understood that and upped the ante. A nice by-product of that is there are all these constructs of people's minds that are out to get them (Fischer's dream protectors) and it provides the movie with lots of opportunities for wonderful action and lots of killing with no moral dilemmas to bog the more important aspects of the story down. Normally a movie of this complexity has all kinds of plot holes and you have no problem finding them just after the movie, or even during. But I couldn't think of any after the movie and I still haven't come up with anything (part of this is because of the ambiguity that Nolan builds into the film to breed analysis). That in and of itself is remarkable.
Spoiler I have one glaring question after viewing the movie a second time. How come Arthur didn't wake up while the van was falling? The others couldn't wake up because they were three levels in but Arthur was only one level in?
The movie isn't complex at all. It's a linear path from one level to the next. Like I said, it's not as if there is any interaction between levels, and they weren't jumping around from one level to another. That would have been complex. As far as mind**cks go, Memento puts this film to shame. My favorite "ending that leaves you wondering" is from a film called Doubt (also a better film).
I was kind of wondering about that. I guess the short answer is because the "kick" is not really complete until the van hits the water.
Doubt's ending left you wondering? I thought it was kind of obvious that the priest had done wrong. I mean that was a great film but i think its overrated. Not better than Inception. There were many better films in 2008 too (though it was a great year for film all around) Also I just watched Memento for the first time this week (before i saw inception) and it was great, but I liked Inception more personally.
The whole point was that it was likely, but not certain, hence the title and the ending. It actually has a similar theme to Inception, how can we know truth based on limited information and limited faculties of perception. Doubt is a more realistic scenario (which makes it more interesting). As opposed to dream traveling, which is silly.
