Inception - Analysis and Interpretation
SPOILER ALERT: If you still need one, then you sir, are pitiful. No, don’t just sit there and look for a Cam rip, get off your ass and go watch it. If it’s not playing in your town, move. If your friends won’t come with you because it’s too high-concept, then ditch them. If you are 4 years-old, well… I guess then none of these words make sense to you anyway. Here’s a picture of a shiny balloon http://bit.ly/amBIob
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The very first visual of Inception that Nolan presented to us, in the movie’s first trailer almost a year ago, was this small metal top that spun, wobbled and fell over. Co-incidentally (or maybe not), the last visual of Inception was this same metal top as it spun and wobbled. Things came full circle in a way, in a gripping ending sequence. Nolan chose to do us all in the head and tantalisingly cut to black before resolution, leaving the movie open to be interpreted in many different ways. This one particular theory has been spinning in my head for a couple weeks now, and I thought I should just write it down and see if it makes any sense to anyone else.
I call it, The Circle of Life.
Analysing the deeper meanings of this movie could give a headache to a rocket scientist, so he would quote terms like ‘angular velocity’ and ‘counteracting forces’ to state that a wobbling totem would infact eventually topple. That Cobb did infact reunite with his children and the movie had a happy ending. I too thought the same, immediately after stepping out from my first viewing. However, every time I rewatched the movie thereafter, things started creeping in my head that made me think differently.
Now, I am of the belief that regardless of scientific principle, the totem would indeed have kept on spinning. The genesis of this belief was the simplest of ideas that was planted in my head by one scene in the movie. It is when Cobb recruits Ariadne and asks her to draw mazes. The kicker in that scene was that Cobb couldn’t seem to immediately work his way through a circular maze. Then, in the Mombasa scene, while Cobb is being chased by people of the Cobol Corporation, the cinematography made it seem as if Cobb was running through a maze of winding streets and narrow corners before having to squeeze through the tiniest of openings to reach the cheese.
If you were to draw the architecture of the mind, as shown in the movie, on paper it would be something like this… 
“If you’re gonna perform Inception, you need imagination”
Remember that scene where the city of Paris rises up and rolls over? Visually stunning but what exactly was the purpose of that scene? Imagine rolling the above rectangular drawing around a vertical axis so that the top and bottom edges meet. Roll it a little tighter and it overlaps. A little tighter, and limbo merges with the real world. A circular flow of consciousness through multiple levels of the mind only to end up where you started. It is this circular maze that is beyond Cobb’s understanding. Cobb’s own ‘circle of life’.
Another hint in the Paris dream sequence is when Ariadne lines up two giant mirrors to show infinite, cascading reflections of Cobb. One possible interpretation is that, the mirrors reflect Cobb’s many existences in parallel levels of the mind. Infinite, because Cobb is stuck in this recursive circle where he cannot escape from the guilt of being responsible for his wife’s death. Yet another hint of circular infinity, the Penrose stairs.
So what happened in the movie?
Chronologically, the earliest scene is Cobb and Mal waking up on the shore of their sub-conscious. They lived together for many years before death took them back to where they started. Only, Mal’s mind was infected with the idea Cobb planted. She took a leap of faith and killed herself hoping to wake up and escape her circular existence. It is my belief that she was indeed successful, that she woke up in some other-worldly place (maybe Zion?) which was the real world. Cobb, however refused to take that leap of faith and became infected with the idea that he killed his wife. This infection slowly but steadily worked it’s way through the inner recesses of his mind through the layers, through the events of the movie. He brings a freight train in level 1, projections of his kids in level 2 and a projection of his wife in level 3, one he hesitates to shoot. Fischer dies and Cobb and Ariadne go into Limbo to find him. Here, Cobb confronts Mal’s projection and she stabs him. Ariadne rescues Fischer, shoots Mal and escapes Limbo. Cobb chooses to stay with Mal in Limbo and accepts that he has to let her go. She dies from the gunshot. Cobb wakes up once again, at the shore of his sub-conscious. Only this time, he is without Mal. He finds Saito and they presumably kill themselves. They both wake up in the plane, in what we assume is the real world, only it is not. Cobb has actually woken up in a deeper dreamstate, where Mal doesn’t haunt him because he has let go of his guilt and his only motivation is to see his kids. So he imagines Saito’s projection making the call and clearing his charges. He reaches home and cannot believe it. He spins the totem and suddenly sees his kids’ faces. He realises it doesn’t matter anymore to him whether the totem spins or falls for he is together with the kids. Reality or dream, he is where he wants to be. And that is that.
A happy ending.
Perhaps.
Comments, queries, rebuttals, debunkings are all welcome.
PS: Here is a not-as-serious take on the events of the movie, drawn crudely to summarise what happened to the parents after they saw it. (View in full size)
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Questions received
When a person is in limbo, how long is he/she sleeping (or sedated) in the real world?
To theorise, limbo is the deepest of dreamstates, so the flow of time in limbo would seem like almost nothing in the real world. Only frame of reference we have is that Cobb and Saito woke up on the plane just before it was to land. Kinda hard to judge how long Mal and Cobb were sleeping/sedated based on that. Made peace with the assumption that limbo is timeless much like… (SPOILER ALERT) Lost’s flash-sideways world.
If Mal is alive in the real world (after jumping off the building) why hasn’t she woken him up when she’s out of the dream?
Good question. In my theory, I come to the conclusion that Cobb’s “real world” and limbo merge towards the end of the film. Now we do not know how deep of a dreamstate Cobb is in, in his “real world”. But my theory would suggest that his brain is scrambled to such an extent that he believes he actually is in the real world (exactly what he thought happened to Mal) So, the “real world” is limbo. Now apply the logic of relative time as suggested in the film. While Cobb spends several years trapped in his limbo, just a few seconds might have passed in the actual REAL WORLD. Maybe the 10 seconds Mal will take to give Cobb a kick equates to several dozen years in limbo.
If you have a question, ask me on Twitter -> @Batmanush
