Dream/Reality

How do we know that we are living in reality and not a dream?

This is one of the questions made based on the latest movie, Inception. If you have not watched that film, I highly recommend that you go watch it! It is one of the best films I have ever watched. It has a good plot, great cast and great effects. Now, do not get me wrong. This is not something like Avatar. The difference is that Inception is a movie with a good plot and a good cast supported by its great effects. While Avatar, it is a movie with a not so good plot supported by its wonderful effects. See the difference?

Now, I have to warn you, this post contains spoilers from the movie. So, if you want to watch the movie, I recommend that you stay away from this blog post....don't say I did not warn you.....

So this movie is basically about dreams. The word Inception in this movie means, planting an idea in your head through dreams. In other words, creating true inspiration of something in your head. As described in the movie, it is not impossible, it is just "bloody difficult". The idea cannot be too complex. On the other hand, "Extraction" is stealing your secrets in your dreams. Usually in a dream, a person's secrets are locked up in a bank vault.

The actors in this movie play different and crucial roles for every single job.

1)Leonardo Dicaprio plays Dominic Cobb, the extractor. He is the leader of the team and the one in charge of stealing secrets from the subjects for his clients.

2)Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Arthur, the point man. He is the man responsible for researching on the background info of his targets.

3)Ellen Page plays Ariadne, the architect. She constructs the world of the dream and teaches the dreamer how to do it.

4)Tom Hardy plays Eames, the forger. He impersonates identities of people and adopt their physical form in the dream.

5)Ken Watanabe plays Saito, the tourist. He hired Cobb to perform an inception on his enemy's son and assits them in the mission.

6)Dileep Rao plays Yusuf, the chemist. He makes the chemical compounds for the team to sustain the dreams.

7)Cillan Murphy plays Robert Fischer, the mark/subject. The team's target for inception

8)Marion Cotillard plays Mal, the shade. She is Cobb's wife but committed suicide.

9)Michael Caine plays Miles, Cobb's father-in-law and mentor. He was the one who taught Cobb how to navigate people's minds.

You create the world of the dream. You bring the subject into the dream and they fill it with their secrets.

There are quite a lot of terms in the movie related to dreams like limbo, totem etc. Limbo is unconstructed dreamspace. It feels like reality but it is not reality. People stay in limbo when they start treating limbo as their reality. They do not want to wake up from it.

Totem is a unique object that a person possess. Only he or she knows all the intimate details of it and is impossible to reconstruct in the dream world. Cobb's totem is a spinning top. It will continue spinning without stop in the dream world and vice versa.

Cobb has once been in limbo and stuck there for almost 50 years( in the dream) which is about a few hours in reality. In dreams, your brain functions faster than in reality, thus time passes much faster in dreams. As such, he is unable to differntiate which is reality and which is a dream without the help of his totem.

The ending is the one that sparked off lots of discussions, theories of netizens. At the end, Cobb and his team of extractors all wake up in the plane and all of them looked at Cobb, giving him the look which says "Job Well Done". Cobb goes home and reunites with his children but he spun his totem on the table. He did not get a chance to see if it stopped as he was distracted. Before we could find out anything, the screen blanked. Cliffhanger.

Some say that he is still stuck in limbo while others say he is in reality. It really depends on how you see it. I feel that he has come back to reality since the top wobbles at the end.(it has always spin perfectly in dreams)

So,am I in reality? Are my friends projections? I do not know. I do not have a totem to tell me. I could be living in a dream but in reality I am in coma lying somewhere. But reality can also be based to one's choice. If I am comfortable in where I am, I would say I am in reality.

I am going to watch this movie for a 3rd time soon. FYI, I watched The Dark Knight 3 times too. I am now a fan of Christopher Nolan's films. His next one would most probably be the 3rd Batman sequel in 2012. Do not miss this film or you would regret it!