* * *I didn't understand the part about him using inception on his wife. What was his purpose in doing that?
To get her out of limbo. The only way to do it was to kill themselves and you aren't going to do that unless you are SURE the world isn't real. She just couldn't do it so he planted the idea in her head to get her to do it.
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I thought the only way to get out of limbo is for the sedative to wear off, that the reason people go into limbo is because they die and aren't woken up. How could he do inception in limbo if he doesn't have that object thing that lets you go into other people's dreams? For that matter, how would he even get her to sleep while in limbo? And why couldn't he just take a gun and kill both of them?
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If they could get out, why did she fool herself in thinking the dream was real anyway?
I think maal constructed a control center in limbo somehow--who says you cant do that in Limbo. Cobb tampered with it. Like a hypnosis button or something. In fact Cobb might have done that to himself at the end of the movie. I really, really want to watch the first scene again.
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quote:Originally posted by GaalDornick: I thought the only way to get out of limbo is for the sedative to wear off, that the reason people go into limbo is because they die and aren't woken up. How could he do inception in limbo if he doesn't have that object thing that lets you go into other people's dreams? For that matter, how would he even get her to sleep while in limbo? And why couldn't he just take a gun and kill both of them?
I think the idea was just that they pushed so deep into the world of dreams/into their own minds that they reached the most basic dreamworld. His idea was that it wasnt real so he was happy living that life with her but always knew he had to wake up and live the rest of life. She apparantly either did not want to deal with the real world or was more than content with just spending forever in the dream. To just kill her would cause her to be lost in this limbo place. He had to make her want to leave (although the idea of the train would be quite grotesque.)
I don't think the dream device is necessary in the dream world (although it shows them using it multiple times) I think it just becomes representative of some process or another (or you could go with a matrixian idea that in the mind everything is real and therefore they would always need to "build" this device even though they are just dreaming and no such device exists.
The better question i think for Him and Mal being in limbo together is one of where the other dreamers are. We know that each person must provide the dream, we know that limbo is at least 4 dreams in. Every time they went into another level another person has to provide the dream world. Cobb+Mal is 2. They would be missing at least 2 other dreamers unless they are suggesting that the dreamer can dream a dream (of time gone by) about dreaming a world that the dreamed dreamer it is unaware of.
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posted
They dont need a person to send you to the dream from the previous world, but they need someone there to kick you. But for them it isn't as long.
Maybe it is possible to have a subconcious kick you, but they were in Fisher's dream so that wasnt possible.
posted
Ecthalion, that makes sense. One other thing that confused me though was how come Fisher didn't recognize Cob at the end in the airport after they all woke up? Wouldn't he have thought, "Wait, that's the security guy from my dream! What is he doing here!"
Also, was it ever explained how him and Mal ended up in limbo? I don't recall.
Posts: 2054 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by GaalDornick: I thought the only way to get out of limbo is for the sedative to wear off, that the reason people go into limbo is because they die and aren't woken up. How could he do inception in limbo if he doesn't have that object thing that lets you go into other people's dreams? For that matter, how would he even get her to sleep while in limbo? And why couldn't he just take a gun and kill both of them?
I had the same thought about dying under sedation as well, but then I remembered Saito's situation. He was shot in the Hotel Layer, and died there, but entered the Snowworld Layer before doing so. He was not influenced by the music played in the Van Layer, so couldn't awake and was stuck in limbo. I hope that makes sense.
Overall, some very confusing plot elements and ideas. I think I need to see it again to understand.
The only thing I am disappointed with is the "company taking over the world" plot device. It should have been either more fully developed, or left by the side. Instead it served as a weak device for Fischer to gain his father's approval.
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quote:Originally posted by sinflower: This may be a simple question but... why is it that the top never topples in a dream?
The top was her totem. In the real world it eventually falls down. If it stays spinning shes dreaming. Its supposed to notify you that you are still dreaming in case you forget. Though spelling this out in this paragraph now makes me think that either the movie messed up with that plot device or just didnt explain what Cobb did to it to make her be uneasy with the dream world. Presumably if it spun perpetually she'd know she was dreaming and you'd think it would be easier for him to say "see hun we're dreaming, time to wake up now... i have this really creative way where we get splattered....."
