(no subject)
I went and saw Inception today. I loved it. It was a great movie.
I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I think ultimately that the whole damn thing was a dream. Cobb is never awake.
Cobb tells Ariadne that there are no beginnings to dreams, and there is no beginning to the film. We enter already inside the dream, and even Cobb's presentation of where it begins (with the man giving him a plane ticket to escape the charges of murder) has no starting point or explanation. We don't know who the man is, or why he is presenting Cobb with the ticket, or why it is important that in that moment he leaves. We don't know Cobb's history or even anything more than that "extraction" is some sort of job he is good at. In fact, the only hints we see that this job is supposedly a real job is the concept of people learning to protect themselves from this. Another thing that indicates that this is a dream, is that limbo is made of the subconscious of those who had been there before. Cobb is supposedly the only one who had been there, and so it is only his subconscious that must be contended with. However, if Cobb's job is known enough to warrant people looking to protect themselves, and to have others who specialize in it (e.g.: the man who makes specific drugs for sedating people), then Cobb could not logically be the only to have ever fallen into this place and it would be a mish-mash of others.
I also think that Ariadne is another version of Mal created by Cobb. Mal is trying to destroy Cobb and the confidence he has in his world by interfering in the jobs he is supposed to be doing. Ariadne (whose name, by the way, is that of a Greek goddess who is known as the mistress of the labyrinth- another hint) helps him construct the dream worlds and has an intimate understanding of Cobb and his situation with Mal that the others, who have supposedly been working with him for a long time, don't.
I think that we also see an indication that Cobb is never awake in the fact that Mal and Ariadne are the only two women who are ever present in the movie in a meaningful way. Because of his grief and guilt over his wife, he only has room for her to exist. She becomes central to the missions because she is the center of his inner turmoil.
Clicking through links, someone suppositioned that the job of extractor is an invention in Cobb's dream, which is most likely considering the above comments about the job itself. This brings up many interesting things to consider in regards to Mal. Firstly, if the job is a dream construct, then Mal and Cobb never lived in limbo. They did not grow old together, nor did Cobb plant the idea that her world was not real. Mal obviously committed suicide, as that is the driving force behind the movie, but why? What drove her to it and what happened before her death to leave Cobb feeling so guilty? I think it's reasonable to assume that she probably did believe that the real world was not real, which provides the jumping off point for Cobb's dream. I also think it's likely that he feels guilty because he thinks he should have been able to help her. He feels he killed her because he could not convince her that her world was indeed real. He invents the job to allow himself the belief that he planted the idea in her head, so that her death does become his fault in the dream.
Mal's attempts to convince him that he is wrong, and that the world he believes is real if actually fake is not, in fact, Mal's beliefs showing, but that they are Cobb's desires to not be without her. He is not struggling with Mal's desire to have them be together forever, but with his own. We see him in the "real world" contemplating suicide, and this contemplation is given form in Mal throughout the rest of his dreams.
Also, $10 a ticket is bullshit.
I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I think ultimately that the whole damn thing was a dream. Cobb is never awake.
Cobb tells Ariadne that there are no beginnings to dreams, and there is no beginning to the film. We enter already inside the dream, and even Cobb's presentation of where it begins (with the man giving him a plane ticket to escape the charges of murder) has no starting point or explanation. We don't know who the man is, or why he is presenting Cobb with the ticket, or why it is important that in that moment he leaves. We don't know Cobb's history or even anything more than that "extraction" is some sort of job he is good at. In fact, the only hints we see that this job is supposedly a real job is the concept of people learning to protect themselves from this. Another thing that indicates that this is a dream, is that limbo is made of the subconscious of those who had been there before. Cobb is supposedly the only one who had been there, and so it is only his subconscious that must be contended with. However, if Cobb's job is known enough to warrant people looking to protect themselves, and to have others who specialize in it (e.g.: the man who makes specific drugs for sedating people), then Cobb could not logically be the only to have ever fallen into this place and it would be a mish-mash of others.
I also think that Ariadne is another version of Mal created by Cobb. Mal is trying to destroy Cobb and the confidence he has in his world by interfering in the jobs he is supposed to be doing. Ariadne (whose name, by the way, is that of a Greek goddess who is known as the mistress of the labyrinth- another hint) helps him construct the dream worlds and has an intimate understanding of Cobb and his situation with Mal that the others, who have supposedly been working with him for a long time, don't.
I think that we also see an indication that Cobb is never awake in the fact that Mal and Ariadne are the only two women who are ever present in the movie in a meaningful way. Because of his grief and guilt over his wife, he only has room for her to exist. She becomes central to the missions because she is the center of his inner turmoil.
Clicking through links, someone suppositioned that the job of extractor is an invention in Cobb's dream, which is most likely considering the above comments about the job itself. This brings up many interesting things to consider in regards to Mal. Firstly, if the job is a dream construct, then Mal and Cobb never lived in limbo. They did not grow old together, nor did Cobb plant the idea that her world was not real. Mal obviously committed suicide, as that is the driving force behind the movie, but why? What drove her to it and what happened before her death to leave Cobb feeling so guilty? I think it's reasonable to assume that she probably did believe that the real world was not real, which provides the jumping off point for Cobb's dream. I also think it's likely that he feels guilty because he thinks he should have been able to help her. He feels he killed her because he could not convince her that her world was indeed real. He invents the job to allow himself the belief that he planted the idea in her head, so that her death does become his fault in the dream.
Mal's attempts to convince him that he is wrong, and that the world he believes is real if actually fake is not, in fact, Mal's beliefs showing, but that they are Cobb's desires to not be without her. He is not struggling with Mal's desire to have them be together forever, but with his own. We see him in the "real world" contemplating suicide, and this contemplation is given form in Mal throughout the rest of his dreams.
Also, $10 a ticket is bullshit.