Ahhhahahahaha I've just watched Inception:

"Why is everybody looking at me?"
"because my subconscious feels that someone else is creating this world"

WTF?

I'm in Finland, and everybody is looking at me!!!! It's so freaking scary now!!

Quote:Original post by szecs
I'm in Finland, and everybody is looking at me!!!! It's so freaking scary now!!

In a way, you're creating this world, in your mind.
As a matter of fact, most people WOULD LOVE to kill you anyways.

Quote:Original post by d000hg
Question... do you guys think the actors and even the director/writer know the answers to the online discussions and debates? Is there a definitive answer, or is it like studying poetry, when you never know if what you read into the text is what the author meant?

It all turns around the archetype of the Hero (see Carl Gustav Jung). Cinematography pays a lot of attention to this, because it's a recuring symbol among all cultures.

See

">Leap of faith. See "The fool" Taroth card.

Quote:Original post by d000hg
However, am I the only one who thought the whole plot was actually quite simple? Even with the story-within-story aspect (not sure if this thread tries to be spoiler-free so I won't go deeper) it all seemed quite linear and the complexity seemed like it was deliberately made that way, not that the story was intrinsically complex.

Of course it's a very simple plot. I don't think there is someone with average IQ that can't comprehend the plot in the very first viewing. It's just many people try *too* hard to keep track of all the details, which 'dream level' each character is, where are the 'kicks' planted, how the tokens work, blah blah blah. Now, personally I didn't have problem keeping tracks of all those too, but it's not the issue. You don't need all that information. They're not important. It's like most people think that there's a 'solution' to the movie, and they're going to gain access to it if they gather all the info. Well, no. What really happened is ambiguous, 'open to interpretation', call it what you want. Nolan planted in the film some clues that imply that what we view as reality(part of it or whole) is a dream, and some clues that what is real is real and what is a dream is a dream. None of it is decisive. You can choose to accept that it indicates one way or the other, but all of them can be explained the opposite way.

If you ask me, I decided to judge what happened solely based on filmic(not plot) elements: Cobb and Mal are the only characters that are somewhat developed(Cillian Murphy's role was more or less a stereotype like the rest, it's just that he gave an excellent performance and made it something more). In particular, Mal is the single most 'real' character in the whole film, and pretty much everything sane that is heard comes from her. So I really think that Mal was right when she believed that they hadn't returned to reality after limbo. The suicide scene,as Cobb remembers it, contributes to this interpretation, as she jumps from the window of the opposite building; it could be explained away I guess that she explicitly booked a room in the other building and went there in order to prevent Cobb from stopping her, but it really is a very weak explanation). So Mal could very well be alive and in the real world, entering Cobb's dream in order to pull him out by choosing to stay with her, based on what he 'feels'(as she explicitly says) and not on logical information(that she is actually alive and he's dreaming), because that's how you change a person's mind in his dream I suppose, and she would have a better chance to make him stay with her by 'seducing' him, in a sense, with their love, than to just spill it out and have him not believe her, like he did before.

Anyway, I have 2 final observations:

1)It's a bid disappointing how pseudo-scientific and ignorant some things are. And of course I'm not talking about the whole 'dream hijacking' thing, that's a perfectly legal sci-fi element. I'm talking about scenes like when Cobb states as fact the popular myth that we only use 10% of our brain, or when everybody keeps using the term 'subconscious', when there's decades since Freud himself and most psychologists dropped it as not expressive enough, and use the term 'unconscious mind'. I mean, it's not *that* big of a deal, but it does give the impression of someone who has taken the task of exploring grandiose questions without taking some time to catch up with the basics(I mean, really, it's in Wikipedia Chris!)

2)Inside and behind the existing movie, there is actually a story that is infinitely more interesting, thematically,emotionally and intellectually, but we only get to glimpse bits and pieces of it. Cobb and Mal were a couple in love, that manipulated people's dreams. Trying to see how deep they can go, they got trapped into an 'un-reality'(limbo, whatever). Cobb used the titular 'Inception' in order to convince her that they are in limbo, and 'kill' themselves so that they wake up. But Mal believes they are still dreaming, and commits what it appears to Cobb as suicide, which it could be, but it also could be a real awakening this time. This 'hidden' story basically has the same themes as the main one, except it's so much richer. Why didn't Nolan made a movie about *that* story? Maybe that's the story he wanted to film all along, but it was deemed as not 'blockbuster-material' by the producers, so he made the 'shallow' story the central one, and just sneaked in as much as he could of the interesting one? Just food for thought.

Quote:Original post by mikeman
2)Inside and behind the existing movie, there is actually a story that is infinitely more interesting, thematically,emotionally and intellectually, but we only get to glimpse bits and pieces of it. Cobb and Mal were a couple in love, that manipulated people's dreams. Trying to see how deep they can go, they got trapped into an 'un-reality'(limbo, whatever). Cobb used the titular 'Inception' in order to convince her that they are in limbo, and 'kill' themselves so that they wake up. But Mal believes they are still dreaming, and commits what it appears to Cobb as suicide, which it could be, but it also could be a real awakening this time. This 'hidden' story basically has the same themes as the main one, except it's so much richer. Why didn't Nolan made a movie about *that* story? Maybe that's the story he wanted to film all along, but it was deemed as not 'blockbuster-material' by the producers, so he made the 'shallow' story the central one, and just sneaked in as much as he could of the interesting one? Just food for thought.

That story is the important story. I think it's actually interesting how the story is woven into the background, nagging at you the whole movie, but never really being up front and on task... It's almost like the whole primary plot is really just a dream... Oh wait!

But yeah, I think the movie with it's fast paced action sequences and relatively shallow front plot is really the best way to show that he is still dreaming. Things just roll along, distracting him (as a dreamer may be distracted by the surroundings) and he never really focuses on it. He spends as much time as he can avoiding it until right near the very end when you feel like he's finally ready to face his demons, but then doesn't because ultimately it doesn't matter to him.

At the end of the day it doesn't matter much to me either, I think the movie as a whole was a lot of fun and I was entertained.

I was entertained, I got "scared" etc, so it was a good movie. Too complex movies are too complex. I want to read a book, if I want complexity.

SPOILER For the end: Dicaprio didn't check reality, so he won't know either. But maybe he accepted, that there is no absolute reality so it doesn't really matter. We need to stop looking for reality, when we find a dream that's real enough.