If what he did made it fall over it would explain why she never accepted the real world as genuine but i can't imagine that that would make it easier to convince her to leave the dream world. What he incepted in her was "this world isnt real" and it stuck in her mind If he made the top fall over (then again.... we really don't know what he did to the top so i might just be thinking circles around a non issue) you would think she would have accepted the dream as the real world, unless of course she forgot which sign signified which (she did lock it in a safe.. perhaps long period of time away from the totem made he unsure of whether still spinning was real or if falling over was real.) Perhaps just the act of him touching the totem disturbs the dreamer enough to not want to dream anymore.
All in all there were a lot of things that they didnt need to explain for the movie to be good. I for one am glad they didn't explain them i love movies that make me want to talk about the who, what when where and why of things. Its a good thinking movie.
Posts: 467 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by GaalDornick: I thought the only way to get out of limbo is for the sedative to wear off, that the reason people go into limbo is because they die and aren't woken up. How could he do inception in limbo if he doesn't have that object thing that lets you go into other people's dreams? For that matter, how would he even get her to sleep while in limbo? And why couldn't he just take a gun and kill both of them?
I had the same thought about dying under sedation as well, but then I remembered Saito's situation. He was shot in the Hotel Layer, and died there, but entered the Snowworld Layer before doing so. He was not influenced by the music played in the Van Layer, so couldn't awake and was stuck in limbo. I hope that makes sense.
I think dying in the dream world acts as a kicker. The problem with Saito was that he was so heavily sedated that he wasn't kicked. He was therefore a product of Arthur's dream (subconsciously Arthur's mind would be saying "this entity cant exist (at least for long) so i'm going to erase it.") Think of it as one neural pathway trying to eradicate another, since Arthur is providing the dream and Saito is visiting Arthur's mind would presumably erase Saito before Saito could get back into his own.
By jumping into Fisher's dream (and then Fishers Dream of Browning's dream) it simply resets the process. Eventually he is kidnapped by Mal (who resides in Cobb's dreams) So now he is in a 5th or even 6th dream state (depending on whether or not Mal is part of Cobb's dream or whether Limbo is Mal's dream within Cobb's dream the only way to get Saito back was to have Cobb (the last dreamer) bring his consciousness back with him.
This is why the ending is questionable if it was real or not. Cobb never woke from Arthur's first dream (that we know of), if Arthur woke up in the real world before Cobb got back you'd presume they'd be lost in Cobb's (or maybe even Arthur's) Super-deep ultra subconscious.
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As I understood it, the issue with Limbo was the fact that, unlike normal dreams, you could not wake on your own. The sedatives were so heavy so as to prevent you from feeling the effects of the actual world and have them let you know you were in a dream, which was the reason they used 3 layers and had the 2nd layer be where he did know he was in a dream and they could incorporate all that outside-weirdness into the narrative exposition.
The down side of sedatives preventing you from waking up naturally is that when you died in the dream you were in, your mind couldn't go anywhere but deeper- into limbo. But each layer down took more and more of real world time...so that in limbo, you could spend up to an "infinite" amount of time in that dream world. There was mention that when a person who had been in that state "awoke" their minds would be mush. They would have gone mad and their minds would have been destroyed after an eternity in Limbo, even though objectively they only went through a finite amount of time.
As for the top...I think it did end ambiguously enough so that each person can decide for themselves whether it was real or not. Personally, I was really hoping he'd make it out. His conversation with "Mal" in limbo, when he let her go and told her they had had a life together, they had grown old together, and now he had to move on, was beautiful. I just felt he deserved to live a real life now, his children deserved a father, so that's how I choose to see the ending.
(BTW, love the resolution between the father and son...even though it wasn't real.)
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Hey guys, check out this analysis of the film over at CHUD. I think it's a pretty great analysis, though I'll have to see the film at least a second time before I know whether I agree with it. It's certainly worth thinking about though.
posted
That article is pretty much what I was thinking. That's why I compared it to Total Recall. It's all fake.
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quote:The top was her totem. In the real world it eventually falls down. If it stays spinning shes dreaming. Its supposed to notify you that you are still dreaming in case you forget.
Yes, I know. I just don't understand why it can't fall down in a dream. Is it like... even if the dreamer tries to make the top fall down, it doesn't? Or... in a dream the dreamer can use their mind to keep the top spinning, but in the real life they can't?--but then in that case if the dreamer's attention wavers the top would fall down in the dream too.
Basically, what I don't understand is why a top can have the quality of "never falls down in dream," not why this quality would be a useful plot device.
