It’s been another long stint since my last post, but after watching Christopher Nolan’s excellent Inception this week, I felt a review/analysis comin’, so here it is, with the ending of this movie fully explained!
As usual, I like to start my analysis with some notes on names, so let’s start with the name of the movie. “Inception” comes from the literal latin translation of “in” + “seize” (“-ception” is related to “carpe” in carpe diem). Figuratively, it means “seize in hand“. In English, the word means the start of a new idea or venture. Why is this important? Because in the film, seeded ideas come from “physical” things that must be held in hand. We’ll come back to this later.
While I’m not sure of all the name origins, I can take a guess at a couple. Cobb, the main character, shares his name with the protagonist from Nolan’s first film The Following, who was also a thief and interpreter. Eames the forger is named after the famous architects / designers Charles and Ray Eames. Yusuf the chemist is named for the Islamic version of the Biblical character Joseph (and his technicolor dreamcoat), a man taught by God to interpret dreams.
SPOILERS!!!
And finally, Ariadne the architect’s name is a direct reference to the daughter of the King of Minos in the Greek myth. I find that name especially important because in the myth, Ariadne helps Theseus defeat the Minotaur at the center of the maze. In the movie, she creates the mazes, but also helps Cobb defeat his minotaur as well (his ex-wife Mal) at the center of his own maze (limbo). Even her plan to have them jump into limbo together is a metaphorical handing of mythical Ariadne’s ball of string to Theseus, allowing him to come back from the labyrinth.
Since some people were confused about why Mal is in Cobb’s head, let me explain. Mal and Cobb went so far into limbo that they didn’t want to return to reality. Over dream time, as Cobb realized the dream wasn’t real, he had to convince Mal to leave. Taking her totem, he spun it into perpetual motion to remind her it was dream. Convinced by this inception, Mal went along with the escape, laying on train tracks reciting words she would later recall before committing suicide:
“You’re waiting for a train. A train that will take you far away. You can’t be sure where it will take you. But it doesn’t matter – because we’ll be together.”
This idea that your current reality could be a dream is an idea-virus, as it has no final answer and leads to self-destruction. Cobb escapes this virus when Mal tells him to choose her reality. He chooses the real world even when you can never know if it’s really a dream or not. If you were keeping track, this happens all in Fischer’s mind, although when they reach limbo, Fischer is no longer in control and it is Cobb’s subconscious, triggered by entering Fischer’s limbo, that has taken over.
It’s this choice, picking which dream you want as your reality; that is the crucial question. And the final, most revealing shot in the film answers this. Did the top fall over? The movie answer is yes. While we can’t say that any layer of the movie is definitively dream or reality, the final shot happens in the layer where Cobb knows his top topples.
But this is not important to him. In fact, Cobb walks away from the top to tell us that he doesn’t care if it will topple because he’s chosen his reality already. The only one watching that top is us, the audience. The camera dollying non-diegetically towards the spinning top implies we’re the ones asking the question.
So the reality answer is no, where the cut to credits happens leaves us with only the image of the spinning top for as long as we can remember his movie. The movie, then, is itself a “dream”, it’s mere cinematic smoke and mirrors, and therefore if we were using Cobb’s rules it shouldn’t stop spinning. Nolan has done to us what Cobb did to Mal: plant a parasitic idea in our mind. The movie Inception is Nolan’s inception in us, and just like Cobb, it was done with what Eames described as the most subtle idea, a mere emotion.
For Fischer and Sakai, this simple token was a written will or document in a safe, for us (and Mal) it was the spinning top that became Cobb’s totem. These are things we can believe are “in hand”, the literal meaning of “inception”. The trick is the top in the last shot is not real, but we all choose at the end whether the top spins forever or topples, it’s humanly impossible to not pick one of these results. Therefore what we ultimately believe in means a conscious choice of dream or reality. We will “carry” the image of that last shot with us as proof, it becomes our totem.
And so the true answer is we choose what we want from the movie because just watching it is a form of lucid dreaming. While we’re watching the movie, it is our reality to interpret as we wish. And there is nothing wrong with that, nor any other reality we choose, cinematic or otherwise, spin or topple. I’ll leave you with the seminal words spoken in the opium den:
“They come here to be woken up. Their dream has become their reality. Who are you to say otherwise?”
And that is the definition of the entertainment experience.
christina writes:
oh, nice review, lawrence! i always loved nolan's movies (although they're too few and far in between) because they stick with you after the credits roll. a lot of critics say that his films tend to be too dark and cerebral for the normal american audience. maybe this is true in some places but i think his box office figures show that the majority of americans are starving for the kind of cinematic experience he, his wife, and his brother offer.
Anonymous writes:
I find the link to the myth potentially important. In the myth Ariadne spun a thread (she is associated with spinning in some versions) which she gave to Theseus to lead him from the maze. Mal gave the spinning totem to Cobb (to lead him out). Perhaps Ariadne is linked to Mal via the totem. Maybe she is the daughter of the creator of the maze (Mal's father) and she is giving him a thread to lead him out.
Doug writes:
You must accept, as you enter the theater, that you are entering the shared dream state. As they say in the Matrix, you have to accept that there is no top. It cannot fall or stay spinning. It doesn't matter if it spins or falls because it doesn't exist. To answer the final question is to wake up. Of course there is the (juvenile, though powerful question) how do we know if our 'reality is 'real' or just a dream. It doesn't matter int he end because we must live it as if it is real.
I also find Memento helpful as an analogue. Memory is faulty and subject to manipulation. We believe what we need to believe to go on with our lives. I love your articles. You were right on about There Will Be Blood and I teach it that way in my Script Analysis class (along with Magnolia). Though Magnolia is a bit more oblique.
Thanks for the kind words and great thoughts, Doug.
The question over what is reality or dream is actually not important, the real philosophical question is why a dream reality is any less important than a real reality. Since all data enters us through the lens of our mind, there really is no objective reality, therefore everything is a dream. Dreams, as we call them, are just more dissociated from the real data, but where do you draw the line?
Would love to hear your thoughts on Magnolia, which I never had time to write on. Ultimately I believe it was a cautionary tale about regret, that product of hindsight that comes from years of wrong expectations in a capricious, coincidental world. Interestingly, years after watching it there are now scientific studies showing that that is exactly what makes people unhappy.
Lorenzo, this is the best summation of Inception I've read, and the only one I'm going to recommend people read when they ask me about the movie. You've done a remarkable job explaining the ending as well. Finally, someone else gets it!
boob writes:
great post…Love nolan..
I agree with your perception of the 'distinction' between dream and reality Lorenzo. How could we say that dream is any less real than reality? In my opinion, I'd say dreams are even more 'real' cause they're happening right inside my head. you could call me crazy but that's what comes to my mind.
As for the article, it is an excellent analysis, both film-wise and philosophy-wise. 🙂