My thoughts on Christopher Nolan's "INCEPTION"
1) Hands down best movie I've seen in decades. And I can say "decades" now.
2) SPOILERS!!!!
I honestly think the entire thing was an inception for Cobb. Cobb is lost within multiple dream states. As far as I can tell, there are at least 5 dream levels, and limbo is where the brain escapes to when it can no longer decipher where/what dream level its in.
Reasons why I believe that Cobb is never in reality
1) The movie starts with 'no beginning'.
2) Pieces of Cobb's own dream infiltrate Ariadne's architecture
3) Various occasions where the dredle test is thwarted and never left to spin
4) Dredle wasn't Cobb's own totem - may mean that he is projecting the outcome
5) Cobb's description of inception of his own wife and the method of escaping limbo would only kick them one level.
I created a diagram of the recursion that I think is happening.
Mal is not dead. Mal is in both reality and shared dream state (level 2) with Cobb. She, along with Miles (Cobb's father) is trying to implant the idea in Cobb's subconscious that he should wake up and convince him that his current world is actually a dream through the act of Inception.
When Mal and Cobb experiment and get to limbo together and spend ~50 years there, they shape what Cobb will now see as his limbo - a slew of tall buildings and childhood households. When they decide that they need to leave for the sake of their kids, they lay in front of an oncoming train.
According to the axioms described in the script's dialog, Dying in a nested dream state (dream within a dream) will send you to Limbo; Dying in Limbo will kick you back up a dream level.
Laying in front of an oncoming train would only kick Mal and Cobb up one dream level, in which case, when Mal decides to take the 'leap of faith" to return to reality, it appears to be suicide to Cobb because he already believes he's in reality.
To convince Cobb he's dreaming, Mal and Miles set up a team to carry out an inception on Cobb, to plant the idea in his head to free himself by his own will. To do this, they use the Fischer story line as a cover for the real purpose of the dream level jumping.
The diagram outlines how Cobb returns to LEVEL 2 after the inception with the knowledge that he is dreaming. Customs at the airport symbolizes that the walls he put up which kept him in a dream state (the death of Mal) have now been shattered - he can return to his family.
I think the final scene is of Cobb's ability to dream naturally again, and now home in reality, dreams of the day that he returned home to his kids.
2) SPOILERS!!!!
I honestly think the entire thing was an inception for Cobb. Cobb is lost within multiple dream states. As far as I can tell, there are at least 5 dream levels, and limbo is where the brain escapes to when it can no longer decipher where/what dream level its in.
Reasons why I believe that Cobb is never in reality
1) The movie starts with 'no beginning'.
2) Pieces of Cobb's own dream infiltrate Ariadne's architecture
3) Various occasions where the dredle test is thwarted and never left to spin
4) Dredle wasn't Cobb's own totem - may mean that he is projecting the outcome
5) Cobb's description of inception of his own wife and the method of escaping limbo would only kick them one level.
I created a diagram of the recursion that I think is happening.
Mal is not dead. Mal is in both reality and shared dream state (level 2) with Cobb. She, along with Miles (Cobb's father) is trying to implant the idea in Cobb's subconscious that he should wake up and convince him that his current world is actually a dream through the act of Inception.
When Mal and Cobb experiment and get to limbo together and spend ~50 years there, they shape what Cobb will now see as his limbo - a slew of tall buildings and childhood households. When they decide that they need to leave for the sake of their kids, they lay in front of an oncoming train.
According to the axioms described in the script's dialog, Dying in a nested dream state (dream within a dream) will send you to Limbo; Dying in Limbo will kick you back up a dream level.
Laying in front of an oncoming train would only kick Mal and Cobb up one dream level, in which case, when Mal decides to take the 'leap of faith" to return to reality, it appears to be suicide to Cobb because he already believes he's in reality.
To convince Cobb he's dreaming, Mal and Miles set up a team to carry out an inception on Cobb, to plant the idea in his head to free himself by his own will. To do this, they use the Fischer story line as a cover for the real purpose of the dream level jumping.
The diagram outlines how Cobb returns to LEVEL 2 after the inception with the knowledge that he is dreaming. Customs at the airport symbolizes that the walls he put up which kept him in a dream state (the death of Mal) have now been shattered - he can return to his family.
I think the final scene is of Cobb's ability to dream naturally again, and now home in reality, dreams of the day that he returned home to his kids.