Inception

 

SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

 

When I went with my wife, who does not like confusing stories or unresolved endings, to see Inception when it came out in 2010, she was not happy with me. During the film I was quietly telling her what level of the dream experience we were currently watching. She said to me, “What the hell are you talking about?” and considered it a waste of time seeing the movie. I, on the other hand, like twisty, enigmatic tales, and was already a fan of writer/director Christopher Nolan’s Memento (analyzed here earlier). In that film, and here especially, Nolan is interested in the workings of the human mind. He deals with what seems real to people and what is illusion, and how we anchor ourselves onto what we believe as true to get by, whether or not those “truths” are really falsehoods. But, more than that, he deals with, as Matt Goldberg says, “an exploration of the lies we tell together to create something bigger than ourselves to seek the catharsis we can’t achieve on our own.” That statement conjures up Aristotle, who saw the performance of tragedy as a catharsis of pity and fear. So, Nolan implies that we all suspend what we take for reality to enjoy a story, whether on the stage, in written form, or in a movie, to have that joint purgative emotional experience which is real, but which was generated by, basically, a lie.

I was understanding of my wife’s reaction because this film is quite the layered cake. Nolan does not talk down to his audience, but instead dares it to keep up with his narrative. It might be best to just sum up the main plot points of this science fiction story to create a handle on how to proceed. Nolan gives us the excitement and suspense of a heist movie, only here the stolen goods are the thoughts of another person. Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is the best “extractor,” which means he can, with the use of special drugs, join his free-lance team and the victim in a dream state constructed by him and his colleagues to acquire information for a price paid by an interested party. An outfit, Cobol Engineering, wants information about the expansion project of a rich energy production businessman, Saito (Ken Watanabe). But, Saito knows they are in a dream, and uses the experience as an audition to hire Cobb to perform an “inception,” to place the idea into the son of a dying executive of a competing energy conglomerate to break up his company. Saito promises to take care of the problems with Cobb’s former employer for failing in his mission involving Saito, and to get Cobb the chance to return to the United States and see his children. Cobb is wanted by the American legal system for a crime (later on that). Cobb and his team eventually succeed in achieving their objective, but Cobb’s reward is subject to interpretation.

The beginning of the film does not let us in on the dream aspect of the story. We think what is happening is for real, as we do when we dream ourselves prior to waking up. There are crashing waves, but they move in slow motion, so there is already a distortion of reality as we know it. Cobb wakes up on a beach glimpsing a young girl and boy, (the boy has a checkered pattern shirt and the girl wears a sort of jumper). He then becomes unconscious (which is ironic, since we eventually learn he already is asleep). An armed guard takes Cobb to the palace of an old Japanese man (actually the elderly Saito). We don’t realize it yet, but we are getting the end of the movie first. Cobb has a gun and a small brass top. The old man says that Cobb reminds him of someone, “a man in a half-remembered dream.” He spins the top, and it keeps spinning, a hint that they are in a dream. Saito knows Cobb from the story we are about to see.

Then we go backward in time where Cobb and his partner, Arthur (Joseph Gordon Levitt) try to sell the younger Saito a service to protect him from dream thievery, called “extraction.” Cobb says that the mind is vulnerable to attack when asleep (although we discover the mind has some defenses), and he says he can train Saito to protect his thoughts. Of course we are in a dream at this point and Cobb and Arthur are trying to steal, not protect, Saito’s secrets. In order to teach Saito how to defend himself, Cobb argues that he must know all of Saito’s hidden thoughts to protect them. But here it is like hiring a robber as the security guard at a bank. Symbolically, Saito’s ideas are in an envelope in a safe in the room they are in. Saito seems skeptical about the sales pitch and leaves, and Arthur suspects that Saito knows about their plans. The surroundings begin to shake and Arthur points out a woman and asks Cobb what she is doing there. The female turns out to be Cobb’s dead wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard), or at least the version that still lives in Cobb’s memories. (“Mal” is a Latin derivative for “bad” as in “malevolent,” which literally means to wish someone ill). She asks him if she jumped from the roof would she die? The answer is obvious in real life. Her question connects to what we learn later about how she did die. But it raises the question whether it matters if one is in a dream or in real life if the experience, or feeling, of dying is the same in both worlds. We eventually learn Cobb is wanted for killing her, which is not literally true, but he feels guilty about her death, and she haunts him in his subconscious. His guilt, manifested by her appearance, attempts to sabotage his efforts. That is why the room shakes.

