Just rewatched it again last night, regardless of the whole thing being a dream or not, he decides to live in said "reality" but...The biggest question to me is why Cobb does not use his own Totem. He uses Mals Totem. To me that's the biggest tell of the movie. Cobb would ONLY use his own Totem, so...its not Cobbs dream.
shareJust rewatched it again last night, regardless of the whole thing being a dream or not, he decides to live in said "reality" but...The biggest question to me is why Cobb does not use his own Totem. He uses Mals Totem. To me that's the biggest tell of the movie. Cobb would ONLY use his own Totem, so...its not Cobbs dream.This is addressed in many ways within the context of the movie. The key concept is about the "leap of faith" that Cobb had to take. The top is more than Mal's totem. Among other things:
Cobb is obsessed with the spinning top (once to the point that he has a gun to his head.) The top represents his obsession with guilt over his role in his wife's death. In the final scene, he is not watching the top, because he is cured of the damaging idea which has defined him.
He's not obsessed with the top.Yes, he is definitely obsessed with the top because he's obsessed with the idea that he may lose track of reality the way his wife did. Each time, he watches the top until it stops. When the top falls off of the sink, he is beside himself with fear.
Sometimes I think people lose the importance of the way the thing is staged with the spinning top at the end. Because the most important emotional thing is that Cobb’s not looking at it. He doesn’t care.
He believed the top was gonna fall while it was unstable, and forgot about it and didn't see it stabilized.
during the final scene with Mal, Cobb makes it clear that he would never be satisfied with a pale shadow of a real person. He would not be satisfied if his kids were dream characters.
Cobb doesn't have a totem. His totem is Mal's totem. It wasn't until inception caused Mal to kill herself, that Cobb realized the need for totems. So instead of making his own totem, he uses his wife's totem, in order to keep her memory alive and keep his guilt/responsibility always on his mind.
shareYou hit the nail on the head here--a lot of other people have missed this very important fact.
I think his kids are his totem, a little bit. In the dreams, he never sees their faces, and they are always running away from him, or have their back turned to him. He knows reality and the end IS reality because he can see their faces again.
Very interesting interpretation. But there's a flaw.
The whole idea of the totem is it to be used by its owner to verify if it's a dream or not. Cobb is shown some times using the pivot as totem for verification.
If his children were the totem, then he's look for them, try to see their faces, for the verification.
IMO, he just didn't see their faces, because he missed them too much. When he was accused of killing his wife, he left USA to avoid being arrested, and therefore couldn't meet them anymore. He missed them, and if he'd see their faces in a dream, he'd lock himself on the dream to live with them.
Mal wasn't the thing that would lock him in the dream. He loved her, but he was able to leave her. He knew the projection he created of her wasn't real. He couldn't finish it, but he locked it. When he finally had to face it, he confronted the fact that the projection wasn't good enough for him.Also, in the reality, when he saw her falling, he was able to stay and not fall. He knew he'd have to live without her, and have all that trouble, and still didn't jump.
But, when he saw his children faces, he couldn't resist and got locked.
But why did he let himself see their faces? Because his defenses were lowered. Somebody, not presented on the movie (or at least I couldn't find out a clue), for some reason I also don't know, got him locked there.
See, normal dreams have only 1 level. Rarely we're dreaming and wake up, just to find out we're still dreaming. It's a dream inside a dream.
When we're dreaming, we don't realize it's a dream, no matter how unreal it is. But in certain cases, (in the movie lore) in a shared dream, the subject realizes it and attacks the people in it. So, they create this dream inside a dream to trick the subject.
To inject the idea in the guy Cobb decided to use 3 levels of dreams, as we see. But, in reality (IMO), it was Cobb who was the subject. The whole thing was plotted. He was smart and expert in extraction and injection, so he'd not be caught easily. To lower his defenses and make him believe, he was put in charge. He had control and was let create the whole thing about 3 dream levels. But he was already dreaming at that point.
The dream level 1 was controlled by the person who was subjecting him, whole dreams level 2 to 4 were controlled by Cobb. Without expecting, he had to go 1 more level (the limbo) to recover Fischer who was killed. I think his death was planned by the people targeting Cobb, to make him enter the limbo. It wasn't expected by Cobb, but was planned by the guy who targeted him. He'd not go there willingly, if not to save somebody.
