By now most of you should have seen Inception. If not, here’s a taster of why you should go watch it immediately. If you read on, be warned that there are major SPOILERS ahead.
Right, let’s start with the most obvious question. Does the whole movie take place inside a dream? At the end of Inception we see the spinning top, but we don’t know if it falls over. In my opinion, if the movie had continued, it wouldn’t have fallen over. Cobb was still in a dream. And don’t worry, I have some “evidence”.
- When Arthur explains the totem to Ariadne, he says its purpose is to help you make sure you’re not in someone else’s dream. But what if you’re in your own dream? In that case the totem would be useless. So even though Cobb’s totem falls over at one point in the movie, it only means he’s not in someone else’s dream.
- The fact that Cobb’s totem was originally Mal’s, kind of invalidates the concept. Cobb is not the only one who knows how his totem is weighted. And so it makes the totem less trustworthy in my opinion.
- In the scene where Cobb is chased through the streets, he escapes through a passage that closes in on him. To me that sounds like a dream. And then Saito appears out of nowhere. It seems a bit unlikely that he would follow Cobb to another continent…
Of course this is not proof. The end could just as well be reality. But personally I think there’s more that suggests he’s still in a dream.
The next question, if we assume Cobb is still in a dream, is what the dream means, or what reality is even like. And that’s much more tricky to answer. I have two theories, but one could come up with tons more:
- Mal was indeed correct, and she’s moved on to reality, while Cobb still remains in his dream.
- Near the end of the movie, Cobb says his life is full of guilt. Either his wife killed herself in reality, and he blames himself, or something else happened that he feels really guilty about, and Mal killing herself has replaced that guilt in his dreams.
This is all very speculative. What are your theories?
Christa
20/08/2010 at 06:26
Interesting theories, Helmut. The film certainly gets you thinking. Your second theory (with Mal's suicide only being a symbol of the guilt that Cobb feels) somehow appeals to me as you could make a second film on the underlying issues.
movieschizo
20/08/2010 at 07:27
Yeah, I was saying to Anne that a "prequel" would probably make the most sense if they did decide to make a second film. How Cobb got to where he is in the movie could make for some interesting plot lines.