Inception Meaning
Spoiler Alert! If you have not seen Inception yet, do not read this article! It will spoil the movie for you. Now, if you have seen the movie and you’re curious about the meaning of the biggest movie of the year, read on.
Inception Meaning
The meaning of the movie is open to several different interpretations. While we’ve listed a few of the popular ones here, there are certainly more ways of looking at the film. In fact, even Christopher Nolan might not know the meaning – it’s quite possible he was creating the film to pose a question about the human experience.
In any case, the ending of the movie provides us with a few potential scenarios.
Scenario 1: Cobb was dreaming the entire movie
While unlikely and certainly a bit obvious, it’s possible that Cobb was actually sleeping during the entire movie. Seemingly, this wouldn’t explain the fact that his totem fell over at the beginning of the movie. However, because his wife used his totem, the totem might have lost its power. If this interpretation is correct, then Cobb should have jumped off the building to wake up with his wife (after all, how did they remain sedated for 50 years without being inside multiple dreams?). In this interpretation of Inception, the movie would seem to be saying that Cobb has not learned to trust his wife as she trusted him.
Scenario 2: Cobb is still dreaming when the movie ends
Several things are fishy about the ending of Inception. Besides the spinning top, there’s the fact that Cobb’s children are in the exact same position, wearing the same clothes, that they always are in his dreams. Secondly, it’s not entirely clear how Cobb and Saito have the wherewithal to emerge from the death state back to life. Whether the rest of the team has actually woken up from the movie is now unclear – we can really only see the world from Cobb’s point of view. In this interpretation of Inception, the meaning of the film is murkier – something along the lines of a Berkeleyan situation where we cannot determine the difference between dreams and reality.
Scenario 3: Cobb fell asleep at some earlier point in the movie
This could have even happened at the laboratory in Mombasa. However, the likelihood of this particular event in unlikely, mainly because it would make the story something of a let-down.
Scenario 4: Cobb is schizophrenic
Nuff said.
Scenario 5: Cobb is awake
It’s fairly difficult to believe this one, but it’s certainly a possibility. Yet besides the wobbling top, there’s little to convince us that it’s true. If this is the case, then Inception only touches on the eternal problem of whether we are dreaming of not.
Now, if you’re a student of philosophy, you should have several interpretations about the meaning of Inception. The debate will undoubtedly rage on for months and years to come, so add your thoughts to the comments section below before you wake up.
To decide if you are in a dream, is to remember how you got to where you are.
Now, at the end of the Movie, right before he ‘wakes up’ on the plane, they do not show what happens. ie, Nolan is implying that since cobb does not know how he got to where he was, he is in fact still dreaming.
Meanings applicable to real life from Inception
1. Time is relative and depends on motion, and the ability to be fully in the present moment unites all the levels of consciousness where time is experienced differently due to the different speeds of motion in those levels.
2. A problem must be faced and resolved to, well, resolve it.
3. Conscience functions like Ariadne the character in the movie and like Ariadne the character in the Greek myth of the labyrinth. In the movie, Ariadne appealed to Cobb’s conscience and wouldn’t let him hide, made him face and admit the truth. Conscience connects us to reality and helps us find our way out of traps and illusions into reality and freedom. Its the wire to follow to find our way out of messes we get in. When we hide things and lie to ourselves, we get lost. When we admit the truth, we find our way out.
4. Ideas are real, and they grow to become part of a person. When an idea is visualized strongly, it is planted in the subconscious mind and it grows from there until it expresses itself all the way out into physical life. That’s basic visualization.
5. Waking life is like a dream when compared to other levels of consciousness that are more real than this one.
6. We are more free, and in some cases more awake, in dreams than in waking life. There is a level of reality where we are freer and more powerful. If we go high enough or deep enough, we get to a level of reality where it’s all freedom, pure creation, and no structure has even been formed yet.
7. We do sometimes absorb ideas from other people. Young kids do that especially. And like the movie says, they don’t need to make logical sense. The ideas have to appeal to an emotional need, they need to satisfy a desire. Like, finding someone to blame or punish satisfies a desire for resolution. We can even absorb ideas from movies. Hmmm…
8. Behind every reality is a truer reality.
9. In subconscious mind, everyone is connected, although the wires are not necessary for it. In the conscious waking mind, people experience separation.
10. Much of what we think is objective reality is subjectively interpreted and projected by us.
I think that, deliberately or by accident, the movie plants some ideas like this in people who see it.
