Cobb, Wake Up?
Unlike most summer blockbusters Inception has you leaving the theater thinking about more than the special effects. Some of the discussion about the movie has been whether the entire movie is just part of a dream. I’m going to present my opinion on this and attempt to back that opinion up with an analysis of some key points in the movie. To do this I will be discussing major reveals in the movie so if you have not seen Inception, I recommend you stop reading now.
Throughout this post I will refer to what Cobb considers reality as the movie’s tops level. There is debate as to whether that level is reality or not. Let me acknowledge that when it was revealed that Mal (Cobb’s wife) was convinced that the top-level was a dream and that by dying she would wake up in the real world I was intrigued by that possibility. Here, I thought, would be the question for the movie. Was the top-level just Cobb dreaming or was it reality?
Before the movie ended I was convinced it was (I’ll discuss why later). As I have reflected on the movie I’ve become even more convinced this is the case. One reason is that if this had been one of the questions Nolan wanted us to ponder a different ending was in order that would have reminded us of that question. One simple such ending would have Cobb leaving customs and then seeing someone who looked like Mal but then is gone in the crowd. He would then dismiss it as just the last reach of his subconscious for his dead wife. This would have left the audience with three choices. One would be that Cobb was in the real world and was correct about his subconscious. Two would be that he had seen the Mal of his subconscious because he was still in limbo with Saito. Three would be that he had seen the real Mal who has re-entered his dream world to try to wake him up however deep into the dream world he might be.
But we don’t see that. Mal never appears in the movie’s top-level except in memories. But if Mal was correct and they were both dreaming, why hasn’t she re-entered Cobb’s dream to attempt to wake him up. What would shake his confidence that he was in reality more than seeing his dead wife? This argument will not stand on its own but adds weight to what follows.
Let’s look back on how the movie actually ended. The question that Nolan does want us pondering at the end is whether Cobb ever returned to the top-level, not whether or not the top-level is a dream. That question isn’t part of the end because Nolan had already answered it. One way Nolan answered it is the same way he asks the last question in the movie, with the spinning top.
Early in the movie we see Cobb test whether he is back in reality with the top. It is a short scene in which the top falls over and Cobb is relieved. This is not only evidence to Cobb that the top-level is reality but also evidence to the audience that Cobb is in the real world. It is only because we can trust the top that the ending has its punch. The question of whether the top starting to stumble and fall or recovering to spin on indefinitely is important if and only if the top can be trusted?
Two points help support this. The first is that nothing in the top-level is off. Besides the fact that no trains are crashing down the middle of streets and no one is running on walls or pulling rocket launchers out of thin air is key element that the tokens work. Which leads to the second point. What is the purpose of Ariadne painstakingly making the chess piece. It is to reinforce the importance of the tokens as an indicator of reality. Nolan wants us to trust the tokens as a measure of reality and never gives us a reason to doubt them. In fact, they are so trustworthy that Mal hid her token away when she didn’t want to face reality.
But these are all things I’ve realized reflecting back on the movie. As I noted earlier, I was convinced before the end that the top level is reality. The reason for that is the big reveal – the scene where Cobb admits to Ariadne that he knows inception will work because he’s done it before. This scene loses most of its power if Mal did not really kill herself as if she didn’t then Cobb’s demons are only a bit of something he ate before he went to sleep.
No, to preserve the power that the movie has in the lives of the characters, the top level has to be reality. And the only question we are left with is whether Cobb got back to his children or is he stuck in limbo only dreaming that he did?
PS – I presume Nolan could reload and revolutionize Inception and make a sequel in which it all does turn out to be a dream. But just as the sequels negated much of the power of The Matrix, so such a sequel would negate the power of Inception.
Random Electrons 