yeah i'm not really fussing over the ending either. while the "he's in limbo and can control his subconscious" theory is the most probable, i think what Nolan was intending one to walk away with is that so long as you are surrounded by your loved ones everything's irrelevant. he spun the top and pretty much disregarded it once he saw his kids. although that might be a bit too cliché or corny (or simple) for some of you, hell, it works just fine for me. it's kinda obvious that it was an open to interpretation ending, anyways
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Inception (spoilers)
- Thread starter Stoo
- Start date
I liked the movie. Usually I have trouble sitting through them, but this one held my attention. About the ending, I like to think that it is reality, but the one thing that bothers me is the fact that the kids look exactly the same as his memories. How long was he out of the country? The kids were young, so he couldn't have been gone for very long without them getting a fair bit taller. Either way still a very good movie.
oh my god i have been itching to click this thread for so long
i have just gotten back from the cinema and i am buzzing with it, excuse me whilst i read through this thread!
edit: okay, the only thing i wanted to add (i don't have the expertise to comment on all the gravity discussion)##
i believe the top falls, and i believe the final scene is reality
the smash cut is intended as a tease and not wholly an "up to your imagination" trick in my opinion, because if you have ever spun a top you will know how they behave and how inertia affects the way a top spins, especially right before they fall
the film is cut just as the top begins to wig out which signifies it losing balance and always precedes a fall
as for the theory about him waking up in media res on the plane, i think it is pretty flimsy. it is obviously another reason to make you (i am not for a second saying the ending is accidentally ambiguous) question whether or not he is awake or dreaming, but you have to remember that it is obvious the whole reason the final scene appears the way it does is to make you question "is he? isn't he? is he?" i don't think anyone needs convincing of this but the close-up on the spinning top etc etc ANYWAY my point is that showing him cut back through all the layers from limbo would make it obvious he was not dreaming, which gives us two possibilites
a) he comes to the dream in media res in the final scene
b) we are shown him in media res having gone through all the kicks and appropriate layers etc
(and i believe the answer is b)
the idea, then, is that the beginning of the final scene is cut in such a way as to not show you that the case is a) for sure, but to not give you enough evidence to be certain
ALSO ALSO DISCLAIMER WHILST WE SAW EVERYONE ELSE KICK THROUGH ALL THE OTHER LAYERS WE ARE NEVER TOLD THAT THIS IS NECESSARY ONCE YOU ARE IN LIMBO SO ANOTHER POSSIBILITY IS THAT LIMBO -> WAKING IS A DIRECT ROUTE OKAY I'M DONE
editeditedit: in fact i originally thought my last point was quite shallow and tacked on, but the more i think about it the more i favour it over b.
there was no way to give him the kick if no-one else's dreams were formed anymore (and they had already had their subsequent kicks) and so he was no longer under multiple layers. he had gone down through all of these layers but by the time he had to come back up there was only the one he was in and nothing else above him
also i am reading lots of thoughtless posts saying basically "it was a dream, we didn't see how he got out"
you see saito take the gun
alright, you do not see saito shoot himself and may raise the issue that we do not know if he shot himself and woke both of them up, true
but do you see see saito shoot cobb and consign him to limbo?
we see neither, we see only his hand on the gun to imply he is going to make a shot, and i see little reason why he would shoot cobb when he seems very receptive to the revelation that he is dreaming, as though the truth has flooded back to him
it is also worth pointing out that this collapses the whole "cobb woke up in media res, he must be dreaming" argument. if he woke up in media res and it was not simply a cut of the film between saito taking the gun and cobb waking, then why do we not see saito shoot cobb?
really, i think it only requires a little thought and some deduction to conclude that nolan is simply teasing us - cobb achieved his goal
i have just gotten back from the cinema and i am buzzing with it, excuse me whilst i read through this thread!
edit: okay, the only thing i wanted to add (i don't have the expertise to comment on all the gravity discussion)##
i believe the top falls, and i believe the final scene is reality
the smash cut is intended as a tease and not wholly an "up to your imagination" trick in my opinion, because if you have ever spun a top you will know how they behave and how inertia affects the way a top spins, especially right before they fall
the film is cut just as the top begins to wig out which signifies it losing balance and always precedes a fall
as for the theory about him waking up in media res on the plane, i think it is pretty flimsy. it is obviously another reason to make you (i am not for a second saying the ending is accidentally ambiguous) question whether or not he is awake or dreaming, but you have to remember that it is obvious the whole reason the final scene appears the way it does is to make you question "is he? isn't he? is he?" i don't think anyone needs convincing of this but the close-up on the spinning top etc etc ANYWAY my point is that showing him cut back through all the layers from limbo would make it obvious he was not dreaming, which gives us two possibilites
a) he comes to the dream in media res in the final scene
b) we are shown him in media res having gone through all the kicks and appropriate layers etc
(and i believe the answer is b)
the idea, then, is that the beginning of the final scene is cut in such a way as to not show you that the case is a) for sure, but to not give you enough evidence to be certain
ALSO ALSO DISCLAIMER WHILST WE SAW EVERYONE ELSE KICK THROUGH ALL THE OTHER LAYERS WE ARE NEVER TOLD THAT THIS IS NECESSARY ONCE YOU ARE IN LIMBO SO ANOTHER POSSIBILITY IS THAT LIMBO -> WAKING IS A DIRECT ROUTE OKAY I'M DONE
editeditedit: in fact i originally thought my last point was quite shallow and tacked on, but the more i think about it the more i favour it over b.