Inception is a seed that is planted into our mind usually by others…sb who has emotional influence over us for its this emotion that embed sit into the unconscious.This seed can be destructive such as its usually unidentifiable because were not consciously aware of it….to be continued…
We don’t know if it will continue to spin or will it stop..that actually raises a question about real life…what will happen to consciousness after we die? We don’t know thus the movie ends before we find out the answer.
It also questions how real is the reality were living in now…Or is death the real awakening?
For me asking myself these questions is vital. It leaves me no other option than return to the very base of existence. As inception tells us, true inspiration isn’t easy to fake. In fact it’s impossible to fake. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t excist. True inspiration you will only find at te source, the very inspirator himself, aka Creator…
You can block this thought, just as you can tell yourself you are not living a dream…
I’m not trying to tell the truth, you can find out yourself…
more info: Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis
Greetings, Rohinin
Was the japanese guy a psychiatrist promising to cure him if he submitted to some therapy session?
And the fact that his kids were regained suggested that he was either sane now…or more able to pass over some previous mental block keeping him from the full recall of his kids?
Certainty and ambiguity can’t occupy the same space. This film has more than a normal ration of ambiguity. For that reason, those who try to understand it may get carried away with their “interpretation” of its intended meanings. Denied certainty, they’re left with resolving ambiguities by guesswork (educated and otherwise).
Here’s how I think I see the film: Where Cobb seems awake, I suspect we should accept that he is awake. Where he seems to be dreaming, I suspect we should accept that he’s dreaming. When he goes into someone’s dream to plant an idea, I think the film is asking us to ignore our experience of the real world and accept that he’s really doing that. It’s sci fi, after all. At the end, having accomplished the mission for his well connected client, it appears that he legally returns to the U.S. He’s reunited with his children. The murder charge from his wife’s real world suicide is no more, thanks to his influential client’s intervention.
One problem with how I see it: If the children were no bigger in the last scene than Cobb was picturing them in dreams, or if they are wearing the exact same clothes he has been seeing in dreams, that’s a huge problem with seeing the ending as real world rather than dream state. The kids need to look somewhat different in that final scene. Frankly, I just don’t remember for sure.
The top is seen wobbling towards a stop. This use of the top at the very end is not unlike the device employed in some science fiction films of the 1950’s. After the words “The End” would come a question mark. The spinning top seems a 2010 version of that question mark.
I’m leaning towards scenario 1 at the moment. Ok, so the Totem falling should proove he’s in reality, but if he’s in limbo and the mind can do anything, then surely it could dream about the totem falling?
Anyway, most importantly, really enjoyed the film – much better than some of the recent tosh thats been in the cinema!
Rob
as far as the deeper meanings of the movie…those are more complicated than i care to debate…..
Problem 1: The Look.
When Dom wakes up, he begins to look at everyone, including his father, as if he’d never seen them before. And it is only when he gets home that his memory seems to jump back to him, when he sees his kids. Could it be that he had had a limbo mental problem, and he came back and when he saw his kids, it was healed?
Problem 2: The Awakening.
No kick, no wires on him, and no mental problems from limbo.
Problem 3: Mal.
Is she even real? Or is Cobb schizophrenic, and Mal is his other side that he has been sheltering for some time, and if that is real, then is everyone fake that is in his family?
Problem 4: The Phone Call.
How did Dom’s kids get his hotel room number? That is the point that really made me question what was happening. Maybe it was all a dream from that point because he had been in the dream. Saito’s situation could have been what caused Leo’s dreaming. Let me explain:
Problem 5: Saito.
I believe Dom was the subject of the Inception, and that Saito was the actual person performing inception. Cobb’s father is the one who set it up. His mission?: Input the idea that the world he was in was not real. Reasons: 1. Mal was keeping Cobb in the dream world for whatever reason (love). 2. His friends missed him.
Problem 6: Family and friends.
Arthur and Ariadne seemed to be of the same age and were a bit younger than Dom. They looked a little bit alike, and they seemed to be close. They couldn’t be Dom’s kids that grew up in the time he was gone, could they? Probably not, but the fact is that they, like the Mr. Charles bit, needed to maybe cover up their identities so that they could blend in with Dom’s job. The grandfather was involved as well, and both Eames, being a friend and Yusuf, seeming to know him, also agreed to help. Cillian Murphy may have also been in on it, though I think there could have been two Inceptions going on here: The real, social one about Cillian Murphy, and the underground hopeful one of Dom. After all, Yusuf told Dom to tell them about the men in the dream room, how they went to the dream world to get a bit of reality, so obviously, Yusuf either knew something about Dom, or he was in on it.