Currently, my best guess after reading that article is that the assumption "this is a top that never stops spinning if you're in a dream" is just something no one ever questions because they're in a dream and people accept strange premises without questioning them in dreams.
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The article's the one I read that I don't think goes far enough. Why stop at just that layer of unreality?
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I don't recall anyone in the movie saying it never stops. The deal with totems is that they act in a way that only the owner knows. He would know exactly what the top feels like, how hard it is to spin it, how much it wobbles, how long it takes to fall over, etc. and no one else does. So if he is in someone's dream, they won't know exactly how the top should act and it will therefore act differently.
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posted
No, it's clearly stated in the movie that the top never stops in a dream, which is why the ending with the top wobbling is supposed to be so dramatic.
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posted
The 'top wobbling' (i.e. what you make of it) is, actually, the 'inception-idea'--into you, the filmgoer.
If you believe the premise, then you've been inoculated...if you don't, then it hasn't really worked....either way, the film works--that's the beauty in it--and why it wobbles at the end.
edited to add: if you have the feeling, at the end of the film, that you knew what was going to happen before the end, then the 'inception' worked. That 'knowledge' was planted at the beginning--it's the 'joke' of the movie. If you walked out going: "what happened," then it didn't work.
posted
It's difficult to read through this thread. It's a spoiler mine field. Can't you guys keep them out of the "relatively spoiler free" thread???
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I just got into an advanced screening for Dinner for Shmucks. Should I just change this thread title to "2010 Movie Thread" so we can talk about all of them? It seems like we've created different threads for quite a few movies over the past few months,we might as well consolidate them.
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Yeah, bingo. I figured this all out in the theater. The fact that he "gave" the idea that the world was not real to Maal caused him to be unable to wake up when she did. She isn't dead, she's alive. He tried to keep her tied to him in limbo, because when they were hit by the train, he was the one that kept them in the next layer of the dream, and refused to wake. She woke up, and he stayed there convinced it was real, all because he gave away that spark of credulity that he had given to her. He still remembers it however, so all his encounters with her are his subconscious trying to recapture that idea itself.
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I've never had a lucid dream. Is it actually possible to experience something even remotely close to what happened in that movie?
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Yes, it's remotely like that. I've had a few experiences of lucid dreaming where I seemed to feel consciously aware of what I was doing, and found that I could control the shape of the dream while I was in it, including making people appear and making things happen. It's difficult to say how much actual volition was involved, or how "aware" I was in that state- certainly I did become aware that I was dreaming. I did it by listening to tapes before going to bed, but there was never a time where it consistently would happen.
I would say too that the interesting point the movie makes is that it *feels* real while you're in it. Later, when you wake up, the details aren't there for you to access again, so you literally can't remember how real it actually was, because you only ever looked at the things you looked at, and you can't go back and see them again to confirm the "realness" of the experience.
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Do you mean in it feels real while in the lucid dream, specifically? It seems odd that the dream would feel real, but you would be aware it was a dream. Something of a contradiction.
I ask because, in the more normal (I'm assuming) type of dream, having it "feel real" isn't even an issue that arises. That would presuppose self-awareness, which (for me) is either not present or so limited that it makes no difference.
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I've had lucid dreams on more than a handful of occasions. Where I've known without a doubt that I was currently dreaming and controlled my dream from there on out.
I find that I have a very hard time maintaining that state of awareness. What normally happens is I wake up shortly after I become lucid, or I slowly lose control of the dream and eventually forget I'm lucid dreaming and transition back to regular dreaming.
I think that chud article is spot on. I was particularly struck during the film with mal's presence on the hotel ledge across from their room, and haven't been able to come up with any legitimate reasons for why that would be so. The fact that the children hadn't aged at all was also bothersome. Mal's arguments when trying to convince Cobb he was still dreaming were pretty damn convincing as well!
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quote:Originally posted by Juxtapose: Do you mean in it feels real while in the lucid dream, specifically? It seems odd that the dream would feel real, but you would be aware it was a dream. Something of a contradiction.
I ask because, in the more normal (I'm assuming) type of dream, having it "feel real" isn't even an issue that arises. That would presuppose self-awareness, which (for me) is either not present or so limited that it makes no difference.
I mean to say that despite whatever you may see or whatever you may do in the dream, doing it or seeing it are not strange to you- they feel quite natural and therefore not strange.