Cobb gets Mal to go to a room. She asks if the children miss her (the ones on the beach) and he says, interestingly, “I can’t imagine.” Yet, imagining is what one does in dreams, but bringing up the memories of their children is painful for him, and he would rather suppress thoughts of how they lost their mother. Also, we discover he has been away from his offspring in his legal exile, so he really doesn’t know what they think. He makes her sit on a chair as an anchor so he can climb down a rope tied to the chair. He wants to access the room with the safe. But Mal stands up, and he almost falls, but the empty chair catches against the wall. The image is one of self-destruction, because Mal’s presence is like a bad seed in his brain, which is illustrated by the next scene where he is trying to steal the envelope but is surprised by Saito and Mal, who is holding a gun, and there are guards restraining Arthur. Cobb asks Saito if she told him about his deception. Saito’s answer is, “That you are here to steal from me, or that we are actually asleep?” When one first sees the movie, these words undermine the audience’s perception of what has been happening. We have suspended our disbelief to buy into a fiction, but there was another hidden aspect that we did not know about and were not invested in. Even though there was an earlier cut to the men in a room sleeping, we did not realize that we were witnessing their shared dream dramatized. The effect is jarring, but for those that like surprises in a tale, the discovery is exciting.

But there are more unexpected revelations. Cobb, Arthur, and Saito are connected to a PASIV (Portable Automated Somnacin IntraVenous) device. The drug, Somnacin (the Latin word for sleep is “somnium”) allows them to share dreams. Cobb’s co-worker, Nash (Lukas Haas) monitors the sleeping men. But there are approaching rioters accompanied by shouts and explosive devices going off. Cobb’s chair is above a tub of water. Back in the dream, Cobb gives Saito the envelope and says that threatening to kill him is pointless. But Mal, acknowledging that death will just wake up the sleeper, instead shoots Arthur in the knee, because, as she says, “pain is in the mind.” It allows Arthur to suffer without allowing him to escape the sleep mode. Cobb is able to get the gun and shoots Arthur in the head, thus waking him up, and Cobb then attempts to escape Saito’s guards. Cobb switched the envelopes and Saito sees that he has only blank pages. With the dream, and thus the architecture of the dream, collapsing because the fiction has been revealed, the crumbling building breaks apart, killing Saito, and he wakes up in the place where he was sedated. By instituting a “kick,” a falling down, the disturbance can wake the dreamer up. So, Nash knocks over Cobb’s chair (in slow motion, as Nolan reminds the audience that they are also in a shared altering of the world), and Cobb’s dream is flooded with water as one reality drowns out the other. (The water moves slowly, like the waves on the beach earlier, another hint of being in a dream state, and, as we discover soon, time seems to move slower in a dream state in comparison to the real world). Cobb awakes and prevents Saito from using a hidden gun. The information in the envelope has redacted sections because Saito knew of the deception, and admits to the audition, which at this point it seems that Cobb has failed. Cobb threatens physical abuse to get the information from Saito, who falls to the floor. Saito has a revelation that the carpet isn’t right, and realizes they are just in another dream level. 

 

We now see that Nash along with the other three men are asleep in the two-tiered dream. They are actually (if that word can be used in this movie) on a train (trains are referred to several times in the plot) and a man named Tadashi (Tai-Li Lee) alerts the unconscious Nash by playing music through headphones that the time they have left on the session is running out. In the remaining dream state, Saito praises Cobb for his trickery but says that in his dream he is in control. But Nash says they are in his dream. The rioters arrive (part of Cobb’s guilt-ridden self-destructive thoughts intruding) and they attack the men, as the dream expires, waking them up, Saito slightly later. Cobb pays off Tadashi, and Arthur yells at the dream’s “architect,” Nash, for not getting the carpet right which tipped Saito off about the second dream state. 

In his apartment, Cobb spins his brass top as he holds a gun close to his head. The top stops spinning, which means it complies with the natural laws of physics, and he is not still in the law-defying world of unconscious imagination. If it didn’t stop spinning, he would have shot himself, causing him to wake up. His life is a precarious one, rooted in uncertainty as to what to believe is actually happening. He is on guard that his mind could be hijacked, which is what he does to others. He receives a phone call from his children, James and Phillipa (Jonathan and Taylor Geare. The use of two actual siblings pretending to be related in a fictitious tale is a little Nolan joke about how similar and yet different two realities can be). We get a shot of the two of them looking as they did in the first scene of the film, which implies that is how Cobb remembers them.