Problem 7: A Dream.
It could have just been a dream, or Saito could have left limbo and left Dom in there to create his world, since he died in the car, obviously from drowning. But wait, it never says anything about if Yusuf, who they also didn’t show for the rest of the movie after he left the car (besides in the airport for a portion), if he pulled Dom out of the van. But, the fact is that either Saito died in limbo and went back to reality either in a coma, dead, or fine, and that Dom stayed in limbo, or that he awoke in his subconscious.
Problem 8: Awaken.
He could, to give a happy option, be in reality and back with his kids. After all, his daughter was wearing red/pink (whatever color) sneakers instead of black shoes in the end, so you never know. Plus the totem started to tilt, so there was no way to really definitively say it was a dream… or either for that matter.
Problem 9: Leaving the Train in the Beginning.
When he left the train, he said “every man for himself.” Did anyone go with him? Did Arthur even go with him? Perhaps Dom is asleep on the train, dreaming all of this because he just did a job on Saito.
Problem 10: Death is the Road to Awe.
Dom is dead, because he and Mal either both jumped out of the window together, or the train killed them, and they were both crazy in reality. Perhaps many of the lines said were from previous life that Dom heard. Maybe they never even had kids.
Problem 11: Limbo.
Dom is still in limbo from his previous experience there, which would explain a lot, but would also show that Mal may be in reality with the children.
Problem 12: Completely Crazy.
Nothing in the entire movie is real, and it is ALL made up by Dom’s psyche, perhaps because he is crazy, he is bored, or just because he is having a dream, as all of us do.
These are all scenarios of how the ending could go. But perhaps none of them are right. Maybe they are all right. It is just about perception. Thoughts? Perceptions of Inception?
I think the Page woman was really his wife coming into his dream to help him get out.
Here’s a couple other pertinent meanings:
“To see a building in ruins or damaged, indicates that your approach toward a situation or relationship is all wrong. You need to change. Your own self-image may have suffered and taken some blow.” Relates to the final scene when Dom meets Mel.
“To dream that you or someone fall off a building, suggests that you are descending into the realm of unconscious.” Relates to Mel.
How about the snow in the last layer. “Since snow is frozen one might conclude that snow therefore represents an emotional coldness or a kind of emotional paralysis. Or one might believe that snow might mean that the intuition is somehow blocked–information may be received but the ability to trust it or act upon it is missing.” It’s in the snow stage of the dream that Robert finds out what it is his father really wants.
In the beginning of the movie Dom looks at his watch twice and the second hand hits 6 and 9. The same thing happens on the elevator when Adraine enters his dream. “Another female number, 6 indicates Dharma, Christ Consciousness, Grace, love, forgiveness, compassion. It indicates a request to go beyond the five senses and Karma and develop compassion etc. within yourself. Nine is not very common in dreams and indicates that the dreamer is Spiritually advanced. It is a request that the dreamer follow their life purpose because within this lifetime they can finish with learning the lessons of the Earth. These people would find themselves naturally drawn to learning about Spiritual matters.”
The whole movie is full of so much symbolism, I’m sure this will be discussed for years to come.
“Pinwheel- To see or play with a pinwheel in your dream, suggests that you will succeed on your own power and your creative energy. Alternatively, a pinwheel symbolizes childhood and your carefree nature. Consider the color(s) of the pinwheel.” Robert finds the pinwheel in the safe and finds what it is he was meant to do with the company.
“Avalanche- To see an avalanche in your dream, signifies your raging emotions which have been held back and repressed for a long time. These emotions have not been dealt with in a productive manner and now are being expressed in a sudden and violent anger. Alternatively, the dream symbolizes the inescapable stresses and overwhelming pressures in your life. You are feeling the weight of life’s daily demands piled onto you.” Shortly after the Avalanche Mel emerges to kill Robert putting the whole mission at jeopardy just as Adriane suggested would happen.
“Safe- To see a safe in your dream, indicates that you are hiding your sense of self worth and self value.” In Robert’s case this is true. The pinwheel remains locked in the safe and it is in that safe he finds his worth after his Dad tells him his disappointment in Robert wanting to be like him.
