INCEPTION #201

man, it was good.

i really want to see it again, to pick up the details that i probably missed the first time.

and i have a

new crush now.

along with alexander skarsgard.

joseph gordon-levitt is cute :)

i loved the moment (which was one of very few light moments in the movie) where he was like

"gimme a kiss."

haha, cute :)

anyway, if you are going to watch it

(& yes, i highly recommend you watch it)

stop reading here

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what i have gathered from doing some extra reading and thinking about it:

some sites i have gathered from include these: #1 #2 #3

interesting facts:
- Ariadne is named after a the mythical Ariadne who helped Theseus escape from the Minotaur's labyrinth read more here. there is the obvious connect here, with the mazes and you can see most traditional labyrinths are circular, like the one she drew in the movie
- Mal in latin means evil, i also read somewhere that it might have meant unfortunate, which makes sense with her convinced that she is still in dream state and tragically commits suicide because of this.

my take on the ending:

it is obvious that the director wanted us to be left hanging and we can choose which ending we wanted for cobb.

for those who don't want to think as much, or want a happy ending, you can choose to believe that he woke up back into reality, and that the top totem would eventually stop spinning.

and there are other evidence that might support this theory:

when cobb is in reality he does not wear a wedding ring, however in his subconscious he does wear a wedding ring. in the last scene, he does not have a wedding ring on.

it is also damn well possible that he woke up on the plane, then went through the airport and back to his children. Saito seems to be powerful enough to deliver on his promise.

the totem also looks like it might stop spinning, but then again it has spun much longer than any other times when he is in reality.

so the other option is that, cobb is still in a dream in the last scene, probably in a limbo.

because 1. as mentioned the totem has spun for a long time, much longer than any time in reality

2. his children look exactly the same throughout the movie, wearing exactly the same clothes as in his last memory of them. but we know that quite a while as past since he has seen his children and so they must have aged if in fact he did get to see his children again. (though however, if you check on IMDB there are two sets of children who play the kids, so perhaps they did age and the fact that they are wearing the same clothes is messing with our minds. also, someone else notices that their shoes are different to previous visions of them in the film, but one might still question why the kids look the same despite the different shoes. since the different shoes may just be a slightly different projection as it has been a long time since he has seen his children, but the projection is largely the same)

	Claire Geare	...	Phillipa (3 years)
	Magnus Nolan	...	James (20 months)
	Taylor Geare	...	Phillipa (5 years)
	Johnathan Geare	...	James (3 years)

3. we do not see cobb go through each dream levels, but he wakes up on the plane. this is strange because for all the other characters, the each woke up from each level before they came back into reality.

4. also, when he does wake up there is no dialogue and everything around him seems like a blur. also, everyone is sort of smiling at him, and everything is happening as he would have expected it to, thus it seems like cobb is filling his dream with his projections of reality and how he would expect it to be in real life.

but the question with this theory is that, if he is at the end in another limbo state, how did he get there?
and the other thing is that since when has he been in a dream? from the beginning? from the plane?
I thought this was an interesting observation to support the possibility that he has been dreaming all along: (taken from: here)

Directors drop visual hints as to their main character’s true nature all the time. Remember the scene when Dom looks into the mirrors with Ariadne and we see that endlessly repeating image of him? That’s Dom’s reality. He’s lost within all of these dreamworlds and he doesn’t know where he is.

Mal keeps appearing in every one of Dom’s dreams to break them up. If this interpretation of “Inception” is correct, then Mal is not a projection of his guilt, but a protector. An angel of sorts. She is part of Dom’s subconscious, yes, but she’s there to help him wake up, even if he thinks he doesn’t want to. She is trying to provide that kickback for him.

This interpretation is supported by another Nolan-dropped clue. There was a scene with Ariadne where Dom joked something about “Why would you want to wake up?”

i thought that was pretty interesting, especially with the mirrors that i had never thought about til now.
i also like the thing about mal being protector of his dreams, kind of like how fischer had his security to protect him as well. it does make sense, kind of. except for the fact that in the second scene if mal was protector of his dreams, why would mal be talking to saito, instead of killing him?

in my mind, i think these are the two possible endings: he is in reality, or he is in a dream state at the end. but there are some more theories here.

but in the end, no matter which theory, he is no longer paranoid about whether he is in reality or not, since he walks away from the totem before he truly knows whether he is in a dream state or reality. but throughout the movie he constantly checks, with a gun in his hand whether he is still in a dream, as if he was still in a dream, he'd shoot himself to come out of it.

but in the last scene, he simply doesn't care because he is satisfied with this 'reality' where he can be with his kids.

♥