 Cobb wants to disappear for a while to avoid retribution for his failure with Saito, but the Japanese gentleman is waiting for him and Arthur in a helicopter on the roof. Saito has the beaten Nash with him, who betrayed his colleagues to protect himself, and that is how Saito knew where to show up. Saito sees disloyalty as worthy of death, and hands Cobb a gun to use on Nash. Cobb says he doesn’t operate that way, and Nash is dragged off to be handed over to Cobol Engineering for punishment. 

 

Saito doesn't want to harm the men but instead to hire Cobb for the “inception” plan. Arthur argues against inception saying that planting an idea in another’s mind will fail because the subject will realize it’s not that person’s own thought and knows it comes from the outside. But, Cobb says it can be done, because, as we later learn, he has done it before. The film seems to be commenting on the dangers of technology that could subvert a person’s thought processes. There is also the implication that through the manipulation of the truth, people can be swayed into believing what is contrary to the facts. Saito offers Cobb the chance to go back to America and his children at this point. He says that if he turns down his offer, Cobb will be haunted by not taking “a leap of faith,” and will “become an old man, filled with regret, waiting to die alone,” (which, ironically, is Saito’s situation in the first scene of the movie). 

 

Cobb goes to Paris and meets his father-in-law, Miles (Michael Caine), who mentored Cobb and his daughter, Mal, in the sharing and constructing of dreams. Miles says he never taught Cobb to be a thief, but “after what happened” (the death of Mal) Cobb says he had few legal opportunities. But it’s not just money Cobb says he offers others but also a chance to build “cathedrals” and cities “that couldn’t exist in the real world.” The reference to a church implies god-like powers similar to the Bible’s Genesis. But isn’t that the creative power which a writer/director like Nolan approximates? Cobb needs an architect to replace Nash, and he admits he can’t be the architect because, in his unconscious mind, his guilt has created a vindictive Mal who will thwart him. Miles recommends a graduate student, Ariadne (Ellen Page). Roger Ebert notes that her name is the same as “the woman in Greek mythology who helped Theseus escape from the Minotaur’s labyrinth.” So, it is appropriate that she will be the new dream builder. She shows Cobb her skills by drawing mazes. They then are talking outside at a cafe and Cobb notes that awake people only use a fraction of their minds, but those limitations do not exist when they are asleep. He says her job is to create the framework of the dream they establish and then they “bring the subject into that dream, and he or she fills it with that person’s subconscious.” She questions how can that be convincing, and Cobb notes that while we are in a dream it seems real. He says we don’t remember the beginning of dreams, so he asks her how they happened to be at that café? Cobb surprises Ariadne, (and Nolan the audience), by telling her they are in a dream state right now, (as is the audience immersed in the fantasy of a movie). With great visual effects, the scenery begins to explode in a stylized, slow-motion progression. She is shocked by the revelation that what seems real is not. They wake up in a warehouse with Arthur monitoring them. He says they were only under for five minutes, but it seemed like an hour for her. Cobb says that the mind moves quicker in a dream so events within that state seem slower than the time elapsed in the real world. But the altering of time is also what happens in films, as Goldberg suggests, as the director, through editing, collapses time, or slows it down with camera techniques. So, Nolan is commenting on how, while watching a film, we take for reality that which is not physically possible.

 

Goldberg suggests parallels between the characters in this story and those who make movies: Cobb is the director; Arthur is the producer; Ariadne is the writer (Nolan considered her the “production designer;” Eames (Tom Hardy) is the actor; Saito is the studio; Robert Fischer, (Cillian Murphy), the mark, is the audience; Yusuf  (Dileep Rao), the craftspeople. As noted Cobb’s first name is Dom, which means “home,” as in “domicile,” and Cobb is trying to get there. According to IDMb, if you throw in the names of Robert’s godfather, Peter Browning (Tom Berenger), and Mal, and use the characters’ first names it spells out, “Dreams Pay.”

