Inception Time

All right I have read most of the reviews in the newspapers and on line about Inception. Now it's time for my two cents - if it's really worth it.

My initial thought was that somewhere in this mix we would get to where Cobb's reality actually was. If you think we saw reality at any point in this movie. I believe you better get your diagram out again because we never did.

The entire 1 hour and 48 minutes of the movie is nothing more than a dream. The one significant character who brings that out to me is only seen in the movie twice - Michael Caine's Miles.  Despite his small tidbit of a role it is major enough for me to believe he's the one planting the inception. Because when Cobb goes to visit Miles the elder man tells Cobb "To come back to reality, son."  That right there should have tipped you off that we weren't in reality but stage 1 of the dream and that Miles had entered to make sure the incepton was beginning to take place for Cobb.  Eventually Miles calls upon Ellen Page's character Ariadne to "architect" the layers which involve the supposed kidnapping of Robert Fischer and keeping Cobb in his dream state forever.

The reappearing of Mal - Cobb's wife - throughout the movie is not because she was limbo and eventually killed herself because she could not take reality, it was a mechanism Miles had placed in Cobb's dreams to get him to comeback to reality, which Cobb never does. In reality Mal cameback and now with the help of her father and Ariadne they are trying to convince Cobb to wake up.  It seems they never found his kick to wake him up.

Everyone comes into the dreams are there to throw Cobb for an ego trip like no other believing he caused the inception to get Fischer to split up his father's company. When they are really trying to wake him to present time. Plus the projections which were Fischer's men were nothing more than there to make sure Cobb jumped from stage to the next throughout and with just enough resistence to make him out to be a hero each time.

Since Mal had already "kicked" herself out of the dream by falling from the hotel at this point she was nothing more than a projection in the fourth stage of Cobb's inception from Ariadne and Miles. Ariadne is then forced to shoot Mal to permanently take her out of Cobb's subconscious and allow him to stay in limbo to find Saito, which will eventually lead us back to the beginning of the movie.

Not to mention when you think about Ellen Page's character's name she was left by Theseus in Greek mythology. Just as Cobb left Aridne to find Saito and had her go back through the stages.


All of them have mementos which let them know when they are in reality and when they are dreaming. Cobb's is the top that he took from Mal as he continued to be in limbo and dream stages while she remained in reality. If the top stops spinning it means Cobb is in reality. If it continues to spin he's still dreaming. to me it seems the top did an awful lot of continuous spinning. Plus we only saw the other's mementos and never saw them in action. Not once.

OK finally the ending - Cobb finds an aged Saito. If it took Cobb that long to find Saito why didn't he age? Because it was Cobb's dream and he could be as old as he wanted and look as young as he wanted.  So as they travel back through the levels Cobb stays the same because he's dreaming he never aged while Saito gets younger. Through this now Miles and Ariadne can't seem to bring Cobb back. Saito does as promised and makes the call to allow Cobb to safely be back on US soil at the customs checkpoints at LAX.

All at the airport are there now to say goodbye to Cobb because they have brought him back safely to the original stage of the dream where he can either now live out his fantasy of being together with his children or go back to being a "mind" thief. They have all did their share in balancing the other stages of the dream sequence. Miles takes Cobb home. His two children are in the same position as we have seen them in every scene through the movie with their backs turned wearing the same clothes. They turn around to see Cobb and smile and are the same age as they were when he first left them and spent several years in limbo. Even if time moves slower than dreams as long as Cobb was allegedly gone don't you think they would have aged beyond the years that they were throughout his flashbacks and at least be wearing different clothes?

The top will spin forever as Cobb will remain in a dream state because it is his reality. It's how he remembered how things were prior to originally prior to going to limbo in the first place with Mal so many dream years ago.

This was definitely a Nolan masterpiece then again I have been a fan of all his movies, but this tops them all. We will look back at this film for years to come as an original thought that was brought to life. Nolan gave what a lot of us have always wonder could happen - going into someone else's dream and visualizing the experiences. A high score for a breath of fresh air into the cinema which has been lacking of originality for quite awhile.  The creative genius Nolan has given us with this latest movie should put him atop in the annals of writers/directors of my generation.