This is completely off blog-topic, but have any of you seen the film
Inception? I've been on the road so much this summer that I didn't get to see it until this weekend. I think it's a movie that people probably either loved or hated. I loved it.
If you are interested in discussing it, please comment below.
SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT KEEP READING IF YOU DON'T WANT THE FILM'S ENDING RUINED.
Here are a few of the theories that I have about
the film. These are initial theories, as I've only seen the film once. I think the clue to what actually happened at the film's ending was in the first 15 minutes during
Cobb's interactions with Saito. At that point in the film, we were still learning the rules and didn't know what the hell was going on. I think the clue to what really happened is in there. I need to see it again.
1. The Easy Ending
My initial reaction to the ending was that the totem (top) was going to fall. I wanted Cobb (
Leonardo DiCaprio) to have succeeded in his quest to get back to his children and for the movie to have been at face value. However, if the ending was actually that simple they would have shown the top fall.
2. Cobb in Limbo Forever
If I had to venture a guess... Perhaps
Saito (
Ken Watanabe) and Cobb remained archenemies like they were at the beginning of the film. When Saito beat and tortured Cobb's previous architect on the helicopter, he learned Cobb's secrets in order to use them against him: the circumstances of
Mal's death (
Marion Cotillard), the cause being the inception that he planted in her that she wasn't in the real world, and Cobb being unable to architect a dream. Saito used
Ariadne (
Ellen Page) to extract the information about Cobb's totem so a fake one could be constructed in the dream. (By the way,
in Greek mythology Ariadne was King Midas' daughter. She helped Theseus by giving him a sword to slay the Minotaur and also a ball of red fleece to lead him out of the Minotaur's labyrinth. Sound familiar?)
After that, Saito and Ariadne created a dream maze/labyrinth in order to entrap Cobb in limbo. A circular illusion like a never-ending staircase. This dream mission was to plant an inception in
Fisher (
Cillian Murphy). Another possible level to this theory is that Mal was the real baddie and architect of the entire plot, with the intention of entrapping Cobb forever.
At the end of the film,when Cobb goes to save Saito in limbo, Saito plants the opposite inception of what Cobb had planted in Mal: the thought that Cobb's world is real. For the inception to work, the initial thought had to come from Cobb, which happened when he decided to go to limbo to save Saito right before Ariadne jumped off the building. Cobb's decision and the thought, the need to make Saito honor their agreement, then leads Cobb to the idea that he completed the mission, the charges against him are lifted, and that he's returned home to live with his children in the real world.
But instead of waking up, Cobb was transferred from Saito's dream landscape into his own, trapped forever in his subconscious dream limbo, but thinking that it's real. When old Saito picked up the gun at the end of the dream mission, while in limbo, he probably shot himself to wake up. We didn't see whether he shot Cobb first or not. So, there's an ambiguity here. But in the end, the inception was about getting Cobb to believe something, not Fisher. The top never falls.
2. Cobb Escapes Limbo
After Mal died in the real world, Cobb retreated into his dreams and got stuck. (He may have been one of the people in the basement of the chemist's building that were hooked up to the dream sharing machine because that world had become more real to them. If that's the case, then perhaps the dream team, lead by Saito, Ariadne, and
Arthur (
Joseph Gordon-Levitt), etc. went into the dreamscape to rescue Cobb, by concocting the Fisher project.
The project was a front to get Cobb back into the real world. By successfully planting the Inception in Fisher, as we saw in the film, Cobb believed that he was earning his freedom to return home to the United States, which lead him to believe that he would wake up and live in the real world. The different levels of the Fisher mission, Ariadne counseling him to kill Mal, Cobb's need to save Saito so that Saito will honor the agreement and give him his freedom, all of these are part of getting Cobb to come to the thought that his life is worth living in the real world. In this ending the top falls.
4. The Top is a Red Herring, Cobb's Ring Is the Real Totem
4. The Audience Inception Twist -- the Point of the Ending in My Opinion
From a structural perspective, the film had an ambiguous ending for a reason. The top wobbled but didn't fall, because
writer/director Christopher Nolan's brilliance wasn't about what happened in the characters, but in the viewers.
The twist was not about which inception was planted in which character, but which was planted in the viewer. The idea that each audience member grasped onto during the film determines how that person interprets the ending. Therefore, the ending can be interpreted multiple ways.
Art is about inception, the artist trying to convey an idea, emotion, or message through a medium. Christopher Nolan succeeded as an artist, he planted ideas into the minds of his audience.
5. A Plea to Mr. Nolan
Please, please, please, please, please, Christopher Nolan, do not make an sequel! Don't pull a Matrix Reloaded. Let Inception stand on it's own, with a universe that is still mysterious and open to interpretation.
Let the top keep spinning!