 

Ariadne and Cobb enter the subconscious state again, and she can make the Parisian city streets fold back onto themselves. Her abilities, and thus, those of the filmmakers is impressive. But it’s her dream and she uses her own memories to create the scene. Her altering the “physics” of the dream construct becomes a red flag for Cobb’s subconscious and realizing it is being manipulated treats her like antibodies attacking an invading pathogen. She imagines a real Parisian bridge that Cobb recognizes and there are images from his memory with Mal there. He tells her it’s dangerous to draw from detailed experiences from her own memory instead of inventing new constructs because it “is the easiest way to lose your grasp on what’s real and what is a dream.” That suggests that the architect will then lose orientation and thus control. Ariadne is very insightful and asks Cobb if that is why he can’t be the architect, because he loses the reality/fantasy distinction, which points to his problem with Mal. Cobb’s defense mechanism manifests itself as a mob of people grabbing Ariadne and Cobb, and also as Mal, who appears and stabs Ariadne. She wakes up because she was killed in the dream. Arthur explains the need for “totems,” like Cobb’s top. It is a “small object, potentially heavy,” (to stress its importance through weight?). It is something that no one else knows about, and which only the owner can distinguish the feel and the weight of it. That way, Arthur explains, “you know beyond a doubt that you’re not in someone else's dream.” She feels at this point that Cobb’s mind is too unstable and threatening and she leaves. Cobb is sure that she is intrigued (maybe addicted?) and will return.

 

Cobb travels to Mombasa to recruit Eames to be the “forger,” which means within dreams he has the talent to impersonate other people. Eames recommends that the planting of an idea must be something simple and basic to the individual. In this case, the father/son relationship. They are followed by bounty hunters hired by Cobol Engineering. As Cobb runs away, there is an aerial shot that makes what is below look like a maze, like the one that a dream architect constructs (or a filmmaker?). With the help of Saito, who tracked Cobb, they escape. 

 

Ariadne returns as Cobb predicted. She eventually chooses as a totem a semi-hollow bishop chess piece to make its weight distinctive (the reference to the game suggests a similarity to the inception attempt, mirroring the complexity of the game’s moves to score a victory). She and Arthur enter a dream state where he shows her how to create architectural paradoxes that are subtle and which allow them to control the scenario for their subject. She asks about Mal. It is here that Arthur states that Mal is dead and now only exists as a projection in Cobb’s mind. Unlike the imagined Mal, in real life, she, according to Arthur, was “lovely,” which shows how what we take to be true can be distorted by the way our minds warp existence.

 

Eames takes them to the chemist, Yusuf. Cobb wants a three-level dream for inception, which, Yusuf notes, is very difficult since dreams become more unstable as they go deeper. But Yusuf has made a drug variation that keeps the different states cohesive. He shows the others some people that are in that sedated state and have exchanged their real lives for the subconscious ones, living out what appears to be years in that alternate universe, with real life becoming to them the fantasy. Cobb understands that they become dream dependent, like a drug addiction, and need longer periods of time inhabiting their escapist world, because “after a while, it becomes the only way you can dream.” These subjects look like they are in an underground drug den. The concept is both intriguing and frightening. Cobb samples this sedative state and is impressed but also wakes up rattled after encountering Mal, which points to his fragile subconscious state. 

 

The group includes Saito who wants to make sure the job gets done. The target is Robert Fischer, who is the next-in-line at his father’s company, the one Saito wants broken up or else the Fischer company will have dominance in the energy field. His father, Maurice Fischer (Pete Postlethwaite) is dying. Eames wants access to Maurice’s closest confidante and Robert’s godfather, Peter Browning, to understand the dynamics of the family relationship. Eames studies Browning’s mannerisms and says he can impersonate this influential man “in the first layer of the dream.” (Again, we see how invasive this technique is, a sort of hacking of the mind). His plan is for Browning (Eames in disguise) to suggest the idea of dissolving the company so that it will carry over into the second level of the dream and seem as if Robert came up with the concept himself. 

 

Ariadne tells Cobb about her work on the maze structures. She wants to show Cobb a model of her constructs, but he doesn’t want to see it, and she realizes that if he has knowledge of what is planned, so will his mental version of Mal, who will sabotage the process. He admits to this fact, but hasn’t told the others of the extent of his subconscious undermining the project. He wants to get home and here admits that he is wanted for Mal’s murder. As we go deeper in the dream states, there is a parallel depth of discovery concerning Cobb’s secrets. 

