Inception: A Modern Day Masterpiece

No doubt many of you will have either seen Inception or be wondering what indeed is all the hype about this film? It’s a film that some people will describe (like myself) as being a technical master piece whilst others will see it as another good film to see along the lines of Toy Story is also a good film to go and see. All in all, there does appear to be an overwhelmingly positive response to the film with nobody that I know of disliking the film. I felt the film warranted a review as I think it’s a true thought provoker which is a refreshing change to a film like say “The A-Team” or “The Expendables”. Also for those who’ve already seen the movie, I’ll include a few explanations on the ideas in the film for anyone who either didn’t understand some areas or wanted to read my interpretation.

Non-Spoiler Section will come first then my theories and explanation are halfway down the page.

NON SPOILER SECTION
This film is brilliant. I just cannot begin to say that enough. On a personal level, the way in which all the positive ingredients that go into making a truly amazing film all came together on this film. A combination of great story writing, solid pacing, great acting, continuous attention setting, great originality, great cinematography and great musical scoring made this a modern day master piece of a film. Christopher Nolan has really outdone himself on this film not only for creating a great film but also by having the audacity that other directors don’t have, in creating a very big budget movie that’s complex enough to leave a movie lover frothing at the mouth whilst bringing in the big bucks.

The movie was viscerally satisfying throughout demonstrating that yes there are a lot of special effects, but when put together cleverly and in cohesion with the story can make for a great film rather than throwing as many bullets and as many explosions then say a certain transforming robot series. There was a lot more of a “how will I demonstrate my story point more clearly” and throwing in a shudder of a glass of water to illustrate the point rather than “how will this many explosions make the scene look exciting”. There are many more things I’d like to add about the special effects but I think if I did then it might give away too much of the story.
One of my favourite segments appears in the climax of the film. I won’t spoil what happens in it except to say that when Hans Zimmer means business, then Hans Zimmer means business and that’s why it pays to have the big name composer in town. For a good 20-30 or so minutes in one period of the film I was gripped on the edge of my seat by mostly just the sound track alone. The music scored for this film absolutely fitted it to aplomb. Perhaps it was also the effect of watching the movie in the IMAX where the bass of the speakers would literally judder and vibrate my seat giving you a surreal experience of watching an intense action scene whilst seemingly also being there. The musical scoring was quite simply magical and to tell you the truth, I’ve been writing this blog post with the soundtrack solely in the background for the last few hours.
The complexity of the idea behind the film will astound you the more you think about it after you’ve seen the film. I’ve had so many discussions with so many people who’ve seen it giving their own opinion on the overall storyline. Little segments people notice here and there have been very enlightening. I haven’t been able to stop talking to my younger brother for a good few hours after the movie finished. Again I won’t spoil it for those of you who haven’t seen the film yet but with the amount of layers in the film, you can understand why it took a good portion of the beginning to explain “the rules” of what was in Inception. However unlike other films where the explanation would be long winded and tedious, it was presented in a way where not only you as the audience were discovering what was happening but also the characters on scene. Characters were learning new things as you the audience would be learning them which I believe helped to connect one and two together to string the story along.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt who plays one of the key antagonists in the movie I think was superb. His ability to add suave and class to the “team” gave it another angle that the rest of them didn’t. In fact I think all the casting was pretty much spot on. Ken Wanatabe’s depth and tone of his voice really came across in the film and although I’ve heard many complaints about his diction, I really thought he spoke his lines perfectly and would rather he do those lines as he did in his native Japanese accent rather than your stereotypical well pronounced westerner who wouldn’t have provided as great a depth or interest to the character profile. Leondardo Di Caprio I believe is also one of the most underrated actors in his generation. I think the amount of skill required to pull off a main role part in this film really lays a platform to opening the rest of the characters up. The rest of the cast really do just leave themselves out there to shine.

SPOILER SECTION
For anybody who hasn’t seen the film, please do not read on. There will be a lot of spoilers and is only intended to be read by someone who has already seen the film or by someone who has no intention of watching the film by which case, none of it will make sense to you anyways!