There he faced Mal, and didn't lock himself. He finally let her go and saw her projection dead. Then he willingly left back to dream level 1, which he though was reality. This was the second trick to lower his defenses. He wasn't being locked, he himself freed himself!
But, as shown to us, from the airport he's all of a sudden guided to a house with a garden. He tries his token, but it's "hacked" to move as if it was gonna fall. If the pivot stabilizes, it's a dream, if it falls it's reality. When he sees it moving he thinks it's gonna fall, then the father calls his attention, not letting him see the pivot actually stabilizes.
The pivot is the third trick used to lower even more his defenses. He was in control of the lower level dreams, he was in the face of being locked in limbo but freed himself, and finally the pivot seemed to fall. With his defenses down, he lets himself see his children faces.
Cobb was able to free himself from his wife projection, but he loved and missed his children even more than her. That's why he never allowed himself to see their faces, because he knew he'd not support it and get locked. But his defenses were down and he believed he was in USA, so he believed it was reality and let it happen. When he saw their faces, he didn't support it, and got locked...
Another evidence of it is that Fischer didn't realize the idea was inplanted. For Fischer, Cobb was his subconscience, as the other people on the team. When he'd wake up, if he'd see them at his side, he'd either believe to still be dreaming, or realize they were fooling him. For it to work, when he'd wake up, they'd need to be gone. And he'd never be allowed to see their faces again. But no, he wakes up, sees them in the plane, and doesn't care.
In this interpretation of mine, Ellen was obviously the main person controlling Cobb. In the dream she pretends to be friendly and deeply interested in Cobb, but in reality she was against him and the one in charge of discovering his secret and locking him.
I also wonder why a totem was used on the movie, and why people felt pain. I believe we don't feel pain in dreams. If we'd stay conscious in a dream (at least I've never myself), we just create pain on us to verify it.
Okay so you've thought this out pretty throughly. Do you think the end was real or not real?
Even though I don't think even Christipher Nolan knows whether it was reality or not. He wanted ambiguity at the end. Wanted to make people think about it and they FORM their own speculation. Both sides of the argument have evidence. It's just based on your perspective.
Also the totem isn't really effective IMO. He says to never show anyone your totem. After Ariadne said no about her bishop, he tells HER exactly what his/Mal's does. And she was the one who built all the levels. So that totem can't be used as a verification anymore and also it was Mal's not his.
But anyway, I used to think it was real at the end then I saw/heard some other evidence for the non reality side so then I started to say it wasn't real at the end. Also some people (not as many as the other 2 sides) say that the whole movie was a dream based off of the movie starting in the middle of a dream without us knowing how it was started, and the whole Mal and Cobb going up "1 layer" of dreaming. We don't know if they used a sedative or "died" in the previous layers. And that was all in the past. Mal could've been right the whole time and the movie was all a dream. So who knows??
So all sides can be correct IMO, it's just based on what you think. And
that's what the movie was made for. Nolan wanted that. I think it's his best film, my favorite film. Watched it many times and much more to come.
Okay so you've thought this out pretty throughly. Do you think the end was real or not real?
Even though I don't think even Christipher Nolan knows whether it was reality or not. He wanted ambiguity at the end. Wanted to make people think about it and they FORM their own speculation. Both sides of the argument have evidence. It's just based on your perspective.
Also the totem isn't really effective IMO. He says to never show anyone your totem. After Ariadne said no about her bishop, he tells HER exactly what his/Mal's does. And she was the one who built all the levels. So that totem can't be used as a verification anymore and also it was Mal's not his.
But anyway, I used to think it was real at the end then I saw/heard some other evidence for the non reality side so then I started to say it wasn't real at the end. Also some people (not as many as the other 2 sides) say that the whole movie was a dream based off of the movie starting in the middle of a dream without us knowing how it was started, and the whole Mal and Cobb going up "1 layer" of dreaming. We don't know if they used a sedative or "died" in the previous layers. And that was all in the past. Mal could've been right the whole time and the movie was all a dream. So who knows??
