First off, one of the more nitpicky things that bothered me was the treatment of the totems. Cobb's totem was obviously one of the central images of the movie, especially in the ending. The scene where Ariadne made her totem, a gold chess piece, made it seem as though her totem was going to play an important role, but we literally never saw it again after that scene. The same is true of Arthur's weighted die, although it's not set up to be as important as Ariadne's chess piece. This isn't some grand conspiracy theory or anything, just a moment of Fridge Logic that hit me the next day.
Fooled you!
While I was watching the movie, I never felt totally satisfied with the way that sensory effects transferred from one level to another. When the van is tumbling around one level deep (I'm going to call it level 1 from now on), the gravity in the level 2 hotel changed correspondingly, but the snow world on level 3 was totally unaffected. In fact, the floating bodies in the hotel were probably changing their orientations way more drastically than the ones in the Van. On the other hand, I was pleased at the authenticity of the fact that freefall in level 1 was the same as zero-g in level 2.
Physics! (no, it's not the right thought experiment, but close enough)
However, the real thing that's bothering me is the last 30 or so minutes (surprise, surprise!). Fischer gets shot by Mal, and as Eames is setting up the defibrillator, Cobb says that there's "no use in reviving him, his mind's already trapped down there", emphasis mine. This makes it sound as though Fischer is now stuck in limbo, because he's died in a dream while his real self is under the chemist's heavy sedative. So, let's assume that Fischer is indeed in limbo and run with that idea. Ariadne and Cobb go to join him in limbo... by going to sleep? They pull out another one of the briefcases they use for shared dreaming to go join him in limbo, when it seems like that should just put them in a normal dream state, albeit now four layers deep. Anyway, even if we handwave that one away, there's a much bigger problem: the world that Cobb and Mal built in limbo years before is still there! That means that limbo, rather than being the dream state to end all dream states, is actually some kind of persistent reality! That's a big deal. A really big deal, and Cobb and Ariadne don't seem the slightest bit surprised or perturbed by it. Well, wait, what if Cobb is just remembering the world he built and is somehow projecting it into limbo? The problem with that answer is that Fischer was there first, and the projection of Mal has already bound him and brought him to the apartment where Cobb knows she will be. It seems unavoidable, then, that limbo is actually a persistent world that doesn't depend on any particular dreamer, which is completely crazy, and no one seems to care about it. This is aided by the fact that Cobb and Mal's city seems to be in ruins, cumbling and falling apart. When Ariadne asks him "this is your world?", he responds with "it was", which is frustratingly ambiguous. Either it "was" because they left it a long time ago, or it "was" because it used to be wonderful, but has fallen apart since they left it.
"Okay," you might say, "then what if they're not in limbo? What if Fischer is still hanging on to life and they're all just in a normal dream? That would explain why they used the shared dreaming machine instead of killing themselves". Yes, imaginary dissenter, that's a good point, but that opens up an even more problematic can of worms. If they're in Fischer's dream, where does the ruined city of Cobb and Mal's time in limbo come from? Fischer can't possibly know it, only Cobb can, so maybe Cobb is projecting it somehow. But why would he choose his limbo city? Besides, if they're not in limbo, how does Cobb find Saito after Ariadne leaves him there?
The other possibility is that one of our basic assumptions is flawed: that they're not actually in the top level in the airplane, that at least a significant portion, if not all of what we consider to be "real" is in fact a dream. Unfortunately, Word of God seems to lean towards Cobb being awake at the end. Michael Caine said outright that it's not a dream, and a costume designer from the movie has confirmed that the children at the end are wearing different clothes from Cobb's visions, and are in fact entirely different (and older) actors. However, there's nothing wrong with a little postmodern Death of the Author analysis, right? Personally, I think just saying "the whole thing is a dream!" is a bit of a copout. My favorite interpretation that I've heard is that Cobb is still asleep in the chemist's basement, testing the extremely powerful sedative. There's some fairly significant support for this - after he wakes up in the basement, images of Mal are flashing through his head and he rushes to the bathroom to see what his totem tells him. Obviously Cobb thinks it's possible that he's still dreaming, but he fumbles the totem, and Saito interrupts him before he gets a chance to use it. In fact, the only time after that in the film that he even tries to use his totem is at the very end, when we're left hanging. The icing on the cake is the extremely Yoda-esque old man in the basement whose only line is "No, they come to be woken up. The dream has become their reality. Who are you to say otherwise, sir?". It's too perfect!
Anyway, those are just the thoughts bouncing around in my head after seeing the film once. I'm sure I'll probably have a whole different batch of questions after I've actually watched it more than once.
Interesting observations. I have some of my own.
ReplyDeleteFirst, I'm pretty sure that just because the child actors at the end are different doesn't mean that it's not a dream. I read an article in Wired in which they asked Nolan about his take on a few different interpretations of the movie and he didn't seem to favor the "everything is as it seems and Cobb is awake at the end" interpretation more than anything else. So Word of God, as far as a I know, doesn't specifically endorse one version. Although he does emphasize (and I do agree with him) that the important thing about the ending is that it doesn't matter to Cobb whether the top keeps spinning; he's found where he wants to be, dream or not.
As for the dream levels and limbo, here's my interpretation. Saito and Fischer fall into limbo by dying. Cobb and Ariadne decide they need to go in after them and descend into limbo as well. How they do it is, I feel, fairly unimportant; you could say that when the dream machine takes them into Level 4 it immediately disintegrates because a fourth-level dream is just that unstable (remember, a third-level had never been tried before and required insane sedatives). You could also say that the dream machine has a "take me into limbo mode," or some incredibly deep dream mode that acts as an equivalent. Whatever the case may be, all five of them (Cobb, Ariadne, Fischer, Saito, Mal) end up in limbo at the end of the movie. Cobb and Ariadne are trying to find Fischer, so they go toward him in limbo. I definitely seem to remember someone in the movie commenting at some point that those who have been in limbo before bring what they created the first time with them if they ever enter it again, and so as Cobb enters limbo the cityscape manifests itself. Since he's looking for Fischer and brought Aridane (and Mal) with him, all four of them are in the cityscape. Limbo isn't a persistent reality; the cityscape version of limbo gets precedence over everyone else because Cobb had been in limbo before and therefore inserts his version of it onto everyone else. (Except Saito, because he was in a "different part" of limbo. Or something.) He confronts and kills Mal, rescues Fischer, and tells Ariadne to jump. Thus he is left alone in limbo, and somehow makes his way to Saito's world.