After scouring the net for answers I'll go see the film again with fresh eyes but I thought Aaron had three plausible explanations for what the ending meant.
This can only mean one thing - poll time!
So here are his three options (the rest of his rebuttal censored due to the fragile state of my ego!):
a) Cobb doesn't escape from limbo... we don't see the kick so maybe the ending is all in his head. I mean that would suggest that the top keeps spinning long after the credits roll. I mean we didn't see what happened when he last spun the top...
b) Cobb has completed his mission. Saito kept to his word and Cobb has returned home (the kids at the end are played by actors that are 2 years older than the actors playing the kids at the end) this would suggest that after the cut to black... the top fell over and Cobb's back to reality, he dodges a bullet.
c) The whole thing start to finish is a dream. His wife died in Paris, he's flying to LA to “go home”... his reality does seem like a dream and is refereed to as such. None of the other characters on the plane talk to Cobb at the airport. Almost like they are all strangers who just all shared a 1st class flight with each other.
Which one of these options do you believe best fits your interpretation of the film... or doesn't it matter? Please use the poll on the top left of the blog...
One thing I can't argue with is Aaron's summation:
"Inception is in no way a 'perfect' film. It has flaws. But a classic film, loved or hated, it will become a film that could, and should, revive the spec scripting market in the US as well as sell the idea that big, original, large scale films... can still have an audience".
Amen to that.
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ReplyDeleteAbove post removed by me owing to my speed typing which would be better described as "speed typo-ing".
ReplyDeleteMr McCann is a vehement and passionate man, that's for sure.
I HATED INCEPTION, but Nolan deserves some of my time because clearly he works his arse off to make these extravaganzas.
I thought it was a) and always thought it was a) from about 20 minutes in.
I have a side question - is c) sufficiently different from a) to be another choice entirely? Aaron and or Richard?
Did you vote for (A), PJK in the poll? :-)
ReplyDeleteps I suspect there is a difference. I'm trending towards (C) myself...
I think c) better fits my views of the film and better covers any flaws I perceive to be in the story.
ReplyDeleteWhen I go back to see it, Cei I'll be looking for the (C) framework. It seems to explain a lot of 'anomalies' from a straight reading of the film.
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ReplyDeleteThank you Alysha - a well argued summary. I'll be more alert second time around as I'll be less distracted when i see it next!
ReplyDeleteI believe that it was all set up by his father from the beginning, to help get him over the grief of losing his wife and stop blaming himself so he can be there for his children.
ReplyDeleteThe whole story is about the power of suggestion, but making the person they want to influence believe it came from them self (their own subconscious). So the whole mission of Cobb trying influence Fischer was just a ploy to get him to work his way down to the inner most of his own subconscious and face his demons (his wife and his guilt) once and for all. I believe all of them were in on what was going on with the exception of Cobb and Fischer (who was just collateral).. even Ariadne was hand picked by his father (and his father knew he would come to him for help in finding a new architect for this "mission").So his father used his power of suggestion, by making Cobb believe it was his idea to use the power of suggestion on someone else.
He told Ariadne that his wife locked a way a part of herself because she no longer cared for reality, and would rather stay in limbo forever. He also totem he is spinning he says was his wife's (the part of her she locked away), but I believe it was his all along..and she hid it in order to keep him in limbo with her. Its use and purpose was from then on jeopardised due to her touching it...hence why they have the rule that no one but themselves can touch it, and because she is such a powerful component of his subconscious and she was able to control him with it.. so he could never quite be sure whether or not he was in reality or not .
Whether or not it was a dream all along? Well I don't think it matters... I don't think it was, but I also don't think as much time between his wife's passing and him being reunited with his kids is as long as he believed either.. (you say the children at the end or played by actors two years older.. but I thought/ saw them as the same age as his last memory of them).. and that he has lost his sense of time due to his escaping into his medicine induced dream world so often.
I have read a lot of blogs about this movie.. yet I (and my mother, and we both came to this conclusion on our own before discussing it with one another) seem to be the only ones who think this.