[mousepod]

Here's my quick take on the Inception plot:

Spoiler:

I think the whole movie takes place in a controlled dream.

The only two ways that they use the dream technology in the movie is either for research, or to steal information.

If the dream movie was the former, then it would suck. Therefore, the purpose of the dream-movie is to steal information from some "mark".

So if the big cathartic revelation of Inception is that Cobb admits to Ariadne that he performed 'inception' on Mal, then most probably Cobb is the mark and Ariadne is the person who was hired to get that information.

If that scenario is true, then Arthur could well be the dreamer.

But who would want that information in the first place? Going out on a limb, I'd say Mal's father... who (at least in this dream reality) knows all about the process.

The whole Saito/Fischer story, then, is the 'fictional' contrivance that lets us know what's 'really' going on. It's a microcosmic telling of the story constructed to bring Cobb to his admission.

Did I mention that I really enjoyed this film?