Yeah, I'm also diggin' the emerging school of thought that extends the film to allegories of Nolan's life and his filmmaking art, and filmmaking in general, and filmmaking as the modern shared dream. This is another great level of thought and discussion inspired by this wonderful film, and I love how a film about dreams within dreams spurs level upon level of interestingness.

I still find it unsatisfactory. So the whole movie is actually a natural (unconstructed) dream being had by Cobb as a result of some guilt he's feeling over the ending (by death or otherwise) of his relationship with Mal?

That may be the intended meaning from Nolan, but if so I like the movie a lot less, not a lot more.

I don't see how the characters don't lose significance if they're all just "projections" (though the definition of projections as we've been made to understand them by the movie should now be ignored).

And if all this anguish over Mal isn't due to him actually thinking he caused her death (though how would be a complete mystery since the explanation given is entirely fictitious under this interpretation) and simply because their marriage ended then he shifts from tortured to pathetic in my view, especially since we have no idea why it ended to have any sense of the validity of his self pity.

Of course it doesn't help that I and the author of that apparently disagree on a key underlying point: "...the catharsis found in a dream is as real as the catharsis found in a movie is as real as the catharsis found in life..." I've no doubt that writer believes that (and Nolan may also believe it), but to me it is utter bull****.

The silly simplisticness of his whole overwhelming Mal guilt trip is only palatable to me as a dream construct. To extent that would be the real psychology of a real character would have turned me off. It's really quite dumb.

In the context of a dream, it plays wonderfully.

I understand how you can see it that way, Alex. But it's absolutely contrarily the more the whole thing's a dream, the more i love the movie.



Let's just each have it be the way that pleases us most.

If the movie was just a dream, from beginning to end, then nothing the characters do or say can be taken as truth. If the rules really aren't the rules but rather constructs to further the allegory for the filmmaker (going by Devin's interpretation), then the whole thing was a pretty waste of time for me. It's just one very long Mobius-styled vanity piece. I think I'd almost rather believe it full of plot holes than follow Devin's mode of thought- while it has indeed stirred much debate, my interest is rapidly waning and I even feel a bit cranky about the whole thing- Leo D is not my favorite actor, and the special effects were not enough to make it worthwhile viewing.

Then don't think of it as a dream. It's that simple. There's nothing in the movie that authoritatively says it's all a dream. Taken at its face value, it's nothing of the sort. If that interpretation displeases you, don't interpret it that way.

Absolutely, I hope (though I've probably failed) that my responses don't come across as me attempting to talk people out of their preferred interpretation of the movie (unless it is based on something demonstrably false).

But I do like talking about how I respond emotionally to interpretations different than mine or what I see as the implications of a particular interpretation.

If instead I'm coming across as browbeating I apologize and will try to rein it in.

You have strong opinions and you back them up. When my opinion differs with yours, it forces me to examine my argument or concede. I appreciate the way you present yourself here.

(Even though you're wrong about Inception.)

It is good, though, that we can have wildly divergent interpretations of the film and still both feel that it is a very good movie.

Also, I need to rewatch Last Tango in Paris so I can revive my argument that the events in that movie are also all delusional.

Lol- it doesn't displease me- I thought the whole movie was a dream already. I just was racking my brains to figure out the 'whodunit' aspect, and had something of a answer that worked for me. Then I read Audra's link, and that made a whole lot more sense. I suppose it irritated me in that most people, as movie-making outsiders, would not come to that conclusion and would be left twisting in the wind so to speak. Still, after thinking about it, I decided I liked the movie after all. A few things- I mentioned the mobius strip state of this movie, and then I got to thinking- I'm not trained musically, but would the two notes played from the Piaf song be considered a dyad? From Wiki:The Möbius strip is the configuration space of two unordered points on a circle. Consequently, in music theory, the space of all two note chords, known as dyads, takes the shape of a Möbius strip; this and generalizations to more points is a significant application of orbifolds to music theory. Also, it may have already been stated here, but the actress who played Mal is also the actress who played Piaf in the biography 'La Vie en Rose'.

Ours is a house divided when it comes to Inception. Though I suspect neither of us like it as much as you all seem to. I think it's certainly compelling on a storytelling level, but the characters took a back seat to plot, and to me, that's something that could have been easily fixed and would have improved the film overall.

When it comes to the is-it-or-isn't-it-a-dream discussion, the answer seems abundantly clear to me. The children are the same age, in the same position, wearing the same clothes as in his dream... years after he last saw them. What he's seeing is not reality, just what he allows himself to see when he thinks it's reality.