That sounds plausible, but what would anyone want to extract from Cobb? His knowledge about dreams and how to do inception? If it was already done to him (i.e. believing that his dream is in fact reality) then this information would no longer need to be extracted. The end of the movie is indeed very ambiguous, I'm just questioning about the reasoning of him being still trapped in a dream.
shareI believe we don't feel pain in dreams.
I happen to disagree with this quite a bit. Have you ever awoke from a dream feeling worse than when you went to sleep or while you were sleeping?
There's no accounting for the level of psychological pain that can occur in a dream.
me.
Why does cobbs wife have a totem if it was her death that started the need for a totem in the first place?
Why does cobbs wife have a totem if it was her death that started the need for a totem in the first place?Her death didn't start the need for totems - it was actually her idea to begin with. When she thought she would never be able to leave limbo, she locked the totem away and tried to forget her other life.
It's not shown what made Mal see the need for a totem.
It's kinda obvious. While we're in a dream, we don't know it's a dream. In cartoons we see people think they are dreaming and pinch themselves to see if it pains. But when that happens, they are never dreaming.
With experience in shared dreams, people get lucid and know they are dreaming. But still they can't be sure, so somehow Mal had the idea of the totem. For some reason she created hers and told Cobb, but Cobb didn't have his.
In fact she didn't think she'd never be able to leave limbo. She didn't want to. It all started with her having the idea of living there forever...
At first, they used to dream, have fun, then come back, to reality and their family. But they started to stay longer time inside the dreams, until they reached limbo and stayed there for years.
Mal still knew it wasn't real. But she wanted to believe, she wanted to stay. So she decided to forget it wasn't. For achieving that, she locked her totem in the safe, layed down. Being layed down, her subconsciousness believed it was real.
Different from Mal, Cobb wasn't satisfied anymore with the dream. He knew it wasn't real and wanted to go back, but Mal kept insisting it was real and refusing to leave. Cobb would not leave without her, so he started to search for clues of what was happening.
He found the safe, and inside it the top layed down. He spinned it, that made Mal start believing it wasn't real and they needed to die to get back. It worked, but the top kept spinning in her subconsciousness, and therefore she kept believing it wasn't real and they needed to die.
But since Mal knows what her totem does and so does he, he could be in Mal's dream and he would never know..
shareYes, totems can possibly be shared with people you are intimate with or people you trust. What makes a totem a totem is you knowing its unique characteristics so that if you are in someone else's dream, they can't fake your totem's unique properties. The knowledge of the unique properties could be shared with someone you trust. In this case, you wouldn't know if you are in your dream or in your trusted person's dream, but you trust them, so it's OK.
share(yes, Cobb says totems were Mals idea) and lets not forget also - Mals father was the one who taught Cobb everything about dreaming .. .
If you watch the movie with the idea that the whole movie is a dream and Mal's father is the dreamer and Cobb only feels real in dreams - its much more interesting!
Why would Mal's father be the dreamer?
shareHe might be the dreamer because he taught Cobb everything about dreaming and his daughter died because of it,
In addition to this guilt, the father also saw
how tortured & guilt-ridden Cobb was -
Also, consider how far and how long down the rabbit hole Cobb and Mal went ... 50 years ....
What was Cobbs reality?
The market place apothicary and dream lab were a strong clue - people has to go there to dream in ordee to feel in reality -
Who would know and understand all this better than the father-in-law, and have as much or more motive to help set Cobb free ...?
Of course, you can view the movie at face value, ie; this was Cobbs LAST job - he somehow managed to have a grip on reality despite his depths and time involved, and the top did stop at the end ...
lol sorry I wasnt able to undertand much
shareugg so sorry for all the typos ....
share . . . k . . .
You mean . . . You didn't understand much about the movie? . . . or you didn't understand much of what I wrote?
. . . cause I could see how both these things could be ... lol
: )
The biggest question to me is why Cobb does not use his own Totem. He uses Mals Totem. To me that's the biggest tell of the movie. Cobb would ONLY use his own Totem, so...its not Cobbs dream.
Mal means malady