Mal’s Safe and the Spinning Top
Throughout the film we’re led to believe that Cobb had performed an Inception before and he reveals towards the end that it was in Mal that he did it. He discovers that in Mal’s childhood home, she kept a safe in there which was secret and buried deep inside her subconscious. By entering that safe and taking Mal’s totem and spinning it, and then closing the safe, he effectively plants the idea in her mind that the totem is spinning and therefore she is in a dream. He does this because Mal refuses to accept that she is stuck in limbo for 50 years and refuses to believe that it’s a dream therefore will not come out of it and will not kill herself. However as the safe is shut, the totem will always be spinning making Mal never believe that she has returned to reality even when she really does. Cobb hints this when he goes on to say that a single idea can define or destroy a person. In this case, it did both.

If Ariadne is the architect, how does Arthur change the hotel?
Early in the film, Arthurt describes “paradoxes”. Things that can logically exist but cannot then exist in reality like the staircase that he changes in the hotel. Although Ariadne designs the dreams and teaches them to the dreamer, ultimately Arthur is the dreamer and it’s his to do what he will.

Resuscitate Fisher Jr. then why not Saito too?
I think this one works depending on what level you’re on. Saito was shot in the first level of the dream therefore all subsequent levels he would’ve been “shot” and therefore to heal the wound, you’d need to transcend up the levels until the original level and resuscitate or kick him out of that level. However Fisher Jr. was shot on the third level therefore he was only shot in his dream in the 1st and 2nd levels meaning he was unaffected by it.

But wait, does Fisher Jr. actually die in the third level of the dream?
This is where I think technicalities come into play. I think Fisher doesn’t die in the third level of the dream but is instead hooked up with Cobbs and Ariadne and goes into Cobb’s dream which becomes very unstable, evidently shown by the collapsing city. He needs to go back so that he can find Mal and then also to give more time to Fisher to live as time slows down. However this is NOT limbo as a lot of people have thought it might be because if that was the case then Ariadne jumping off the building would have sent her into limbo world rather than going the opposite direction and back into the third level of the dream.

Fisher Jr. not recognising Saito?

Something I hadn’t noticed but was pointed out to me was how comes Fisher the heir of a huge energy company not recognise Saito, the head guy of their rival company. Even after so many levels down, you’d think that in a dream your personality would still react at least unfavourably to working with the head of a rival company. Then again many strange things do happen in dreams.

Cobb’s Totem?
This one had me baffled a little bit. Throughout the film, he clearly states that the totem that he spins doesn’t belong to him but that it belongs to Mal but that nobody can know the particulars of a totem else it would defeat the object of having one. Except he always knew and always spun it therefore rendering it useless anyways. I think all along his totems were his children’s faces. If he could face up to his children’s faces, then he’d know that he was in reality and not still stuck in a dream. Alternatively the spinning top really could’ve been Cobb’s totem. He does mention that only he and Mal knew the weight and everything of the totem so the fact that nobody else knew about it still counts and therefore really could still be his totem in the end. EDIT: OR that in fact his totem was his ring. Perhaps the fact that in every scene of the dream world, his ring can be clearly scene and in every scene of the real world, his ring is gone. Perhaps only he knew about the ring and therefore this was his totem.

What is limbo?
My interpretation of what limbo is that it’s a shared state of consciousness that is shared by everyone it is a shared state of conciousness that is shared by everyone currently sharing the dream i.e. “if Cobb wasn’t sharing the dream, Saito’s limbo would be blank” (thanks to BryanJWatson for the correction there). As Cobbs explains, it is a combination of all the things that are left behind from people who once were lost in limbo. However time goes much much slower here leading to the fact that only minutes in the real world could be decades in the world of limbo. When Saito dies, he enters this limbo world and when Cobbs joins him, made decades have past. It also explains how the world he built was still left standing.

Saito and Cobb’s Age Difference at the end
Here I believe the key lies in when each of the characters died. Saito died in the third level of the dream in the fortified bunker in the snow. As Cobb explains earlier, every level of the dream becomes slower and slower in time, so as soon as Saito dies and goes to limbo, time accelerates for him but not for anyone else. Therefore what may have only been minutes apart for their deaths in the dream worlds would have been decades in the limbo world thus explaining why Saito was so old and Cobb hadn’t aged at the end of the film.

