dustbust5 wrote: It's a dream, the situation simply doesn't exist, starting with hotels that allow easy suicide of falling, exactly parallel rooms in exactly parallel buildings, and the rooms each and every attribute being the same, every last piece of furniture, the flower paining by the door, the sign hanging on the door. I'm sorry but people thinking parallel rooms having absolutely exact same everything including minute details is a coincidence or oversight is just moronic, in a film this meticulous they would not do such an obvious choice of a production design out of laziness.
Cobb tried to keep his memory alive through dreams.
The situation cannot be dismissed simply because he dreamt about it. In fact, more often than not dreams find roots in real experiences.
dustbust5 wrote: Except that same room is trashed on Cobb's side, among other things. You're telling me she went over there to trash the place, leave the top as a cryptic message that, if anything, miscommunicates because she leaves it down for reality and the very act of leaving it for him would mean that it's his to tell reality with now, a bizarre gesture for someone who is about to try and convicnce someone that they have no ability to tell reality and need to take a leap of faith no matter what anything says. And again, it's down, knowing what it means, she'd be going out her way to tell Cob the opposite thing that she wants him to believe.
A dream can be created through real tragic, a tragic can be distorted through a dream.
tykjen wrote:dustbust5 wrote: For the record, after the suicide, she's now labeled as someone who was sick, even if the doctors previously didn't believe Cobb about her madness.
Mal had herself declared sane by 3 different psychiatrists before her suicide. And Cobb certainly never told Mal that he found her secret place where he planted the idea which enabled her to break free from Limbo, but she received a radical notion that did not define her, but destroyed her and led to her suicide in reality. This feeling of guilt is what haunts Cobb whenever he Dreamshared.
dustbust5 wrote: The top appears in response to him stepping on the flute, an action that happens 3 times, once as a recreation of this scene, once here, and once in the hotel lobby. Each time it creates a break in Cobb's perception and ability to tell what's going on. Here he gets it as he's going to lose Mal as his totem, he gets Mal's totem magically seemingly Because as he steps into Mal's death scene, she will no longer represent reality for him but cuz Cobb knows about his own Inception and that it corrupted Mal's undetstanding, her believing it was spinning (them dreaming) means to Cob it's dropped. The loss of Mal because of different readings of reality immediately makes Mal's totem Cobb's because he believes she's lost and so reality can be told by the top being opposite of Mal's perception. That's the meaning of this moment.
I don't think it really matters whether this perticular scene is reality or not, because it isn't reality. It's a memory. And one thing Memento taught me: sometimes, memory isn't anymore reliable than dreams.
Is this scene significant? Definitely.
Is it real? Not everything.
But is it totally false? No. This scene is important because it represented something that really happened.
tykjen wrote:dustbust5 wrote: Later when Cobb breaks a flute everyone stares at him as if he's become the subject suddenly and thus the projections are suddenly alert, then his children run by in response to this switch, because the situation changes.
Cobb was sharing the dream, and the projections would not seek out the subject. The subject is the one populating the Dreamshare levels.
dustbust5 wrote: Cobb is genuinely lost because when you are lost in limbo you lose sight of reality, his totem was Mal and she came with so that's all he needed. Thus Mal's top was key for them to actually get home in concept, but Mal f***ked it up by manipulating it, and Cobb made it no better. Cuz now Mal believes top spinning should be her reality totem. but she jumps off and ends up in limbo where we don't see her real self until muchhhh later again. She was right that they weren't home but because she has no clue anymore where home is, she loses faith in reality's existence. She latches on to the riddle and decides that she can just stay in limbo as long as she gets Cobb to join, because that's what the riddle says.
I don't understand this part...killing oneself would only get to the reality plane unless on a extremely strong narcotic. So I don't think there's any possibility that Mal's alive.
dustbust5 wrote: It's a story about models of reality and in their case corrupted models of reality, manipulated by others at a deep subconscious level or just corrupted by the resulting dysfunction, and how difficult it was to get everyone home. The only answer, because the top is so corrupted was a leap of faith, and there in lies the film's wisdom. Because our models of religion have been manipulated in ways and corrupted (religion, politics ect) the only way to happiness and reality is to take a leap of faith.
It's not how I interpret Mal though.
At the end, she's just a very special projection. Special, but still a projection.
How she talked and acted, what she stand for... it's all Cobb's subconscious blaming himself.
dustbust5 wrote: You really think 5 or so bizzarely impossible moments were just mistakes? There is more going on in this movie that most people are willing to understand, and they respond to insight about how truly complicated it is (it's built to be soo complicated that we can never fuly know, just like life) with saying you're reaching or over reading into it. This film has an ambigious ending, it's created for analysis and debate, reading into it is part of the experience.
I can't find the impossible moments you mentioned.
Won't say you over reading anything, but maybe some misinterpretation? Mal being alive is contradicting many other things in the film; believing Mal being alive may ended up bending the film's fundamental logic. (But who am I to say? An idea is a truly resilient parasite
.)