The second part of a two-part series, this will attempt to explain why the 2010 Christopher Nolan film Inception is amazing, with specific plot, scene, and character details.
The first and most obvious place to start would be the final, memorable scene - Cobb, finally reunited with his children, spins the top totem on the table before turning away. After a moment the camera zooms in on the top - still spinning. We know that in the dream world, the top never falls, and this top certainly has been spinning longer than it should. The audience is tense, waiting, and the scene cuts to black. Does the top fall? Is Cobb still in a dream world? Was Mal right? Christopher Nolan refuses to tell us!
I'm sure everyone either loved this ambiguous ending, or hated it. Orson Scott Card sure did, stating in his review that, after such an amazingly well done movie, the ending was an artistic cheap-shot. After I watched the movie, I found I quite enjoyed the ambiguous end - I tend to like those - and thought it seemed to break the fourth wall for the audience. 'Is this real life?' Nolan seemed to be asking us, reflecting back on Dream Theory and popular 70's songs. Who are we, caught up in the 'dream' of life, to say that there isn't something beyond it?
As a religious person, I kinda liked this idea, which rang a lot like a life after life afterworld idea that I believe in. I was completely satisfied, in my first level of thinking, with the idea that the top totem would never fall, indicating that there was more, after Cobb's world, that wasn't necessary to reach until he had lived out his life in the lower dream.
The more I got to thinking about it, however, the more I was fascinated with this ending. I particularly noted that, after Cobb and Saito leave Limbo, everything is shown from Cobb's point of view. The audience doesn't, in fact, even seen Cobb and Saito's exodus. We assume they get out safely, and watch only through Cobb's eyes as he lands in America, walks onto sovereign territory, and rejoins his children. Didn't this, I thought, do further to prove that this is Cobb's dream, maybe in fact still Limbo, everyone else a 2D projection of his mind? To add to that, hasn't the top always been unreliable as a totem? If its property is to show, visually, whether one is in a dream or not, couldn't the dreamer dream of the top falling, thus reducing the totem's effect?
I realized how amazing Christopher Nolan's directing was. He set up this either-or situation at the end of his movie, leaving it completely open to interpretation, and leaving enough clues throughout the movie for an audience to be able to decide which possibility they prefered, then proving it to themselves. I, who like the idea that this wasn't real life, saw easily the proof that it couldn't be, while others who wanted Cobb to have been, in reality, reunited with his children, saw that of course the top would fall, otherwise someone eventually would see it still spinning, in effect Cobb via one of his projections, and would know, and hadn't it started wobbling before the screen cut out anyways? Besides, earlier in the movie we saw the top spinning for quite a while before falling - maybe the top is just designed very well?
On the ride home, my parents an I discussed out opinions. I had not clearly formed mine yet, so I wasn't able to add much to the conversation, and my dad was convinced that the message of the movie wasn't 'is this real life' but 'who cares?' as Cobb had been seen clearly ignoring the totem just after he set it to spin, as if it didn't matter anymore. It was mom, however, who said something that convinced me that this movie was, truly, amazing. "You know," she told us, "It's just a movie. It isn't real life."
It isn't real life, not in the way that Limbo wasn't real life but in the way that Twilight or Harry Potter or any other popular fiction obsession isn't real life. There's one more level to the story of Inception, and that's Reality, the reality of a director hiring actors to play parts that he had created in his mind, and read lines and spend weeks filming just one scene.
I bought the shooting script for the movie Inception just a few weeks ago, and in it, Christopher Nolan's brother Johnathon interviews him about how the movie came about, after years of imagining it. He mentions, towards the end of the interview, that it generally takes about an hour of work to create one minute of the final product in film, much like how an hour in a dream is only equal to five minutes of real time. Christopher thought it was interesting that Johnathan had managed to link the world of Inception to real life, but insisted that he hadn't planned it at all.
I, however, think he's just trying to throw us off his trail.
The one thing I didn't like about the movie, after seeing it, was the fact that Cobb was the only character that seemed 3D to us as the audience. However, taking into account that the film is breaking the fourth wall here, that according to its own rule it doesn't portray reality, it's easy to imagine that Cobb, in the film, is the 'dreamer', or more accurately taking the place of Nolan, who dreamed up the story. Everyone else, though necessary for the story, are only his projections, placed there to move plot and help the 'dreamer' achieve his goals.
The time ratio mentioned before also holds, though it is reverse in reality, where more reality time equals less fiction time, while less fiction time equals more dream time, and increasing from there.
I'm sure there's much more I could go on about, but when I realized all these things, the impact of the movie seemed much greater. Had a lesser director decided to make an obvious grab at breaking the fourth wall at the end (having a character look directly at the camera, or speaking to the audience, or any other ploy that only works in comedy), the effect would have been obvious, great for a while, then the movie quickly forgotten.
Inception, however, refuses to make itself that easy for us. The audiences' first reaction to it is on a low level - though stunned and amazed, they are mostly thinking about the story between the mark, Fischer, and his Father, whom he learns still loves him. Slowly, however, the audience realizes that this is not what is really going on - the team is inventing this scenario, being paid by Saito. Does Fischer's father in fact want him to split up the business empire? Probably not, but we'll never know, now that Cobb's team has planted the false idea deep into his subconscious.
The audience is then impressed by the story of the father willing to do so much just to return to his children in America. He seems unrightfully persecuted and noble, plagued by visions of his dead wife. The audiences' understanding soon raises another level, however, when we learn that he did, in fact, plant the idea in his wife's mind that led to her suicide. The story of Inception becomes one of his guilt, trying to return to his family and somehow forgive himself by apologizing the his subconscious projection of Mal.
The final scene gives the audience a new impression, then, when it's up to us to choose if he succeeds or failed - should he have joined Mal in their suicide leap? Was she truly crazy, infected by his idea in her subconscious, or did she have the right idea after all?
No matter which level of the story someone ended up focusing on, they were impressed by it, and the multi-layered story telling went hand in hand with the action in the movie, taking place simultaneously on multiple layers of the dreamers' minds. Whether Christopher Nolan meant to bring Reality in as the last and final layer of his story telling or not, only he knows, but I personally believe that this final level enhances the story to a point very few directors or producers could even begin to reach. I will definitely be looking forward to future Christopher Nolan films.
I always stay through the credits of movies - sometimes to see if there's a scene at the end, but more often because it feels awkward to walk out during the music and listing of people who put together this piece of art. Inception, I noticed, played four tracks during the credits, the first a more brassy piece meant, I believe, to keep us impressed at the final scenes. The next two pieces are more passive, building up as the audience either sits and waits or decides to leave early. The final track during the credits was Edith Piaf's 'Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien,' used throughout the movie as the 'kick' to wake the dreamers up back to reality. Over half of the movie's audience would have left before it started playing (those remaining were either hoping to see the top fall at the end or just appreciated movie credits). Over half of the audience didn't get the 'kick' to wake up - it's not real life. The dream is over, and it's time to go back to reality.
AWESOME.
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