On the Ending of Inception

Spoilers?  Maybe?  You think?  I'll let you do the spoiler-math.

First, let me set this straight: The last decade of my moviegoing history goes a little something like this:

Matrix 3 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - That New Star Trek - - - - - - Inception

So what I'm trying to say is that I don't get out much.

I see a movie in a first run theater so seldom that I had this conversation with myself prior to watching Star Trek some afternoon in the Summer of '09 -

Nate: Wow, I don't think I've seen a movie in a theater since the third Matrix.  Man, that movie sucked.  Sucked a lot.  Well, might as well go all out and treat myself to a popcorn and a drink . . . wait . . . how much?  Eight dollars?  For a fucking popcorn?  Eight fucking dollars?  What the fuck?  When did that happen?  Seven dollars for a drink?  Seven American dollars?  How?  Why?  How is this even possible?

I then dropped to my knees and pounded my fists against the ground Planet of the Apes style.  Needless to say, there was no popcorn to be had that day.

But enough hilarity derived from the extraordinary inflation of concession prices at movie theaters in America in the early part of the 21st century and on to the ending of Inception -

After surfing the internet (Note to self: see if kids still "surf" the internet - adjust parlance if necessary) after watching the movie I was struck by the number of  interpretations that centered on whether the Leo had entered limbo prior to completing the final mission and was still stuck there at the conclusion of the movie, or whether the mission had been a success and Leo was actually in the real world and reunited with his kids.

(One thing:  There's going to be a lot of "Leo" and and "Young girl" and "Leo's Wife" and so on.  I am actually unable to remember what characters in movies are named.  I'm not even joking; I think I have a condition.  I've watched entire movies with like one main character and could not for the life of me tell you what that character's name was if you had stopped the movie at any point and asked me.  Sure I could jump over to the wiki page and figure out their names, but whatever.)

About ten minutes into the movie, around the time of the first dream-within-a-dream sequence, I said to myself, "Oh, Leo's stuck in a dream."  I really don't see any reason to think that Leo wasn't captive in a dream for the entirety of the movie (with the possible exception of what happens after he wakes up on the airplane at the end of the movie - we'll get to that).  The question isn't whether the mission at the end was a success, but rather: Why was Leo in the dream?  Three possibilities:

I - There isn't any dream-sharing technology.  Leo's wife went crazy and killed herself.  The entire movie is Leo's sleeping mind trying to come to grips with his wife's suicide.

I actually like this one, but it does make a whole heck of a lot of the movie sort of superfluous.  Aesthetically speaking, Nolan should have cut down on the matrix-y gunfights and snowmobiles chases if this is what he was aiming for.  This interpretation does explain why the dream-sharing technology is so hokey-looking (seemingly intentionally so) and fairly nonsensical.  And why is there dream-sharing technology in a world that appears no different from our own?  If Nolan wanted to place the world of the movie squarely in the future, he could have thrown in a few flying cars or holographs or robot butlers or something.

II - There is dream-sharing technology.  Leo and his wife accidentally entered limbo as described in the movie.  She killed herself in limbo, exiting it in the process, and the entire movie is Leo trying to escape from limbo himself.

The movie definitely points you in this direction in a few places.  The scene where the wife mocks the idea that Leo is being pursued around the globe by some shadowy organization, for example.  Another example: The movie looping back on itself at the end with the scene of Leo washing up on the shore and being brought before the old man.  That scene also has all sorts of talk of trying to remember something important hovering right outside a person's awareness.

III - There is dream-sharing technology.  Leo is actually some sort of "extraction agent" and did perform an inception on his wife, which led to her suicide.  Leo is in a dream at the start of the movie.  The other characters in the movie (the ones who are on the plane with Leo at the end) are rival extraction agents who are extracting from Leo the method to performing an inception.  They get this information from Leo by tricking him into performing an inception on a person in the dream.  Leo wakes up at the end (in the real world) on a plane and then goes home to his kids.  Under this interpretation, the movie is basically an elaborate play put on to get Leo to divulge the secrets of inception.

A few things in support of III:

(1) The existence of Leo's wife.  Why was she trying to sabotage everything?  Why didn't somebody else have an ex-girlfriend or an abusive father or somebody who would occasionally burst into the collective dream and fuck up things?  Leo's wife's repeated attempts at sabotage comes across a lot like a subconscious that has been trained to attack extractors.  In fact, the last part of the movie hinges on the idea of turning the target against his or her subconscious (the Mr. Charles tactic).  This would seem to be taking place when the young girl tells Leo that his wife is going to be a problem and that he needs to warn the other team members about her.  In another scene, the young girl implores Leo to kill his wife after she appears in the ice fortress.  Actually, throughout the film, the young girl seems oddly focused on Leo's wife (the scene where she runs away from Leo and takes the elevator to the basement).

(2) Leo doesn't seem to know who anybody is at the end, which is odd.  After waking up on the plane, Leo's interactions with the other team members seem noticeably awkward.  There isn't any eye contact that says, "Hey, nice job.  The mission was a success."  It seems like they are strangers, which is what we would expect if they didn't know each other in the real world.

(3) The obvious dei ex machina throughout the movie.  Two things really stuck out to me: (1) The Asian guy suddenly appearing in Mombasa and saving Leo (2) Leo's father-in-law easily providing a brilliant new architect for the team.  There's actually a few things about Leo's father-in-law that bug me.  How was he teaching in Paris (and teaching what, exactly?) and then suddenly in America at the end of the movie?  Logical lapses such as these make more sense if the bulk of the movie (everything but the last few minutes) are operating under a sort of dream-logic.

(4) When Leo is running through the streets of Mombasa, the camera films from overhead, showing the streets of Mombasa to be a maze, just like how a dream world is a maze constructed by the architect.  Another interesting thing about the Mombasa sequence: Leo tells the guy he meets at the hotel to meet him back at the hotel after the chase.  Leo explains that that would be the last place the pursuers would expect them to meet.  Perhaps that's true, but it is also what we would expect if Mombasa was a dream and there wasn't any place outside of it for Leo and the man to meet-up (remember how the dream worlds are intentionally created as mazes that loop back on themselves).

(5) The fact that Leo isn't allowed to be an architect.  The movie clumsily explains this through the existence of Leo's wife.  Leo can't be the architect because then his wife, a manifestation of his subconscious, will know the layout of the dream and wreak havoc.  Of course, not knowing the layout of the dream doesn't seem to stop her anyway.  If Leo is actually the target of an extraction during the film, then it would make sense that he wasn't allowed to generate the dream world.

In conclusion, pretty decent movie, probably better than the new Star Trek (I didn't like how everybody conveniently slid into his or her job - Oh, hey Bones, looks like you're now the chief medial officer of this brand-new trillion dollar spaceship despite the fact that you just graduate from the Academy two hours ago.  How about that?).

Now, when is Leo going to get back together with the cast of Growing Pains for a reunion show?  Soon?