 

The team discusses how to change a business strategy into an “emotional” entity, because as Cobb says, the subconscious runs on the emotional, not the rational. Cobb also suggests implanting a positive concept, because, “we all yearn for reconciliation, for catharsis,” sort of how an audience watching a film wants some type of positive release of troubling feelings. They decide on persuading Robert to not want to follow in his father’s “footsteps,” and also to believe, “I will create something for myself,” in the second level. These thoughts will then connect with what they suggest in the third realm which will provide a feeling of healing with the father’s positive wishes for Robert, which are, “My father doesn’t want me to be him.” 

 

They determine in dream time that the first phase will seem like a week, the second will appear as six months, and the third will feel as if ten years have passed. To exit the dreams, there must be “kicks” since, despite the heavy sedation to prohibit any waking from the dreams, Yusuf has left inner ear function intact so a sense of falling will wake up the sleeper. Here, waking is like a parachute to save a person who falls out of a plane. It is interesting that they plan to carry out their mission on a jumbo jet, which suggests escape from the world on the ground, just as a dream is a trip away from the everyday world. They need ten hours and Saito knows that Robert flies from Sydney to Los Angeles every two weeks. Saito buys the airline to ensure control over the situation.

 

Ariadne finds Cobb alone on the dream machine. She joins him, and finds herself descending in an elevator (going deeper into his subconscious?) to a level where he sees Cobb talking with Mal. She reminds him that he had a “dream” of growing “old together.” She suggests there is a way to do that. It is his feeling sorry about losing her that is seducing him, through Mal’s subconscious persona, to join her in the dream state forever. The two become aware of Ariadne’s presence, and Cobb accompanies her in the elevator as they ascend since he knows her presence will cause Mal to be threatening. They rise to another of his memories which has Mal and his children on the beach (the children look the same and are wearing the identical clothes as in his other visions, reflecting a baseline for his recollections of them). After Ariadne wonders why Cobb tortures himself with these living dreams, he says it’s the only way he can dream now, and he wants to feel as if his family is “still together,” a denial of what actually is. He is like those addicts in Yusuf's basement den. She says these are not created dreams but manifestations of memories, the opposite of what he advised Ariadne to do, since distinction between worlds will be difficult to differentiate. She says Cobb can’t put Mal in the past. It seems that she still possesses him, only in these fantasies she has a tangibility that is not ghost-like, making them more compelling. They now ride the elevator to Cobb’s house after Mal has died. There are James and Phillipa (again, appearing as before, their faces always turned away from him, stressing their being out of reach) in the yard. A man appears and hands him plane tickets that, probably, allow him to escape being arrested. He says the only way he will see his children’s smiling faces again is by returning home. 

 

Ariadne runs away from Cobb, enters the elevator, and descends to the bottom level, to one of Cobb’s most frightening memories to discover what happened in his past. The room she enters is trashed. Mal is there asking in a threatening way why Ariadne is there. Ariadne says she wants to understand, but Mal cuts her off, saying she can’t fathom what it’s like to love and feel like one is ‘half of a whole.” Her remark reveals a deep dependency that existed between her and Cobb. Mal likens being a lover to riding on a train without knowing or caring about the destination, because, as the arriving Cobb says, the couple is on it together. These lines are repeated in the movie, as well as the train references for romantic and ironic effect. He says they are in a hotel room where they celebrated their wedding anniversary. (We learn later what happened at this location). Mal has a broken wine glass in her hand. An enraged Mal tries to get at them as Ariadne and Cobb escape into the elevator. She yells that Cobb promised they would age together, and he promises he will return.

 

They wake up, and Ariadne says Cobb can’t contain Mal which means she is a threat to their enterprise. She gives him an ultimatum of either her sharing what she just witnessed or letting Arthur know about it. Saito and Arthur arrive with the news that Maurice died and Robert will be accompanying his father’s body to Los Angeles. Cobb agrees to have Ariadne accompany them. They are in a sectioned off part of first class. Eames pickpockets Robert’s passport, and hands it to Cobb, who tells Robert he found it, using the ploy to get close to him. The appearance of aiding someone is as phony as are the dream states. Cobb drugs Robert’s glass of water with the help of a flight attendant Saito probably paid off. She makes sure they have privacy and helps them use the sleep devices. 