Inception hints at Greek mythology?
This one I’ve picked up from reading online sources and something I really should’ve spotted but just never did was the hints Nolan left in the wake of Greek mythology. The little girl who plays the architect is called Ariadne who in Greek mythology gave Theseus (Cobbs) a sword and a thread to lead him out of the labyrinth of the Minortaur (Mal). In the end Theseus abandons Ariadne like Cobbs does by staying in his subconscious.

It was all just a dream?
This was an interesting point a friend suggested in an IM conversation was that the entire film was in fact a dream from start to finish. That being that the film was in fact, an Inception within and Inception rather than a dream within a dream. And that the purpose of the film was not so that they could plant a seed into Fisher Jr.’s mind but actually the entire film was devised in order so that Cobbs would face his guilt and his subconscious in Mal and therefore the idea of an Inception would lead him towards that and everything that he did on the way was in order to plant his very own seed in his mind to free him from his guilt. An interesting theory. Of course Mal could be just his subconscious guilt all along and never really existed but only as a fragment of his subconscious planted there by his father in order for him to “wake up”.

The Ending
I love the ending to this film. In the final shots of the film, everyone was perked up in the cinema and when it cut to black, giant “oh!” and groans and delighted giggles rang out through the cinema. I think there are two possible ways this ended, firstly that either he’s still stuck in limbo in his dream and that he sees his kids. Therefore he’s gotten rid of his guilty subconscious in Mal and decided that he doesn’t care whether or not he’s in limbo or not as he gets to see his kids. The alternative is that he really did wake up and that he really did see his kids in the end. Obviously. But that would be too easy now wouldn’t it. Ultimately I think it comes down to the point of that as Cobb creates his dreams from his memory, how far gone is he. Has he really lost touch with reality and becomes obsessed and forgets the truth. Also another point is also that whose to say that when Cobbs finds Saito in the end that they’re not in sedation still? Remember we don’t know how much time has passed in the real world, therefore it’s perfectly logical that they were both still under sedation meaning that if they were both killed then, they might have been sent further into limbo creating a place where it was impossible to tell the difference between reality and the dream state.

That my friends is what I leave up to you to decide. The film has about a million more different paths that aren’t even thought possible unless you read into them and so this post could really run much much longer however I think that’s all I have to say but one thing. Go and watch this film if you haven’t, it’s a truly breathtaking cinematic experience.

UPDATE: For the record, have a look at what the New York Movies editor wrote about Inception. Reading it put me in beggar’s disbelief that this “expert” (David Edelstein")  actually knew anything about movies:

Inception is full of brontosaurean effects, like the city that folds over on top of itself, but the tone is so solemn I felt out of line even cracking a smile. It lacks the nimbleness of Spielberg’s Minority Report or the Jungian-carnival bravado of Joseph Ruben’s Dreamscapeor the eerily clean lines and stylized black-suited baddies of The Matrix—or, for that matter, the off-kilter intensity of Nolan’s own Insomnia. The attackers in Inception are anonymous, the tone flat and impersonal. Nolan is too literal-minded, too caught up in ticktock logistics, to make a great, untethered dream movie.

I could not agree with this guys opinion any less. The “brontosaurean” (if that’s even a word) effects in the film are justified in the film making technique that Nolan uses to create a more realistic special effect stunt, i.e. less CGI and more realism. The tone of the film is intentionally solemn as it’s the story revolved around a man trying to get around his guilt in his mind aswel as to highlight how dangerous a predicament the antagonists find themselves in when they enter so many levels of the dream world. The attackers are intentionally anonymous and flat and impersonal as they are representations of your subconscious defence mechanism. They are not real people and are only figments of your subconscious filling in the dream state. If this buffoon of an editor actually bothered to watch the film rather than fill his very much retarded review with preconceived misconceptions and idealisms then he might actually have understood the film for what it was trying to convey. It seems the rest of the 146 commenters agree with me and  they can’t all be wrong too. The article that can be found here. To wrap up, my favourite comment was this particular one by Vini888:

What's up with these NY critics? First they bash The Dark Knight, which turned out to be a masterpiece, now this?
Did Nolan touch your kids or something?

UPDATE: I found this infomation graphic which might help you explain the levels within Inception. Move everything down a notch though as I wouldn’t count reality as being a level and also I’m not sure that their level 5 IS limbo and that level 5 should be Cobb’s dream making 6 the world in limbo.

LiveJournal Tags: Inception,Christopher Nolan,Leonardo Di Caprio