OT: Inception (WITH SPOILERS)
It's the off-season, so I feel that if we can have 20 bobblathon threads we can have 2 threads on what will probably be the highest-grossing film of the year.
There are spoilers in this thread.
If you want to see this movie (and you should!) leave now. If you don't leave, you deserve anything you get.
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Getting things started with some bullets....
- Holy f---. Did this movie ever slow down? I felt like it was the fastest 2.5 hours of my life.
- I'm fuzzy on some of the rules of the dream worlds - how did Cobb and Mal spend 50 years in their dreams? Did I miss something on that one? Did they have some kinda sedative? (EDIT: Aware of exponential time increases - thought they were in level one (L1) for 50 L1 years. Someone below said they were in limbo at this time).
- I believe the top fell. Why? Because I want to, which is most important. One main reason I believe this, though, is that early on in the film when he spins the top wouldn't it not fall as well?
- If he is asleep and Mal was right, then what is the number of layers we're looking at? Snow Mtn would then be 4, not 3. The van would be 2, not 1, etc.
- When Cobb went to find Saito, did he go down another layer?
Can't wait to go see it again. Even though I think I have a good grasp on things, I'm sure there are opinions/aspects that would provide some new dimensions that I had not considered.
"oh by the way...". however, i didnt think it was delivered poorly enough to be considered a mess up/possible knock. after all, hes not talking to mal. hes talking to his self conscious's projection of her. he has to be serious and convince HIMSELF that shes a "shade." that would be my explanation of the lack of emotion during that part
I also thought the top was wobbling and was clearly about to fall, but some other peoples' comments that made me less sure:
1. Apparently at the airport all the people were looking at Cobb as if he was in someone else's dream and their subconscious was trying to identify him (I didn't notice this and I'm not sure it happened but I will be looking for it the next time i see it.)
2. There were no kicks to wake him up after he found Saito as an old man in limbo. He just opened his eyes and was back on the plane with everyone else.
One other issue I had: before the mission it showed several of the characters waking up when their chairs were tipped and they were about to fall, showing that despite the heavy sedation, their inner ear function would not be interfered with and they would wake up if they experienced loss of balance. So how did they all manage to stay asleep when their van rolled over like 5 times?
When Leo and old-man Saito were talking in limbo the last thing that happened before Leo and Saito woke up on the plane was old-man Saito picking up his gun. I'm pretty sure that that they killed themselves in limbo, but it's just not really the sort of thing that the movie would want to show you.
I missed that at the time but it makes sense now.
they were wearing seatbelts! the distance difference between falling off a bridge and being rolled in a car would be my explanation. and to address ur first point: they werent all looking at him. while going through baggage claim no1 was looking at him except his friends/partners. again: they were not staring at him.
- I think that the ending wasn't a dream because the top was definitely making wobble noises and seemed on the verge of falling. And while I suppose it's possible for the people in the airport to be watching Leo when he gets off the plane, I think it's unlikely because by that point in the movie we (as viewers) were trained to look out for stuff like that.
- I geeked out when Michael Caine introduced Ellen Page's character as Ariadne. In Greek mythology Ariadne was the princess who helped Theseus get through King Minos's maze to kill the minotaur. Horray, classical studies!
- When I watched the previews I had no idea how they were going to combine all of the crazy images (zero-gravity fighting, the guy wrapping up the stack of people in the hotel, the crumbling city in limbo) into a coherent movie, but somehow they did that and one-upped everything by adding a crazy snow mountain fortress.
- Did anybody else thing it was weird that after he plays the music for the people in the van, the driver from the first level pretty much isn't seen for the rest of the movie? He was missing for like the last 30-45 minutes and isn't even seen on the plane or in the airport. I don't think it's supposed to "mean" anything, but I still thought it was pretty weird.
with the first point. I'm pretty sure I would've noticed the people watching him, I just started to second guess my first instincts after reading the comments of some other people who saw the movie.
Didn't Leo tell Ellen in the real world what the properties of his totem was?