Probably the most important symbol is the top. “To see or spin a top in your dream, represents idleness. You are not going anywhere in life and are wasting your time away on frivolous pleasures.” Mel locks her top in the safe while Dom takes it out and holds onto it the whole movie. At the end the top does not stop spinning, which could indicate his idleness.
A quick internet search from the movies symbols doesn’t make the movie make sense, but starts to show the common themes and the fact that Nolan is a genius.
Best. Movie. Ever.
Like all science-fiction movies it narrates a metaphor, something that derives from the real world. If we consider how strange the real world is, that matter is made of vibrating energy and it reacts on the mind of the person, than the metaphor tells us the aspect of our self-created hell here on earth. Indeed most people suffer under their own self-created demons, projecting them onto others and onto events. Carl Jung’s theory of synchronicity is an example how inner states can materialize in the external world.
Michael Talbot wrote the book “Holographic Universe” in which he touched some really interesting implications that derives from the discoveries in holography and quantum mechanics. Our world is a giant holographic universe in which the small part contains the whole and where the mind forms the reality. Same conclusion is the result of Robert Lanza’s theory of a biocentric world, where consciousness creates the universe and not the other way around.
In the second part of the Matrix Trilogy the person “Neo” find out that his special abilities are also applicably to the “real world”. This could be one possible explanation to the end of the movie Inception. Cobb was so long in the dream world, that when he returned he could project onto the real world his own inner reality. Well maybe we are doing this all time!?
Is a lesson in what we use as a reference point in our own realities? Our reference points of people, places, things, religion.
Another thing is, who says a spinning top can’t fall over in a dream? The whole totem thing was way too silly and feeble to hinge an entire plot on.
Then there’s the philosophical point of, if you can’t tell the difference (for anything whatsoever), then it makes no difference. If there’s a difference but it can’t be detected – is the same as no difference at all. If you “believe” something is different but you can’t really tell, then that’s just another way of defining religion.
Jonathan
CN’s grand illusion seems to have many hoodwinked…
The nature of dreams is obviously a big theme in Inception but another big theme is the similarity between dreams and films. There is the idea that watching a film is like experiencing a (shared) dream, and this idea feeds in to the subject matter of the film – I think there are lots of in jokes like this in the film that some might consider pompous but the film has prompted a good debate if nothing else. I think other important themes are objectivity vs. subjectivity and realism vs. relativism.
CN likes films where the experience of following the film is akin to navigating one’s way through a maze and again this idea feeds into the subject matter and visuals of Inception. In Inception CN (as screen writer (or “architect” if you like)) has designed a multi-layered plot/maze with some parts barely signposted (not explicit or vague), a number of optical illusions and a few ambiguities. These characteristics lead the film to be open to multiple readings or interpretations (like the different interpretations of dreams). To continue with the maze analogy, sometimes we can misread or read too much into a signpost in the maze if it is vague or unclear (elements of the story that are not explained in detail or left ambiguous). My feeling is that if our reading of a signpost doesn’t help us continue on through the maze or leads us to a completely different maze all together, then it should be clear that we have misread the signpost (or read too much into it). Of course, people read personal meaning into films from their own experience the whole time and this meaning is still powerful and valid even though it is completely personal/subjective — but there is also the notion that the writer/director Chris Nolan knows what is going on in the film and his version of events could be considered the film’s “objectivity”, as it were. I’m suggesting that misreading a signpost in the maze could take us away from CN’s vision of the film.
In one interpretation it has been suggested that Cobb is dreaming (or in limbo) throughout the film and Mal is alive in the real world trying to wake Cobb up – now that is conceivable, sure, but I would suggest that it is very hard to prove that this is how the film should be read because you are relying on bits of story that aren’t presented to us in the film. I think it is our natural impulse to try and resolve the ambiguities in the film, but this process could, I think, make our navigation through CN’s maze more troublesome than if we just left them unresolved. I think it is probable that CN left certain things ambiguous on purpose (knowing that people would be tempted to resolve these things). The idea that what we chose to be our reality becomes our reality is certainly a theme of the film (relativism) – it’s like the dream junkies who have chosen dreams to be their reality and Mal who chose limbo to be her reality, what we make of the ambiguities feeds in to the film’s reality for us. CN has also elaborated the maze/story with various “optical illusion” moments e.g. the final scene with Cobb’s children closely resembles one of Cobb’s previous dreams/experiences which may prompt us to think we have gone back into the maze, as it were, and so Cobb is still dreaming (perhaps he’s in limbo?). Also the two scenes with Cobb and Saito in limbo that bookend the main section of the film are like the Penrose stairs — an endless loop. The point, I think (apart from being a kind of joke), is that if we look hard enough, we see that actually the two scenes with Cobb and Saito are not identical and at the end the kids are in slightly different clothes etc – that they are identical to before is an illusion (and the Penrose stairs could not exist in reality after all).
