Before I start with this, I'lll go ahead and warn anyone who decides to read this that SPOILERS ABOUND!!! Anyway, now that that awful little piece of business is taken care of, on with the show.
I saw Inception last night, and I think it's the first time in a while I've been to a movie and not been able to get my thoughts together enough to talk about it afterwards. But, I've had some processing time and here's what I think, for whosoever may care.
At its core, Inception deals with one of the pre-eminent postmodern dilemnas that we face as a culture right now. The idea of being unsure how much of our reality is real or constructed is of great interest to thinking minds around the world, but Inception deals with it beautifully. The target of Cobb's inception, Fischer, seems to have a fractured idea of his father in the "real" world, but within the dreamscapes fabricated by Cobb and his team, finds some real purpose. There is some conflict here. The entire journey Fischer goes through is premeditated by others and thus not really a product of his own will, yet in his own mind, Fischer believes he has made a real discovery for himself regarding his relationship with his father and his own purpose in life.
This makes me a bit uncomfortable. The idea that a dramatic awakening of self could be the product of another entity's designs on my actions is frightening to say the least, yet the character I left the movie feeling most resolved about is Fischer. The guy gets duped into breaking up his company, but the manipulations of others also move him towards a more integrated sense of self. Is this what happens in our own worlds? Do others push us towards an idea of who we are and what our motives should be until we believe they are our own? As higher level thinking creatures, we like to think that we can find our own purpose, but in the end it is impossible to know what force planted the seed that gave us that purpose.
What Nolan does with Fischer is remarkable because it sets up a visceral image of the question many of us have asked ourselves; How much of me is really me? In the end, Fischer's journey is remarkable and emotionally compelling regardless of how he got there, but pales in comparison to Cobb's own journey.
As we find out more and more about Cobb's time in Limbo and the impact of his wife's inception, one must wonder how much Cobb really knows about his reality. After all, he lived in Limbo longer than he ever lived in the dream world. How many layers down was he? Mal's point regarding Cobb becoming a world renowned extractor only after her death raises some very important questions, and as she is a part of his subconscious, we must believe that somewhere there was always a doubt in Cobb's mind about reality. Either that, or someone is working Cobb himself to bring him back to reality and his kids. His father in law seems a likely suspect, as he inexplicably is there to pick him up from the airport and take him home. It's possible that the father in law is trying to incept Cobb to bring him out. Of course, it's impossible to know what is real and what is not, which I believe is Mr. Nolan's point. We can't be sure of truth, but we can ascribe meaning. Cobb may not every be sure whether his world is real or not, but he can find meaning is his overcoming guilt over his wife's death. Fischer finds meaning in his life in the middle of his deception. The poitn is not to know what is real and what is not, but to notice what is meaningful and what is not.
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