'Inception' reconfigures reality?

By Madeleine HARGREAVES

'Inception' is a 2010 American action film written, produced and directed by Christopher Nolan. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Dom Cobb, a skilled thief in the controversial art of 'extraction'. This is the theft of valuable secrets from deep within the subconscious during the dream state, when the mind is at its most vulnerable. Cobb's rare ability has made him a coveted player in this treacherous new world of corporate espionage. However, it has also made him an international fugitive and cost him everything he has ever loved.

Scenes from the film

Then Cobb is offered a chance at redemption. One last job could give him his life back but only if he can accomplish the impossible - inception. Instead of idea theft, Cobb and his team of specialists have to pull off the reverse. Saito, an energy magnate, wants Cobb to plant an idea in the mind of a man named Fisher, the son of a terminally ill rival. In return, he'll fix problems with the US government so Cobb can return to his children. Cobb takes the near-impossible job - planning three layers of dreams within dreams. It requires a large team taking a powerful sedative to ensure the dream state is stable.

If something goes awry, the dreamers may not wake. Normally if killed in the middle of the dream sequence, the sleeper wakes immediately. However, multiple dream layers,coupled with the powerful sedative means that the dreamer risks dropping into 'limbo'. This is unconstructed dream space, which can leave the sleeper in a coma. As the intended deception grows ever more complex, Cobb has to deal with his own emotions and feelings of guilt over his dead wife, which are projecting themselves into the dream space. Cobb has to deal with the eventual question of what is real and what is only a dream.

When Fischer the elder dies in Sydney, Saito and the team share the flight with his son Robert back to Los Angeles and drug him. The team enter Fischer's dream and kidnap him. However, they come under attack by Fischer's militarized projections and Saito is badly injured. It is apparent that Fischer has been trained to resist dream extraction. Cobb then admits that if they die in the dream world, they will be trapped in limbo for an indefinite time. Cobb confesses that he and Mal, his wife, spent a lifetime deep within shared dreamscapes, building a world together. After waking, Mal had remained convinced that they were still dreaming and committed suicide to escape, incriminating Cobb in her death so that he would also kill himself. This is what forced Cobb to flee.

Eames changes himself into Peter Browning, Fischer's godfather, to extract information from him. They then enter a van and are sedated to enter the second dream - a hotel. It is here that the team convinces Fischer that the kidnapping on the first level was orchestrated by Browning and that he must enter his godfather's mind to determine his motives. They in fact enter into a third level, where Fischer must break into a snowy mountain fortress to find out what 'Browning did not want you to know'. He unwittingly helps the team break into his own subconscious, circumventing his own defensive projections.

In order to protect and wake the team, a member stays behind at each level. He or she has to orchestrate synchronised 'kicks', which will wake them from each level of dream. These are, on the first level, Yusuf driving the van off a bridge, in the second, Arthur sending an elevator containing the team's sleeping bodies upwards in a zero gravity sequence and on the third level, Eames detonating explosives in the mountain fortress.

Fischer is killed by Cobb's projection of Mal and goes into limbo, so Ariadne and Cobb follow him down and confront her. There Cobb's projection of Mal attempts to convince him to stay in limbo by making him question reality, referring to events that occurred while he was awake. Cobb reveals that he had originally planted the idea of waking from the dream in Mal's mind to encourage her to leave limbo, making him indirectly responsible for her suicide. She attacks him, but Ariadne shoots her.

Cobb remains in limbo to locate Saito, who has now died on level one. Meanwhile Fischer and Ariadne return to the mountain fortress, where Fischer comes to the conclusion that his father wanted him to break up the company in order to be his own man. Cobb eventually locates an aged Saito in limbo and then appears to wake up on the plane to find everyone up and well. Saito honors their arrangement and Cobb enters the United States, returning finally to his children. Cobb spins his top to test reality, but is distracted by the reunion before the viewer can establish whether or not it continues to spin indefinitely or whether it topples.

I have now seen the film twice and believe I should view it again to solidify my position. However, I already have two different theories about the film's ending. The first time I saw the film, it occurred to me immediately that Saito had killed Cobb (on level 4 of the dream world, which turns out to be the world that he built with Mal) and that he had dropped down another level into 'limbo'.

Here in limbo on level 5 Cobb believes himself to have woken up in the real world (aboard the 747) and to have returned home to his children. The director deliberately throws doubt on the reality of the experience by the fact that we do not see whether the top falls or not.

The problem with Cobb's totem is that it wasn't always his own - he got it from Mal, who killed herself because she believed that they were still living in a dream. As Cobb points out in the film, dreams seem real in the moment and it's only when you've woken up that things seem strange. The sequences that are presented as 'real' are filled with moments that, on retrospect, seem strange or unlikely and that are unexplained. In any case, the end, at least seems to be without doubt a dream.

Cobb wakes up on the plane in a blurry, unreal way and that the dream sharing equipment no longer anywhere to be seen. He floats through the airport, which is unusually silent, without exchanging a word either with the team or with his Father who meets him. Next he arrives home to find his two children in the same position and in the same clothes they have been wearing in all his dreams. I was convinced, on viewing the film for a second time, that the entire film is simply a series Cobb's projections within several dream sequences. Scene one shows him waking on the beach which later turns out to be level 4, which Cobb allegedly built with Mal. Here he meets Saito (who he finds there in 'limbo' as an old man). The otherworldly way that Cobb, who is an international fugitive manages to move unimpeded between world cities is another mystery.

Another scene, supposedly in Mombasa, Cobb is chased by mysterious assailants, yet manages to escape via an impossibly narrow gap between buildings. This gap seems to narrow further during the scene, before Cobb is bizarrely and inexplicably rescued by Saito who conveniently arrives in a car (just in the nick of time). Then in a later scene, when Cobb remembers Mal's suicide, she is sitting on a ledge opposite the room they rented. Even the basics of the dream sharing technology is vague, most likely because Cobb's unconscious mind is filling it in as he goes along.

In either case, Christopher Nolan is challenging the audience to question reality. Even in very close relationship to others, we essentially live alone in our personal, subjective 'reality'. Each of us inhabits different internal universes from those around us. Even aspects of reality during the time we are awake can seem surreal and dreamlike.

Conversely our dreams are sometimes so vivid and colourful that we believe we have lived real experiences and had real conversations with others. Meeting others within dreams in a true sense is not a few idea. Mystic and new age thinkers often claim to travel and have encounters on the 'astral plane' during our dreams. Indeed the Aborigines in Australia believed in this mystical plane and that we travel there whilst asleep.

The ideas presented in 'Inception' are not dissimilar to those explored in the 'Matrix', the 1999 film,directed by brothers Andy and Larry Wachowski. However, 'Inception' is more complex and lacks the fantastical elements of the 'Matrix' and is as such, more believable. It forces the audience to question our grasp on reality more seriously precisely because it is not obviously presented as Sci-Fi.

It is a film that I highly recommend, although some viewers may find concepts both confusing and disturbing. A first viewing is a must, however, and a second viewing with closer attention to detail is advisable!