I saw Inception for the second time today. I think it is a very very good film. However there is one tiny detail which (if I didn't persist in flat out ignoring it) would make it in my opinion if not a bad film, then an extremely poorly constructed one.
Yes, I'm talking about that ending. If you haven't watched the film and you are still reading, this is your cue to leave the building.
My argument is this: I cannot see any way in which the great 'will it, won't it' spinning top ending benefits the film. In my eyes it is a cynical, lazy thing to do. Of course we will spend our days debating 'what would have happened next', human nature being what it is, and we all enjoy the aura of mystery and inclusiveness we gain from muttering in hushed tones while our companions (not so lucky as to have seen Inception with us) look on in jealousy. Naturally I am sure this has persuaded many to see the film to figure out what the fuss is about. And everyone enjoys having a pet theory.
But if you're going to make your film end on an ambiguous note, there is one key thing you have to do. BOTH outcomes must be plausible. In my opinion, it is impossible to find a way through the plot and world of Inception that would allow Cobb's presence in a dream world in that final shot, unless (and this is key), Christopher Nolan's notions of plausibility and world building are radically different from those of a normal human being. So either the top falls over just after the cut to black, or Christopher Nolan is very stupid. Either explanation is pretty unsatisfying
and therefore I think leaving the final 20 seconds in the film is a mistake.
Any attempt to create a situation whereby Cobb remains asleep runs up against problems. If we decide that he has in fact been in a dream for the entire film, then this dream breaks all the rules of dreaming introduced in the film, making them worthless. Totems would have to be an idea completely created within the dreamworld (or at least an idea that existed in the hypothetical real world but didn't work) because otherwise Cobb would not be able to spin the top and see it fall on two (possibly three?) occasions in the early part of the film.
If it is assumed Cobb begins the film awake, we have to choose a point at which he transitions to dreaming. This has to be after the two episodes of top-spinning, or we run into the same argument as above. My candidate would be the cut/transition to Mombasa where Cobb meets Eames, assuming that about 15 minutes later when Cobb gets out of the first brief drug induced sleep and attempts to spin the top in a panic in the bathroom, he does not succeed. But there are unanswered questions, the most important one being WHY? Nobody in the film is set up as having the slightest reason or ability to accomplish this feat. I can postulate any number of my own reasons (therapy? stupidly expensive counter espionage?) but these are complications that add to the complexity of the plot without in any way improving it, and none of them is more valid than any other. If in order to understand or extract a message from the film we have to invent things that have absolutely no signposts in the plot whatsoever, if we can generate an almost infinite number of explanatory scenarios using the information given us, then I say the film has failed.
The most defensible way to have Cobb still asleep at the dénouement is to assume everything is as played in the film and Cobb simply hasn't woken up from limbo. I question what this achieves, it's not a very satisfying ending although I guess it does have a nice dollop of poignancy. Furthermore, I didn't see anything in the film which implied that Cobb or anybody was able to create a world that detailed and realistic. Granted, Moll and Cobb can create an entire city, which they fail to people, and Saito does manage some people. (But he appears to have no independant thinking, as-they-were-in-real-life companions.) Maybe Cobb's powerful catharsis after concluding the whole Moll chapter of his life allowed him to create this world for himself? This final scenario is the one that requires a choice. It does fit the facts if you stretch them quite a bit, and your judgement of whether it is impossible and/or a downright rubbish way to end the film or not will dictate what you think. I personally think that it isn't a great explanation. It also leaves itself open to the same occam's razor like criticism as before, if I have to come up with that many apologies to make the whole ending work, is it a good ending?
So there you have it, my three cents on why the top definitely falls over... What annoys me is that I should have to deduce it. The film should either have not adressed the question or made the choice more ambiguous. One thing that bugs me and seems to indicate a last minute attempt to make the ending ambiguous without changing the rest of the tightly knit rules of play, is the fact that the kids are wearing the same outfits as their dream selves. I have to choose to ignore this as a coincidence, as I have been left no way to connect this piece of evidence to a coherent series of events that I can explain without recourse to hours of theorising outside the boundaries if the film I saw.
To conclude, Inception is fantastic and wonderful and great, but that spinning top ending is cheap, manipulative and pointless.
PS I am a terrible contrarian, and I can already feel myself start to generate counter arguments at myself, so I must stop now before I attempt to refute everything I just said.
PPS I promise actual real world things in my next post!
Der Tom
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I agree with the sentiment about the end of the film impinging adversely on to the quality of the rest of plot.
ReplyDeleteI however, after watching it once and giving it a bit of a think, as one is want to do by the tantalising ambiguity of the ending and decided two things. Firstly that as you say it seem to be put on the film to deliberately make you ask unnecessary questions that I didn’t see plausible or resolvable solutions to and thus it should be ignored secondly (i thought before the first point) that the top probably don't stop spinning (this his however an opinion subject to review). i decided this primarily because of the house and the children in the final scene being so similar to the dream sequence, in particular the position of the children in the garden through the doors. secondly because i liked the idea that it was 'all' a dream so the real cob ,if that is his real name is never seen out of his own dream. However to make this plausible i had to make one constructed assumption which was that the foundation awake state of the films detail was a deliberate violation of the other rules of dreaming constructed and presented to the view in the dream sequences as so to create the impression that the dreamer (the 'real cobb') would be having as dreams seem real when your having them its only after (if if your invading someone elces dream) that you notice, hence why the base level of reality in the dream was plausible to the audience who are viewing it from the dreaming cobbs perspective.
Despite this imagining that think something to make something else plausible is bad science so i settled on the first conclusion to ignore it and focus on the slow motion cars falling off bridges and tracked hummer side of the film, because I don’t get them in reality and there is plenty of inexplicable ambiguity in life as it is.
Now however I want to watch it again
....damm you Nolean