The many levels of Inception

I was inspired to write this after watching the following video on youtube - you can watch it before or after I guess but if you're like me you might want to leave some time for your brain to crawl back into your ears. Oh and it goes without saying, you need to watch Inception too - I was pretty late to watch it in the first place but I still know some people who haven't...

The title of this post could refer to the levels of dreams in the film but also to the many levels you can appreciate the film on. I think the video above is about as high as it gets but the great thing about it is that almost anyone can appreciate it, even as a great action film. Since it took me a long time to get around to watching it, I thankfully hadn't heard any major spoilers but I'd certainly had a lot of people say that it was a very complicated film, so I was expecting something confusing and mind bending that would take multiple watches to even understand. As it turns out, I found it to be pretty straight forward (not trying to act like I'm exceptionally smart here or anything), the film does a very good job of explaining everything that's happening every step of the way. Other people have pointed out that the character of Ariadne pretty much exists to ask all of the questions the audience may have, so that they can be explained to her and us at the same time. The concepts may be unrealistic but they are dealt with in a sensible and logical way, I don't think there's anything wrong with enjoying it on this level and not thinking too deeply about it afterwards.

As the above video explains, probably the best trick in the whole film is the ending and how for most people it got them thinking about whether the spinning top would fall over and whether he was still dreaming at the end. A lot of people were convinced it was a dream, I think I leaned towards it possibly being reality but at the same time I wasn't going to argue about it as I didn't feel it was that important which it was. Overall I thought that the point was he had got over the grief of his wife and that he was just happy to be with his children because he starts spinning the top and then doesn't even look back to see how the top behaves, suggesting he doesn't care anymore. So I saw it as a 'happy' ending either way, even though some people might view it as a bad thing to still be stuck in a dream. We all have to take happiness where we can find it I think, rather than hoping for a better world after we die. I guess it's a similar but different approach to the question of whether you would stay in the matrix for the digital steak.

But clearly that's the tip of the iceberg, as the video shows there is so much more that can be taken away from it. It makes a very convincing argument for both the final scene being a dream and that the entire film is a dream. It also raises more questions about dreams and reality that I hadn't really considered and will probably make you question the meaning of the film if you watch it again. I'll certainly be paying a lot more attention to all the background stuff I missed. It's pretty clear that the dream vs. reality question can probably never be proved one way or the other though, given that Christopher Nolan has stated it is supposed to be ambiguous and he probably won't endorse one particular viewpoint as correct.

This made me think of another situation where this kind of confirmation has been made by a director, in the case of Blade Runner and whether Deckard is a replicant or not. Ridley Scott has now pretty much gone on record saying that he is supposed to be one, but for a long time I wonder if he was trying to keep it ambiguous so that the viewer can make their own deductions? Certainly from my own point of view, it was a film that I loved the first time I saw it but the idea of him being a replicant never crossed my mind at the time. It wasn't until the advent of the internet that I became aware of the idea and over the years more and more quotes from Ridley Scott cropped up supporting it.

But should the director of a film have the final say over how it's interpreted? And does it make the film worse if you don't agree with this theory? It makes it a different film for sure and you could certainly take the approach suggested in that Inception talk and ask whether viewing the film from either perspective gives a different insight or a more sympathetic view of it. This is something I may try to remember in future if I feel like I'm quick to judge a film badly because I'm looking at it from a fixed viewpoint. I think it's still down to directors to make things clear to us through the film though and not just rely on a press interview to tell us what it's really about.