Telling a person about a totem and letting them experience it are too different for that to change anything. I could tell you what it's like to have sex, but if you haven't experienced it for yourself you have no idea what it's really like.
I'm not saying you haven't had sex by the way I'm just using that as an example.
What makes your reply so interesting is that I gave my 16 year old son my id and he made his very first post to the blog because he had that question.
And then he gets that reply!
Quite amusing.
I just read this awesome interpretation of Inception. I disagree with some parts of it, but it's really worth reading for the depth of thought put into it and way too complicated to me to try and summarize.
The nature of this movie i such that I don't think you can ever really come to a conclusive assessment of what it means, and was the whole thing a dream, but that analysis is as spot on as any I've read. Who knows if he's right about the details, but the broad strokes of what he's saying IMO are spot on......esp. that Inception is sort of a self-referential commentary on cinema as shared dreaming. Seen in that light only makes it that much more brilliant.
I just thought of this. The ending had to be a dream. When Cobb got back with his father to see his kids, they walked down that same hallway that hed previously been in his dreams. If the kids were staying with his mother-in-law they wouldn't have been in the same home. Therefore I must conclude that Cobb gave himself the idea that making it home to his kids was reality.
was living at cobb's house before. remember wen he had to fly away? his mom/mal's mom(he referred to her by "grandma" wen talking to his kids) was the one who called the kids away before cobb could call them and see their faces one last time.
I just saw it for the 2nd time and the kids WERE wearing different clothes. The girl had a white undershirt at the end that she definitely did not have before, and I'm 95% sure the boy had a slightly different plaid shirt (the one at the end had white in it, the one in the beginning did not).
I saw this movie on Friday night in IMAX no less, which in a point by itself was worth the extra money for the street bending scene and the music alone, and plan on seeing again within the next few days....
Reading all the discussion here just shows at how great this movie was. What I can't wait for is the DVD release to listen to (hopefully!!!) the director commentary by Nolan. I would love to hear what his thoughts are as well as any actors in the movie.
As a person fascinated with philosophy, I was not worried so much about the precise details (which have been fascinatingly discussed here), but rather was trying to discern a broader understanding to the film.
And ultimately, I couldn't help but think the issue of the dreams was about faith. The whole hubbub about each level of the dream was trying to discern what was a dream and what was "reality." The entire conflict of the film centers on trying to input a false belief within the dream of another (Fischer) so as the false belief being perceived as a reality from Fischer himself.
The last conversation between Mal and Cobb was that of Cobb trying to perceive whether or not Mal (who took a leap of faith in her suicide) was real in her leap or was a figment of Cobb's imagination who even in his imagination had still perceived Mal as flawed and imperfect.
This all added to the significance of the last scene wherein we are trying to see if Cobb's world was real or not in the spinning of the top. My own interpretation was that Cobb's world was real, but yet the top was still spinning as to signify that we cannot even be sure that our own perceived reality is the true reality by which we perceive or if it was a simple construction from a dream. This dilemma is ancient, and also unanswerable.
I'm probably wrong, but the movie got me thinking which is a rarity in movies these days.
Because it gets people thinking and talking about ideas, the world, existential things, existance. It's great.
Just watched the movie last night and had the worst nights sleep last night! Still trying to digest it. It was like the minfuck of 6 seasons of lost combined in 2.5 hours
Why does the top have to spin forever in a dream? Couldn't the dreamer create a dream world in which gravity acts like it does in the real world and tops fall over? Since Saito touched the top, he could theoretically create such a dream world give the top the correct weight/texture, thus fooling Cobb.
Saito probably could not have created the dream world or plant a fake totem for Cobb. Saito only saw the totem once when he saw Cobb drop it on the bathroom floor. He had no idea what the weight/texture/balance was like, so it would've been near impossible.
He touches it as an old dude in limbo. My point was whether or not the top falls is a red herring. Leo could have also been dreaming the whole time, in which case "reality" is just a dream world in which tops obey the laws of physics.