there was no way to give him the kick if no-one else's dreams were formed anymore (and they had already had their subsequent kicks) and so he was no longer under multiple layers. he had gone down through all of these layers but by the time he had to come back up there was only the one he was in and nothing else above him
also i am reading lots of thoughtless posts saying basically "it was a dream, we didn't see how he got out"
you see saito take the gun
alright, you do not see saito shoot himself and may raise the issue that we do not know if he shot himself and woke both of them up, true
but do you see see saito shoot cobb and consign him to limbo?
we see neither, we see only his hand on the gun to imply he is going to make a shot, and i see little reason why he would shoot cobb when he seems very receptive to the revelation that he is dreaming, as though the truth has flooded back to him
it is also worth pointing out that this collapses the whole "cobb woke up in media res, he must be dreaming" argument. if he woke up in media res and it was not simply a cut of the film between saito taking the gun and cobb waking, then why do we not see saito shoot cobb?
really, i think it only requires a little thought and some deduction to conclude that nolan is simply teasing us - cobb achieved his goal
well the top is the worst possible totem by the way. If someone wanted to plant ariadne into a dream they would need to get there hands on her bishop to know the weight. To plant leo in a dream all they need to do is sedate him and have him carry a top that doesnt fall...
although i believe this useless totem was put in as a red herring just to mess with people like me
although i believe this useless totem was put in as a red herring just to mess with people like me
No top doesn't fall. Also, I think the idea of the chess piece is that there's something carved into the bottom, and noone else knows what it is. That way, if another person creates a dream with the chess piece in it, it won't have the symbol and Ariadne would know.
its to leave us hanging. Ha Directors these days. It stumbled for a bit though... and let's just imagine that it's real!
What I really like was the concept of Inception. Though even remembering our dreams is hard... sometimes. How can we percieve such a complex mind! Only through amazing work.
Did someone say Inception??
Yeah, this movie was like the first one to actually make me concentrate through the whole movie, most others I'd just switch off and annoy my friends about half-way through lol.
Anyway, I just realised you can explain pretty much EVERY world phenomenon with Inception. Hehe
Yeah, this movie was like the first one to actually make me concentrate through the whole movie, most others I'd just switch off and annoy my friends about half-way through lol.
Anyway, I just realised you can explain pretty much EVERY world phenomenon with Inception. Hehe
Bumping this thread because this movie confused the hell out of me. I was able to keep up fine with the layers and such, but what I do not understand was the ending, of whether or not it was a dream. I thought it was reality at first, then I took a piss and changed my mind. First of all, I don't get the point of the totem. The dice and bishop make perfect sense, only they know the loaded side/symbol on the bottom. However, why does the top spin indefinitely in a dream? If the dream is supposed to resemble reality, why do all concepts of it apply except this? It's not like the top never falls in reality and if it did, then he'd know it was a dream. I must be missing something here.
Every top spins and stops in a different manner depending on its weight, dimensions, surface characteristics etc, I suppose if the architect didn't know the top to a very detailed degree, then it'll be very hard to fake the top stopping in a convincing manner.
That still doesn't explain why it never stops. If the dream is to be kept realistic, it has to stop at some point, or that right there would allude that it's a dream.
If the architect can't fake the top stopping convincingly then they just don't fake it at all? I dunno. I expect Christopher Nolan must have whole rooms filled with mail like this.
Then doesn't that make the top kind of irrelevent?
Yeah the top probably doesn't stand up to scrutiny, I'm thinking that Nolan chose it as Cobb's totem just so he could have the scene at the end.
Alright, something else that confused me. I'm sure it was explained in the movie why when they were killed in that specific dream, they would go to Limbo instead of waking up, I just can't remember. Now, Cobb and Mal escaped Limbo by being ran over by a train, correct? So does that mean that being killed in that dream sends you to Limbo, and being killed in Limbo sends you back to reality? Another example is at the end of the movie were Cobb questionably escaped Limbo by being shot by Saito.
Yes you are correct. That's one of the points that got me too. They were so scared of Saito being sent to Limbo when in actuality escaping Limbo is quite easy - just shoot yourself.
So let me make sure I have this straight. The point were it becomes questionable whether or not the final scene is a dream lies in whether or not Saito actually shot Cobb, not so much in the top spinning at the end? The way I see it; he was shot=no dream, he wasn't shot=Limbo.
I think the reason they were scared of Saito going to Limbo was that if he did, he wouldn't realise that's where he was and hence he would stay there forever, effectively remaining in a coma eternally.
It's similar to how when a dreamer starts a new level, they don't actually realise they can't remember how they got there. I think limbo operates not as a layer in someone else's dreaming, but an underlying part of your own subconscious, and the technology only facilitates a sort of shared-mind effect to allow people to visit someone else's limbo.
It's similar to how when a dreamer starts a new level, they don't actually realise they can't remember how they got there. I think limbo operates not as a layer in someone else's dreaming, but an underlying part of your own subconscious, and the technology only facilitates a sort of shared-mind effect to allow people to visit someone else's limbo.