Inception

[Bondo]

I expect we'll be needing this.

So, the top, does it fall or doesn't it fall?

[joker]

there are soooo many ways to think about the ending.  Even more then the "does the top fall or not"

Follow me on this.  The whole film is a dream.  The street chase, the closing in wall, Saito appearing out of no where to pick Cobb up.  A dream makes sense untill you wake up and look back at it.  Cobb is so many levels in, and the reality we see is just another level.  Now remember the totem, and how no one can touch it.  How they then can reproduce it later, and make the dreamer not know if it's a dream or not due to them knowing everything about the totem if they touched it.  Why did Cobb let Saito touch the totem at the end?  That way, Saito, who is an figment of Cobbs on mind, can reproduce it within another level, and cause Cobb to beleive his level of dream, is reality.  That is why the top is spinning, but wobbles when he hugs his kids.  He is dreaming, but his dream is turning into his reality. 

There are other clues too, to this.
The kids not aging, and wearing the same clothes
Saito calling a "unknown person" to free Cobbs name (to me, name = mind knowledge of the dream)

The whole movie was Cobbs inception of himself.  Placing a thought within himself, unknowing

[Sam the Cinema Snob]

My friend and I wen't back and forth. I say it doesn't, because the kids look the same age as in his memory and the film makes it sound like he's been out of the country for a while now.

I guess the question is who's dream is it?

Unless someone can convince me the top did fall over.


Also, crazy people will say this film is groundbreaking and revolutionary with the dreams within dreams storytelling. These people have not see A Nightmare on Elm Street.

[joker]

My friend and I wen't back and forth. I say it doesn't, because the kids look the same age as in his memory and the film makes it sound like he's been out of the country for a while now.

I guess the question is who's dream is it?

Unless someone can convince me the top did fall over.

it's Cobbs dream, and the ending is a dream.  The top most likely did fall over, not because it's reality, but beause the totem was compromised, and is now an inception itself to Cobb.  He believe the totem falling over is his key to knowing reality, but due to it being compromised by his own subconcious, it allows him to turn his dream into reality at the end.  

his mind knows, subconciously, that he is levels, upon levels in.  And this was it's way of saving itself from becoming, lol, scrambled eggs. 

[Bondo]

Hmm, I guess I missed Saito touching the totem, though I obviously know where it would have happened. The kids not aging definitely threw me and suggests that he's still dreaming. I think the ending works as that kind of ambiguous ending because I'm not sure it matters and I almost think that is the point. Who's to know if it is dream or reality. You do make a convincing case that more than just the last sequence is dream, which isn't something I had really considered. The question then is, is his wife out of dream and with the (properly aged) kids because she had actually killed herself in one of the levels down and pulled out?

Anyway, for me the only part of the logic of the world that didn't quite work for me were the kicks. They "miss" some kicks which leads me to wonder how it is voluntary. What determines if the kick will take you up a level or not. And it seems like the kick is a moment, yet it is depicted as being a bit more than that...is that because they are so many levels that that moment is actually longer? I do love the telescoping nature of time within the levels so that we see that in the few seconds in the first level we get a few minutes in the second level and, within the capacity of the movie, significantly longer chunks of the third and fourth levels.

Waking Life also has dreams within dreams. I don't think that simple element is what is revolutionary.

[joker]

Hmm, I guess I missed Saito touching the totem, though I obviously know where it would have happened. The kids not aging definitely threw me and suggests that he's still dreaming. I think the ending works as that kind of ambiguous ending because I'm not sure it matters and I almost think that is the point. Who's to know if it is dream or reality. You do make a convincing case that more than just the last sequence is dream, which isn't something I had really considered. The question then is, is his wife out of dream and with the (properly aged) kids because she had actually killed herself in one of the levels down and pulled out?

The kicks didn't work all the time, due to it being Cobbs own mind. 

His wife is out of the picture, atleast in the level of dream he ends on.  He let her go at the end.

[joker]

I think there is no wrong way to think about this movie, but there is no 100% correct way either.  The movie concentrated on developing loops within the dream.  Well, the same goes for the story, every theory of what it all means, is essentially a loop.  

Anyone else get the message from this film, that anyone who beleive in god, is crazy.  Cobbs and his wife essentially become gods, but due to the many lives they can share together, and unlimited control in creation, she atleast, starts to lose her mind. 

[Sam the Cinema Snob]

No, I only got that humans trying to be gods are stupid.

[joker]

No, I only got that humans trying to be gods are stupid.

I got the notion that the way we view god.. is stupid.

[Bondo]

I think there is no wrong way to think about this movie, but there is no 100% correct way either.  The movie concentrated on developing loops within the dream.  Well, the same goes for the story, every theory of what it all means, is essentially a loop.

Like the infinite staircase.

But yeah, whatever the wife's status is or his status is, it is very important that he is moving past her. I think it is a commentary about how we are trapped in memory of our regrets and losses and it sometimes makes us "asleep" to our present.