If you're asking whether the dream world is a photo-realistic representation of waking life? I don't know, probably not. The only thing that exists in your dream is your perception. This is difficult to render in a film because the camera is a 4th wall. In a movie there is no perspective outside your perspective, and so everything you see and accept as normal in your dream feels real to you. For instance, if you were to try and do a reality check while in a dream, for instance by checking your watch, which is the most common way (that's the way I have done it), the numbers would appear to be random symbols and or change randomly every time you looked at the watch. Sometimes you have a hard time looking at it as if you're drunk or stoned or something.
But when you *are* looking at it, it doesn't feel like anything other than an actual watch to you- because you're not actually "seeing" anything, you're just seeing a representation of all the elements that make your brain say: "this is a watch." So of course, it's just a watch- you can't exactly examine it for authenticity. If you do try to closely examine the watch, your unconscious-mind just jumbles around a bunch of other images for you, so the watch falls apart in your hands, or it changes shape, or you can't get it off your wrist, or whatever.
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quote:Originally posted by Strider: I think that chud article is spot on. I was particularly struck during the film with mal's presence on the hotel ledge across from their room, and haven't been able to come up with any legitimate reasons for why that would be so.
I think the chud article is right as well, particularly the bit about the walls closing in on him in that "real world" scene. But the ledge thing... I figured she'd walked around the ledge to keep him from grabbing her.
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posted
I have had a couple very lucid dreams, sometimes I can tell its a dream, other times the dream feels very natural even though when I wake it's pretty obvious how strange it all was.
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quote:Originally posted by Strider: I think that chud article is spot on. I was particularly struck during the film with mal's presence on the hotel ledge across from their room, and haven't been able to come up with any legitimate reasons for why that would be so.
I think the chud article is right as well, particularly the bit about the walls closing in on him in that "real world" scene. But the ledge thing... I figured she'd walked around the ledge to keep him from grabbing her.
That, I thought was a given. If she had just been on his side of the window, he would have pulled her in.
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For anyone who is not addicted to nicotine, be aware that wearing a nicotine patch will make you feel very sick. Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Strider: I think that chud article is spot on. I was particularly struck during the film with mal's presence on the hotel ledge across from their room, and haven't been able to come up with any legitimate reasons for why that would be so.
I think the chud article is right as well, particularly the bit about the walls closing in on him in that "real world" scene. But the ledge thing... I figured she'd walked around the ledge to keep him from grabbing her.
That, I thought was a given. If she had just been on his side of the window, he would have pulled her in.
But wasn't there a through street or alley or something beneath them? Unless there was some sort of pedestrian bridge, I don't see how she could have walked around any ledge.
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posted
@Herblay, I think by this point the thread is about discussion of the movie, and if you blocked out all the spoilers you'd be missing pretty much the entire conversation. Probably better off just seeing the movie or avoiding the thread.
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quote:Originally posted by Raymond Arnold: @Herblay, I think by this point the thread is about discussion of the movie, and if you blocked out all the spoilers you'd be missing pretty much the entire conversation. Probably better off just seeing the movie or avoiding the thread.
I've been seeing the construction "@X", where X is the name of ther person being addressed, crop up more and more lately. What does the "@" bring to the sentence? With or without it, it's clear that the person typing is addressing X. Is there any other meaning conveyed by the "@"?
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posted
The credits to Inception list two different actresses to play Phillipa: one at age 3, and one at age 5.
The children are not the same age in the final scene. They are wearing nearly identical clothes and the staging is similar, but they are older, different kids than the ones Cobb sees everywhere else.
------
I noticed she was on the wrong side as well, but it's not inconceivable that she got the room across the space as well. The inside is similar to the room they left, so I bet it's the same hotel/building. It's weird, but it doesn't HAVE to be dream-weird.
That the children are definitely older, bigger and not played by the same kids is my biggest reason for thinking the final scene is real and not a dream.
Regardless, I think the ending is a bit of a cop out. Not as enormous a one as the Sopranos ending, but still a copout. Pick a story to tell and commit to it, people.
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quote:I've been seeing the construction "@X", where X is the name of ther person being addressed, crop up more and more lately. What does the "@" bring to the sentence? With or without it, it's clear that the person typing is addressing X. Is there any other meaning conveyed by the "@"
Heh. I think the biggest thing is that the @ prefix allows people scanning the page to easily locate sections that are addressed to specific people. Yes, "Herblay" and "@Herblay" technically mean the same thing. But if you're quickly looking through a page, "Herblay" won't necessarily stand apart from words like "Hereditary" and "Help," whereas "@" clearly denotes that someone is being addressed.