 

They first enter Yusuf's dream. It is pouring rain in New York City, necessitating the need for a taxicab, which Cobb’s crew obtains. They pick up Robert, and Eames jumps in the vehicle, while Saito is in the front seat with a gun. Cobb and Ariadne follow in a car which is then sideswiped by a train coming down the middle of the street. It is most likely Mal up to her tricks, and the train she used as a metaphor on which carefree lovers travel turns into an instrument to punish the absent lover, Cobb. Men in other cars start shooting at the cab and a gunfight and a car chase ensues. Saito is shot in the chest. When they stop, they place a sack over Robert’s head and put him in another room. Arthur explains that Robert was trained to defend against dream thieves, and his subconscious became “militarized” once he found he was in danger in the dream. Cobb is enraged that Arthur did not find out about Robert’s subconscious defense abilities. Eames wants to wake up Saito by killing him and avoid his suffering from his wound. What Cobb and Yusuf have not told them is that the extreme sedation needed to pull off three dream layers can’t be overcome by dying in a dream. If that happens, the sleeper winds up in “limbo,” which is “unconstructed dream space.” Arthur says that it is “raw, infinite subconscious,” which is a void, except for what remains of “what might have been left behind by anyone sharing the dream who’s been trapped there before.” Arthur says in their case, the only one who fits the description is Cobb. Yusuf says someone who dies in the dream could be trapped in that limbo state until the sedation wears off, or for decades, or forever. Cobb promised to give his whole share to Yusuf who trusted him because Cobb had performed inception before. Arthur is incensed that Cobb risked their lives without warning of the possible consequences of heavy sedation. Such are the horrific dangers of messing with people’s minds.

 

Cobb says they should continue with the job. Covering their faces, Arthur and Cobb interrogate Robert about the combination of the safe in his father’s room. Robert denies any knowledge, but then hears screams, which come from Eames who altered himself to appear as Browning, whom Robert calls “Uncle Peter.” They bring in “Browning” and handcuff him. He says he has been worked over by the kidnappers but he doesn't know the safe combination. Robert tells “Browning” he doesn’t know it either. Robert says the men only want a ransom, but “Browning” says that the plan of their abductors is to lock the two of them in a van and drive them into the river if they don’t get into the safe. In their discussion, Robert expresses the lack of communication he had with his father. “Browning” says there is an alternate will in the safe that allowed for the dissolution of the company if Robert wanted that to happen. He also tells Robert that his father loved him. But, Robert only remembers his father’s last word which was “disappointed,” which he assumes was how Maurice felt about his son. Here Eames plants the idea of breaking up the corporation. 

 

Meanwhile, Saito says that he will honor his arrangement with Cobb, but Cobb says if Saito dies he can wind up in limbo, his mind devoid of any real world agreement, and be that old man with regrets that he told Cobb he would be if he didn’t take Saito’s offer. Saito is defiant, however, and says he will return from limbo and they both will be the age they are now. This scene reflects back to the beginning, so we know at this point it is a foreshadowing.

 

Confronted by Ariadne, Cobb provides the backstory of what happened to Mal. The two had been experimenting with going deeper into the subconscious and found themselves in the limbo state. They spent what seemed to them like fifty years as they built an alternate world there. For Cobb it eventually became too difficult knowing that the life they were living was not real. But Mal chose to forget that this alternate reality was a dream. (There is a shot of her locking her totem, the brass top that Cobb now has, in a safe, representing what she hid away. Safes populate this dream world, representing people’s secrets). When they woke up as old souls back in young bodies it was a difficult transition, an impossible one for Mal. Her denial of the truth about the fantasy world tended to come to the surface and she still felt she was in a dream even after they returned to the real world. Ariadne asks about their children, and Cobb says that Mal thought they “were just projections” and their actual children existed outside, in the real life she had to reach. (There is a quick shot of one child that looks the same as other images, just the back of the head showing, the same age, and wearing the same clothes). At that ransacked hotel room, Cobb saw Mal outside on the edge of the building. She couldn’t be without Cobb and filed a document with her lawyer which showed that psychiatrists found her sane and that she was afraid that Cobb was trying to kill her. The destroyed room was most likely done to illustrate Cobb’s dangerous nature. She used the threat of the release of this information as extortion to force Cobb to join her in her suicidal “waking up.” He refused to jump and tried to convince her not to harm herself. But, she jumped to her death and Cobb fled, leaving his children with their grandmother. Here the film shows the potential perils of the lies we tell ourselves to the point we don’t know what is true anymore. Ariadne offers her help and says Cobb must relieve himself of his guilt which will drain Mal’s destructive power in his subconscious. 

