My name is Jason. These are my thoughts.

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Monday, July 19, 2010

The Question of Perception of Inception



So as many others have done, here is my take on the film: (Spoilers abound. You've been warned)

Jesse Warren had an idea that Ken Watanabe and Leonardo DiCaprio are doing a sort of 'feedback loop' of inceptions on each other. This theory just doesn't jive for me with the themes of the film, although it does hold up as a mechanical theory, to a point. My observation would be based more on the thematic arc of the film - the father son relationship, and the obvious parallels to the Decent to the Underworld myths, most similarly, Orpheus's rescue of Eurydice from Hades. Instead of some arbitrary business deal, it is the need for love, and the loss of love, that are truly the things that drive us, and in this case, Miles. My theory is that Michael Caine's character Miles, Cobb's father-in-law, driven by his loving compassion for his heartbroken son-in-law, is in fact the one who is orchestrating a very very elaborate inception on Cobb , for much the same reason as Jesse suggested - to relieve him of the anguish he suffers over the death of his wife. Here are some clues to support the idea:
  • Miles is the man who taught Cobbs everything he knows - therefor, the only guy who could possibly orchestrate such an elaborate dream web. If you buy the theory, it would mean that the dream web that they have built has at least six layers in it, twice as many as Cobbs actually believes there are (not including the 'purgatory' level they go to to finally deal with his dead wife)
  • Ariadne (Ellen Paige), the Architect –but just a college graduate student, agrees to their admittedly illegal scheme almost instantly - why? Because she's in on it. She's been working with Miles. Cobbs even says early on, "I've never seen anyone take to it so quickly" Well, of course - that's why she's so good at it - because she's been training with Miles for a while. Also, Nash (the original architect, was 'taken' by Saito. Why would Saito take the architect when he's trying to hire the same team? To what gain? Well, because he's part of the scheme and they need to insert Ariadne as the Architect.
  • Ariadne plays a much deeper role that just the architect. On several occasions, she breaks protocol and digs into Cobbs personal life to unearth details about his wife as if she has a separate agenda, one set forth by Miles. Her endgame goal - when they are on level 4 in Limbo World, is to get him to let go of his wife - going so far as to shoot her right in front of him. That to me is the intended inception plot. Getting Cobbs to finally let go of his wife.
  • As Cobb's team 'prepares' for the job, there are many references to the target's relationship to his father, a relationship that is the key to the plan Cobbs' team is following (a plan that his team members conceived, by the way, not him). This is an easily over looked detail, but important to the themes here, I think. These are all thematic references to the father son relationship between Miles and Cobbs.
  • Miles seems to have a professorship in Paris, but is at the airport in the USA to meet Cobbs and take him to his kids - as if he knew exactly what they were up to, because, maybe he did.
  • Cobbs admittedly uses his dead wife's Totem as his 'dream-tester'. But he contradictorily says that you must use your own totem - something no one else would know about - while simultaneously using someone elses totem. This could mean that his totem is completely unreliable and is actually giving him false readings - or just the readings he wants it to give, making him believe that he's not in a dream when he is, and so on.
It's a far more rich and also a more complicated and layered scheme if you buy this theory. Consider that every single scene in the film is a dream. Consider that Ken Watanabe would have to have been in on it form the very beginning. This would mean that Fischer was really just a pawn, someone brought in to supply Cobbs with a complicated enough distraction so that he wouldn't notice the inception being perpetrated on him. Consider that the first scene on the beach, he is in fact waking up in Watanabe's dream, but by design. So that later, when he goes to the fourth level, Watanabe can replicate the same level for him, and make him think he's back to the same place. So when Cobbs sits down with the aged Watanabe and eats the bowl of food, he's being sedated by Watanabe and Miles, which is why the next scene with Young Watanabe just starts right in the middle of it - because it's the beginning of a new level, one that Cobbs thinks is level one, but is really at least level two or three.

But what about the very beginning when he washes up on shore? The only difference at the end is that we see more of the dialogue in scene, but it ends at the same place. It would be a really easy thing to say that it's just a loop - that is to say that Cobbs really is trapped in the Limbo World, and that each waking from a different dream world, eventually just keeps putting him right back into the Limbo World at the beach. But I doubt that's what Nolan had in mind. I think that would be a pretty cheap cop out anyway.

As far as the "cut-befor-the-totem-falls-over" ending, a-la The Soprano's series finalé, I'll offer this: if you buy the proposed theory, then the cut before it falls - or not - makes perfect sense. It's a red herring. It doesn't matter what the totem does, because it's not even his totem.

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