#7: All That We See or Seem

 I've been having these weird thoughts lately. Like, is any of this for real, or not?

It had been the ongoing yet never fulfilled big plan of the summer. Go see Inception. Ever since I saw a synopsis I wanted to see it. Man with a mysterious past manipulates other people’s dreams and plants ideas. Good enough for me. Throw in Christopher Nolan as director and a great cast (mmm, Joseph Gordon-Levitt), and it’s a bonus. Add a plot that is so mind-blowing that invokes a continuous hour-long+ discussion on the ride home, and… wow. It’s been a very long time since I saw a movie on the big screen that left me speechless. Eventually I got a few one-syllable words out, but that took a while. It was very “Fire bad. Tree pretty.” It took me an arrow-abundant diagram and a good night’s sleep to sort it all out, and I’m still confused – the plot keeps spiralling off into fractals that get ever more intricate: dreams within dreams within dreams within dreams and maybe a few more on top of that.

So yes, here it is, sorted out, more or less. More less than more, I’d wager, but I gave it my best shot. Read and take heed: there be spoilers ahead. And I don’t know about you, but I hate spoilers, and I hate even more the people who insist on bringing them out into the open. Which is why I’m not.

So note: SPOILERS.

Dream on, if you dare…

CONTENTS: My Confusion NOTE: Alternate 1985 Not Included

The first thing I had to do was rationalize this whole movie – and since there are loose ends and a great many bits and pieces (not to mention that whole Lady or the Tiger ending), I had to use paper. The diagram above is the nice pretty Photoshop version of my erratic pencil scribblings (‘twould have been easier in Illustrator, but alack, I have it not). I’ve tried to arrange it in chronological order and account for all the sleeping and the kicking and the waking and – oh yes, the dreaming. “Limbo Rock” by Chubby Checker is my latest earworm. Anyway: now for the literal explanation. Here’s what I think happened:

Leonardo DiCaprio and Marion Cotillard (henceforth known as LD & MC) possess a dream machine. They think it would be great to see just how deep they can go: how many dreams within dreams they can make. Isn’t this fun. Eventually, in one of these experimental dreams, one or both of them die (not sure how that works) and they both get stuck in limbo. Well, they think this is peachy, and they create a nice peachy world in their own private limbo. This lasts for years in limbo but, as the movie later establishes, comparatively no time at all in the real world. But alas: LD gets antsy. He wants to go home and see his kids. So he plants the idea in MC’s mind that all is a dream they must wake up from. Enter the great train suicide. And here’s where things get tricky: either their death in limbo kicks them back into the real world… or perhaps into another dream, or deeper limbo. The movie never really explains, and, as you know, the ending never really confirms anything. But if LD & MC aren’t sent back to the real world, all that follows is a dream, and they are really still lying on the floor in their living room.

Well, dream or no, Houston, we have a problem. MC still has the idea in her head that her current reality is a dream she must wake up from. Cue hotel suicide scene. LD is devastated, and, suspected of her murder (due to some nice lawyer paperwork courtesy MC), he must leave his children behind and flee the country. Now, to make a living, he uses his dream manipulation skills to perform jobs for others. One of these others is Ken Watanabe (KW). After LD and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (JGL) try and fail to manipulate one of his dreams, he hires them to plant an idea in the head of Cillian Murphy (CM), heir to his father’s outrageously huge conglomerate of companies. KW wants CM to break up the empire, so to speak, so CM no longer monopolizes the marketplace. Whatever. Well, planting an idea in someone’s head is no easy task. LD & JGL need a team of specialists: Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, and Dileep Rao (EP, TH & DR). They devise a way to plant the idea: by pulling CM deep within a dream within a dream within a dream. Crazy. As a failsafe, they insure that they can wake up from these dreams should they experience a falling sensation – henceforth referred to as The Kick. EP puts in some practice, realizes LD has MC issues: his dead wife likes to cameo in all his dreams. And she’s pissed. But no helping that.

The plan goes ahead: the dream team plus KW takes a long first class flight in the company of CM. They drug him and pull him into DR’s dream. After kidnapping CM in the dream, they soon find out he has received training that guards his mind against invasion: all his projections (imaginary people within his dream) will destroy anyone who tries to harm him. Cue car chase and shoot ‘em up fun. KW is shot in the chest. LD decides this is a great time to tell everyone that, should they die in these dreams, they won’t wake up: the nifty sedative that induces them is just too dang strong. No, should they die in a dream, they’ll go to limbo, and their brains will turn to soup. Peachy.

Anyway, because this is DR’s dream, he stays behind while everyone else drugs up for their next dream. Cue crazy van chase and neverending bridge plunge (Kick #1). The rest of the team (including KW, since, as he is dreaming, his wounds are less severe) is now in a hotel, where they proceed to tell CM that he’s dreaming. Genius. CM decides to go with them to the next dream to retrieve the information that CM thinks someone is trying to steal from his mind via the dream. Confused yet? Anyway, this time JGL stays behind in the hotel.

Don't worry. It will get much more exciting in a few minutes.

Enter TH’s dream – the snow fort. After a shoot ‘em up, it seems all is well, and they’ve gotten to the safe (where they intend to plant the idea). But KW kicks the bucket, and MC shows up and blows a hole in CM. Oops. CM & KW are supposedly now in limbo, and LD and EP must follow him to pull them out.

But is this limbo? Or is this just LD’s dream of the limbo he and MC created? I’m leaning toward the latter. Anyway, there’s an emotional throwdown with MC, EP finds CM, and falls off a building to kick herself awake. LD stays behind. Let’s leave him there for now and follow EP through The Kicks:

• Kick #4: Falls off a building.
• Kick #3: Falls off the sides of the blown up fort as they collapse.
• Kick #2: Is placed in an elevator and jet propelled with explosives to make a “fall” in zero gravity (caused by Kick #1).
• Kick #1: Rides in the van off the bridge and into water.

Exit dream, enter airplane. Back to LD and KW: they’re in limbo. How they can be in the same limbo when they died at separate times I do not know. I also do not know how dying in limbo can send you back to the top, since limbo is the deepest of the deep: it makes more sense that, if you die in limbo, which is deeper than a deep dream (in a regular dream, if you die, you’d wake up), you’d go to a deeper limbo (which is why I think the entirety of this is some kind of limbo/dream caused by LD & MC’s decision to get hit by a train in the original limbo). Very confusing and open to interpretation. Anyway, LD & KW kill each other and supposedly send each other back to the top. They wake up on the plane, KW arranges LD’s safe entrance back into the States (so that he might see his children again without obstacle). He goes and sees his kids (who look the same as before – which also makes me think dream)… and the top spins… or not…

Cue groan. There’s so many ways to spin this and no clear answer. The more you try to make sense of it, the less sense it makes. It’s fascinating.

Will it or won't it?

I still have some questions, though…

1. Do EP and MC2 (Michael Caine) have anything to do with this? Is this some kind of spy effort on their part to find out if LD really killed MC?
2. And even more questionable and confusing: How could LD & MC make progressively deeper dreams if there were only two of them? If one person is always the dreamer and the other is the architect, and the dreamer must stay behind in the event of a dream within a dream (as the dream team did), how the heck did LD & MC ever get to limbo? All they could do is dream a single dream, and unless they had one kick ass sedative (which they wouldn’t need for a one-layer dream) and screwed up the first dream (i.e. died), they’d never get to limbo.

Ooooo. Trippy. I guess all that can be said is that you need to watch this movie and make your own judgements. They’ll have fun with this in film class for years to come.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep

But I have promises to keep

And miles to go before I sleep

And miles to go before I sleep…

And that, as they say, is that.