 

Robert’s dream defenses close in on the team and they again put a sack over Robert and take him and “Browning” in a van and drive away. They enter the second dream in the van. Saito’s wound is less of a problem as they descend in stages, but it still can catch up to him. Their plan is to gain Robert’s confidence. Cobb finds Robert at the bar of a hotel. He tells Robert that he is part of the dream security to protect him, but as he speaks Cobb sees the same image of his children, so Mal’s influence is at work. 

 

What occurs in the various stages of dreams apparently can affect what happens in other levels. Because the van in the first dream goes through bad weather and bangs around as it is being pursued, the surroundings in the second dream reflect some strange turbulence, which Cobb uses to convince Robert that he is in a dream, along with the fact that Robert can’t remember how he came to be at that hotel. Robert goes with Cobb and Cobb shoots men following them, who are the real dream protectors, but Cobb says they are the people trying to extract secrets from him. He hands Robert a gun as an act of trust, but Robert points it to himself, saying he should kill himself to wake up. Cobb says he may be deeply sedated, and may not wake up, which in this case is the truth, so Robert hands over the gun.

 

Cobb gets Robert to remember what happened in the prior dream. He was forced to state some numbers that might be from his subconscious to open the safe. Here, Cobb suggests that they refer to a hotel room. Meanwhile Arthur explains to the novice Ariadne as he places explosive charges around a hotel room that there will be a “kick” when the van hits a barrier and there must be sequenced kicks in the dreams to get them to wake up when the time is right. 

 

Cobb takes Robert to a hotel room based on the numbers he remembered saying. They find the sleep machine there, and Cobb says that Browning was ready to put him in a dream within his dream (which Cobb’s team has already done). Robert’s projection of Browning arrives and admits to what Robert is already suspecting, that he was trying to get the new will to stop Robert from dividing up the company. The Browning projection says that Samuel wanted his son to build his own company because he was “disappointed” that Robert had never done anything himself. Browning says that Robert can build a better company. Cobb says that this version of Browning is lying and wants them to enter Browning’s subconscious to discover what Browning is hiding. But, they are really going into Robert’s mind. 

 

Arthur is left behind to protect the sleepers in the second level from Robert’s defenses and to help coordinate the kicks when they happen. Yusuf’s van in the first dream topples causing a disruption of gravity in the second level as Arthur and his assailants lose gravity and fight floating around. When the van heads toward a fall off the bridge ahead of time Arthur hears Yusuf’s music warning that the drop is coming soon. (The van hitting the bridge’s barrier does not cause the kick needed to wake up the second level dreamers, which is not really explained). When the van is in midair Arthur’s level is free floating and he must devise a way to get the sleepers to experience a kick without gravity. The original plan was for him to set off explosives in the room below the sleepers to create a kick to wake them in the second level. He ties them together with phone wires, puts them in an elevator, and eventually sets off explosives that cause the falling elevator to simulate gravity so they can experience the kick. 

 In the third level, Robert’s vault is in a snowy armed fortress. They hear the warning music too. They must fight Robert’s defenses (which he at this point thinks are Browning's). Ariadne is wary of telling Cobb details about her construction in the third level for fear Mal in his subconscious will betray them. The van going over the bridge translates to an avalanche in the third dream state. (Why there is no loss of gravity in the third level of the dream is not explained). Cobb says that when the van hits the water there will be the next kick. But Cobb’s projection of Mal appears and she shoots Robert as he approaches the safe. Cobb’s team gather near Robert, and Cobb knows the shot man is dead in the dream and his mind has gone to the limbo stage. Saito also dies from his wound he experienced in the first dream stage, and he also travels to limbo. 

 

Ariadne says they can still prevail by following Robert to limbo where time passes very quickly and bring him back to the third stage where they can revive him with a defibrillator. She and Cobb use the dream machine to enter limbo, and Cobb knows where Mal is and says Robert will be there, as she will use him as a bargaining chip to draw Cobb to her, joining her in limbo. We are now back on that beach where we first saw Cobb at the beginning. Part of this world is deteriorating, though, as Cobb left it and was not there to sustain it with Mal. Cobb did the opposite of what he recommended which is to create dreams out of one’s memories. By doing so, as he said, it becomes harder to separate fact from fiction. 