It helps the people who want to participate in a given conversation to follow it more easily, and the people who want to ignore it to do that as well. The easier legibility may be slight, but given that it's a single character that takes less than a second to type, I think its worth it.
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quote:That the children are definitely older, bigger and not played by the same kids is my biggest reason for thinking the final scene is real and not a dream.
Regardless, I think the ending is a bit of a cop out. Not as enormous a one as the Sopranos ending, but still a copout. Pick a story to tell and commit to it, people.
I think it is intended to be real, the more I hear and think about it. But the point is not so much that the ending be ambiguous, but that the ending force you to wonder for a period of time before deciding what's the truth. The wonder/period-of-confusion is I think what that review linked on the last page was getting at.
It goes back to the "am I the man who dreamed he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was a man?" conundrum (can't remember the source of that line, it's on the internet somewhere I'm sure). Yeah you can use logic/evidence to decide that you're real life IS the real deal, but that period of "huh... what if it wasn't?" can be worth the experience.
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I wasn't really bothered by the opposite ledge thing. Mal engaged in some pretty serious engineering to make it look like Cobb killed her - he mentions that she'd had herself examined by three different psychologists to establish her sanity. It's not so far-fetched that she'd rent a different room for her purposes. She couldn't very well make Cobb join her on the SAME ledge - he'd just pull her back in.
The squeezing alley scene WAS a big tip off, though. It was one of the few scenes in the film that actually felt like a dream to me. The instances where the dream projections would all just turn and stare also felt very dreamlike.
Posts: 2907 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:I've been seeing the construction "@X", where X is the name of ther person being addressed, crop up more and more lately. What does the "@" bring to the sentence? With or without it, it's clear that the person typing is addressing X. Is there any other meaning conveyed by the "@"
Heh. I think the biggest thing is that the @ prefix allows people scanning the page to easily locate sections that are addressed to specific people.
I've seen the @ construction most frequently on Twitter, although that may just be a coincidence for all I know.
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posted
No, it has actual functionality on twitter (though it didn't when people started using it, beyond interacting nicely with search). Twitter's what started it becoming big elsewhere.
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posted
If you have read the novels of Philip K. Dick and/or seen the films of Charlie Kauffman there is nothing to be excited about in Inception. In fact, it's quite banal compared to the work of those guys and taken by itself is considerably less clever and involving than Nolan's earlier work Memento. The scenes in which the characters explain the "rules" are cringe inducing (and they comprise 60% of the film) rather than involving. When in "The Matrix" Neo was being shown the rules of the matrix there was the dramatic tone of revelation. Here the explanation of the "rules" are nothing but a drudgery. It's as if Nolan, through his characters, is imploring the audience to find the central idea fascinating, because he doesn't trust (rightfully) in his material enough to hope for that fascination to develop naturally. In fact, the scene in which Ellen Page first explores the concept and walks that city deliberately echoes the scene in The Matrix in which Neo and Morpheus walk the streets as Morpheus explains the rules, and Inception is so much the lesser for the evocation, because there was a film that didn't need to try so hard to sell us it's central idea. And all of it is replete with what is becoming Nolan's trademark: unrelenting heaviness and a pervasive and suffocating sense of dread, something that was effective in counteracting the inherent banality of comic books to create bizarrely enjoyable spectacles but by itself (since there is not much in "Inception" that is really gripping) is quite unpleasant to sit through. In the end, Inception, along with Insomnia and The Prestige, is yet more blustering from Nolan.
Posts: 668 | Registered: Aug 2010
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posted
Thanks, did you copy and paste that screed from your blog or something?
ETA: yes, you posted exactly the same review at Rotten Tomatoes, on two different threads, or you copied it from someone who posted it there. You understand the difference between a forum and a place for you to post your stuff?
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posted
Just sharing my impressions of the film in the thread on the front page dedicated to the film. That I posted the same message elsewhere is irrelevant.
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posted
No it's not. Get a blog, and link to it if you must. You don't get to repost your missives wholesale without engaging here, especially with 7 posts under your belt.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:You don't get to repost your missives wholesale without engaging here, especially with 7 posts under your belt.
Perhaps I intended it as a prelude to engagement. I didn't anticipate anyone having an epileptic fit over it though.
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