Inception: Planting Ideas – Here Be Spoilers

I finally saw Inception yesterday.  I walked to the cool, dark theater right after eating lunch at P.F. Chang’s.  So, yeah.  Yesterday was an orgy of awesome.  Think about that.

When I was talking to people about going to see Inception, in the days prior to actually watching the movie, I was greeted with a general vibe of “Meh.  You too, huh?”

“So, you’ve seen it?” I would ask, hoping they didn’t hit me with any spoilers.

“Nope,” went the refrain, “but it seems like everybody is going to watch it so I think I’ll probably pass.”

What?!?  Don’t you think there may be a tiny little reason why everyone you know is going to watch this movie? Okay, so most people I know went to the theaters to watch Titanic, the Harry Potter movies and the Twilight crapfest, but still…  This was actually a GOOD movie!  What was really at work here was these people had missed the boat and they didn’t want to admit it.  They were geeks, gamers every one.  We are the early adopters.  We find “cool shit” and smear it all over the interwebs for everyone else to rub on themselves.  But they missed being in on it early, so they were going to be cool by playing the cynical card.  Geeks are good at that too.

I wasn’t jumping on any sort of “early buzz bandwagon.”  I wanted to see this film from the moment I saw the first trailer.  It fits the mold of a number of films that I absolutely love.  The common denominator is the existence of a parallel world of either dream, sleep, or memory that can be accessed and possibly manipulated.  I’m not sure what it is about this theme that resonates with me, but there it is.  It’s even in the game I’m writing.  Some other films that fit the mold?  I thought you’d never ask: Dark City, The Matrix Trilogy, Somewhere In Time, Dreamscape, What Dreams May Come?, Silent Hill, and the phenomenal Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.  The basic premise is actually fairly similar to that of Dreamscape.  I’m guessing that Nolan saw that movie at some point during his formative years.

AAAAARRRRRRR!!!  Here be spoilers!!!

As I was leaving the theater after the movie, I looked up and saw that the guy walking out of the theater in front of me had a shirt that said “π RATE”, so I thought the above spoiler warning would be appropriate.  Besides, untagged spoilers kill me.  They stab the spear of death right into the heart of enjoyment and rip the soul out of whatever they just ruined for me.  True story: During the last season of Supernatural, one of my favorite tv shows, fairly early in the season, one of my Facebook friends posted untagged spoilers for the previous night’s episode as her status; as in “I can’t believe they $*#&Q*  ^%#  *^Q $#*& %&#&!”  Of course, I hadn’t watched the episode at that point.  It was waiting patiently on my DVR.  I haven’t watched a single episode of Supernatural since.  The spoiler is almost gone from my brain, so I will be watching this latest season fairly soon.  I need to catch up on an episode or two of Rescue Me first.

Anyway, you’ve been warned.  If you haven’t seen the movie GET OUT NOW (WHILE YOUR SPOILER-FREE SOUL IS STILL INTACT)!!!

Seriously.  Buh-bye.  TTFN, bitch.

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There, now we can talk about this incredible film.  Here are my random ramblings:

The storytelling in this film is tight and well-done.  Nolan leads us in by tying things neatly together and letting our minds create the details.  After all, he even tells us this in the movie.  His use (and Zimmer’s skillful manipulation of Edith Piaf’s “Non. Je ne regrette rien” (Trivia quiz: What other summer blockbuster used an Edith Piaf song?) helps to establish a dream-like quality in the film while also reinforcing what Nolan tells us about the passage of time between the levels of the dream.

As far as the visuals go, the scenes where Ariadne is manipulating the dream world are phenomenal, but once we get into the hart of the film, Nolan stops using them and instead gives us tons of gratuitous gunplay.  The analogies to video games are unmistakable, as Ariadne is designing “levels” including one that looks to be straight out of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.  The girl obviously plays some video games.

Ariadne, of course, was the name of the girl in Greek mythology who assisted Theseus in defeating the minotaur and escaping from the labyrinth.  No, not this Labyrinth.  In the Greek mythology, she is the daughter of Minos.  In Inception, she is introduced to Cobb through Miles.

I found it interesting that Cobb beings the movie working for a company named COBOL, which is a programming language.  DOM (Cobb’s first name), is also a programming term meaning Document Object Model.  It is used for manipulating and interacting with objects in HTML, XHTML and XML.  Mal is also a name often associate with a computer/programming term: malware – a virus.  Indeed, Mal does function as a virus in Cobb’s dream programming.  Whenever he enters another’s dreams, those dreams are then infected with his Mal-ware.  Mal is this film’s Agent Smith.

Some thoughts on totems: The top isn’t Cobb’s totem.  It’s Mal’s.  His totem could be his wedding ring, which he is only shown wearing is he is in a dream, not when he is in reality, or his gun, which he always carries with him.  Either way, the top is a tainted totem because it gets touched by several people throughout the film.  Nolan tells us that to keep a totem true, no other person can touch it.

If Mal was right and what we think of as reality is actually a dream, then several people have wondered why she didn’t come back to “reality” to get Cobb after she ascended.  Maybe she did.  Maybe Ariadne is Mal.  I’m not sure that I buy that, but I thought I’d throw it out there.

The scene where they throw a bag over Cillian Murphy’s head reminded me of this.

I’ve read things that people have written about many of the characters lacking the motivation to accompany Cobb on the “final job” in what is essentially a heist movie.  Nolan actually gives them the strongest motivation of all.  They are there for the same reason Ariadne came back.  The old man in the chemist’s dream clinic tells Cobb how intoxicating it is to dream.  He portrays it as an addiction.  Nolan also tells us that these people who go into others’ dreams usually lose the ability to dream on their own. So, the team members are in it for the rush of the dream, if for nothing else.

If you want to read more thoughts about this film, check out Chuck Wendig’s post at Terrible Minds or Cinematical’s exhaustive study of the movie.  Also, check out this interview with Dileep Rao, who played the chemist.

Much has been made of the final scene.  It certainly appears to have a dreamlike quality through the use of lighting filters (much like the ending scene of Silent Hill).  Also, the children appear to be wearing the same clothes they’ve been wearing throughout the movie (thought they aren’t, and their hair is longer here).  Cobb finally gets to see the faces of his children.  He spins the top and walks away, so happy that he doesn’t care if the top spins eternally or falls.  If you listen closely, you can hear what sounds like the top falling as the credits roll.  My conclusion is that it doesn’t matter if the scene is dream or reality, Cobb is a man redeemed and finally free of Mal’s ghost and the burden of guilt that her death carried for him.  As for the absence of the ring in the final scene, I’m not sure that definitively tells us that this is reality (though I think it is).  Cobb may now be free to dream without wearing the ring, as he has freed himself from carrying Mal into all of his dreams.

One final thought: I think this movie works much better as a theater experience than it will at home, even though I will definitely be purchasing the DVD when it’s released.  Why?  Do you remember that dream-like feeling you get when you walk out of a theater and start to re-engage with reality?  This was accentuated by exiting the cool darkness of the theater into 90+ degree heat and brilliant sunlight after seeing a matinee showing.  Yet, I’ve always felt that leaving a theater is like re-awakening to reality.  So, that just works in Inception‘s favor, at least as far as I’m concerned.

What are your thoughts?  Please share!