 

They find Mal and she begins to sow doubts about what Cobb thinks is the real world where he feels persecuted, being chased by large corporations and governments. She wants him to choose her reality over his, one not having preeminence over the other. The duplicate images of the children again appear. It is here that Cobb says how he practiced inception on Mal. He broke into her safe in limbo, retrieved the top, and spun it, and since it did not stop spinning, he was able to insert the idea she forgot, that her “world is not real.” They did not wake up as he previously said but laid down on railroad tracks and let the train kill them. That is why Mal is quoting about being on a train and using it to disrupt Cobb’s subconscious mind. But Cobb says planting an idea can grow like a virus and that thought that her world was not genuine carried over into the real world. So, she committed suicide, and the only place she resides now is in the limbo section of Cobb’s mind where they built a life together. She is upset that he “infected” her mind, but still wants him to stay with her in limbo to relive what they shared. Cobb’s mind is confronting what he did to Mal, but he is still at war with his guilt over his actions resulting in her death. 

 

Cobb seems to say he will stay with Mal if she tells him where Robert is. Robert is in limbo now with her, still alive in that state with Mal. After Ariadne finds him, Cobb then tells Mal that she is not the woman he loved, only a “shade” of her. She attacks Cobb and Ariadne shoots her. Ariadne then throws Robert off of the balcony, killing him in limbo but waking him to the third dream state. (Not sure why Robert is effectively revived in the third level). Robert enters the safe which is a room which houses his dying father. His father says he was disappointed Robert tried to be like him before he died. Thus, inception is accomplished as the message delivered to Robert is that he must take apart his father’s financial empire and start over, making his life in his own image.

 

Eames sets off explosives in the third dream state which is the kick that somehow reaches limbo, alerting but not enough to break them out of that state. To leave, death is necessary, and Ariadne jumps off the balcony in limbo to wake up in the third state and the explosions there kick her and the others into the second stage, where Arthur’s explosion kicks them into the first level where they wake in the van falling into the water. (I still am not sure that film is consistent in how the kicks work). They get out and Robert tells Browning (Eames) that he realizes what his father wanted for him. Cobb is still in the van under water as he looks for Saito in limbo. Complicated enough for you?

 

Cobb stays in limbo and Mal reminds him of the promise that he made about growing old together. He says they did, and there is a shot of them as elderly people walking in limbo since time there is accelerated and they spent decades in that state. He says they did have their time together. He now tells her he must let her go. She dies from the gunshot and ceases to exist in the only place she can live, in Cobb’s mind. He is purging the guilt to stop her from tormenting him. 

 

We now return to the opening scene of the movie, with Cobb arriving on the beach, but we now know that this episode is a fiction as he encounters the old Saito who has a vague memory of Cobb. Saito asks if Cobb has come to kill him, and says he is “waiting for someone.” Perhaps in limbo Saito subconsciously remembers that he must die to escape where he is. Cobb’s repeating Saito’s words about living a life of regret helps Saito recall who the man is before him. Cobb is now performing inception on Saito, the same one he used on Mal, reminding him of what he forgot in limbo, that he is dreaming. He says these words as the top keeps spinning. He tells Saito to “come back” with him. Saito reaches for the gun.

 

The next scene has them all awake in the airplane, the assumption being that Saito killed Cobb and himself in limbo, waking them up. Saito makes the phone call he promised would set things straight, allowing Cobb to get back into the United States. Cobb lands in Los Angeles and has no trouble going through Customs. He finds his father-in-law, Miles. They go to where the children are staying. He takes out the top and spins it. The children are there and he finally sees their faces and they have a joyous reunion. But, the children are the same age and are dressed in the same clothes as he has pictured them in his memories. It makes us wonder if Saito’s promise was just to put Cobb in a dream state to convince Cobb that Saito had delivered on his promise. The top continues to spin, but begins to get shaky. However, we do not see it actually topple. 

 

Is Cobb in a dream, or has he returned to his children? Or, does it matter, if the only way he can be happy is through an illusion? Nolan seems to be saying that sometimes the lies we tell ourselves aren’t always destructive. Robert has been able to have an emotional reconciliation with his father in his mind which allows him to gain self-confidence and move forward as his own person. As Goldberg says, Cobb’s real goal isn’t to exist in “reality” but to work through his “trauma” about his wife’s death, face his guilt and take responsibility for Mal’s death. As moviegoers, “We accept that we miss chunks of time and don’t have to be constrained by chronology. We accept we’re being told a series of events that never happened.” With the help of those that constructed the architecture of a film (or a play or book) we add our own minds to the process to extract true insight out of make believe.

The next film is The Best Man.