So I am suggesting that some of the interpretations I have read (including that the whole movie is Cobb’s dream) are the result of our impulse to resolve an ambiguity, our falling foul of one of Nolan’s illusions/jokes, or simply our misreading or reading too much into something that was left vague or unclear. I do think there is a “straight” reading of the film that works perfectly well (i.e. when we are told the characters are dreaming, they are dreaming, and otherwise they are in reality (so the end is in reality)). I think it is important for CN that this reading of the film works — equally I think Nolan was playing with the ideas of dreams/films vs. reality and set things up so they could be read in a number of different ways
The idea that the film is Cobb’s dream until he wakes up on the plane at the end is quite attractive but again you have to add things in that aren’t presented to us in the film – so maybe that’s more illusion, or maybe CN had this reading of the film in mind – who knows. The other thing CN did was to bring the themes of realism vs. relativism, objectivity vs. subjectivity and reality vs. illusion into the visuals and subject matter of the film (a relationship that is symbolised by the endless mirror). Maybe the multiple levels of meaning are symbolised by the multiple levels of dreaming. I have also read on another forum that the whole heist is a metaphor for the process of filmmaking where the architect is the screen writer, the forger is the actor, the extractor/inceptor is the director, Saito is the big studio money man or exec producer, etc – again this is possible but I’m not sure how far this should be taken though…
I enjoyed the film but I don’t think it was as original as Memento or even the Matrix. A lot of the action scenes were actually nothing special and a bit forced. Visually, it had some good moments but on the whole I felt this was a big missed opportunity (why was limbo so visually dull? and why wasn’t there more of the “creating the dream world on the fly” stuff which had been interesting and fresh in the first half of the film). Emotionally it had me engaged but I felt it was often a little off the mark (esp. the scenes between Mal and Cobb), but then again, I wasn’t expecting a rich emotional element from this film. Still, a great film, I guess.
In Inception that all he has he miss his wife, his children and if he see them then its real and he can’t see them then he still dreaming.
is your dream reality? Or is reality your dream?
I dont think they were saying “a spinning top in a dream will not fall” – but rather, in his wife’s dreams, when she spun a top, it didn’t fall.
Someone pointed out that Cobb awoke with no wires attached – but he wasn’t the 1st one awake.
Finally, some people are talking about how he could actually see his kids faces, so that is possible evidence he is awake. Just to say, in the film where he points out he can not see his kids faces, he says he is trying to change that. I think him confronting his wife in the lower levels of inception was him dealing with his guilt, which would allow his mind to make that change.
Here are my points that I noticed –
1.His Dad (Michael Caine) – making the comment in Paris “you need to come back to reality”, almost a direct plea?
2.His Kids on the phone having a very odd conversation saying “Granma says you’re never coming home”
3. His subconscious wife saying in his dreams he is always pursued by odd conglomorate types etc – (so we have to ask, WAS it Fischer’s mental training projecting the trained troops, or was it actually Cobb?) Plus in his “Awake” level he was pursued in Mombassa and shot at.
4.it is never really explained what his dad does, or how Cobb got into the technology of Inception, other than some army research chat about the equipment, Cobb just has it from the start… or Inception… of the film. And interestingly, how could they sedate someone in a dream using that same technolgy – i.e. is the whole inception briefcase technology thingy just a dream fantasy?
also, one point that stuck out to me, I noticed the line about “taking a leap of faith” being repeated, and obviously the reference to a totem’s (which makes me think indian totem polls, dream quests etc) – which also makes me think there is more reference of symbolism to Cobb still being in dream state, like his wife suggested. – and writing that, I just thought, with reference back to the start of the film, the guy “Knows” he is in a dream becuase the carpet the does not feel correct, which is what his wife complains about when they “wake-up”.
Basically, I think his wife was correct. Or that maybe Inception is suggesting that reality is actually non-existent, there are just different levels of dream state.
I have not enjoyed a film this much since I can not remember when! :)