What Happened in Inception: Part II

After another day of pondering about what happened in Inception, we're going to dive in a bit more into the film.  Not since The Matrix have we seen a film that questions what is real and what exactly is reality.  While The Matrix was much more explicit about this point, Inception is much more subtle, and confusing.  Once again, this contains spoilers so if you haven't seen the film *SPOILER ALERT*.




This clue is fake.

 Throughout the film we never know exactly where reality begins and where it ends.  We are given clues as to what is real and what is not, but we can never fully trust these clues.  Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) uses a totem (a top which he spins to see whether or not it stops) to determine if where he is in reality or a dream.  However in a key sequence with Ariadne (Ellen Page) Cobb explains that he should never let anyone else know exactly how her totem feels so that it can't be faked.  It is implied that the totem does actually say whether or not one is in a dream, but it only shows whether or not you are in control of your dream.  If it is your head that is populating the dreamspace, then you know how this object should behave, otherwise the object is coming from someone else's head.

In case that isn't enough to convince you that this clue is meaningless to determine dream vs. reality, as I discussed in the previous post, the totem isn't even Cobb's, it is his wife Mal's (Marion Cotillard).  We see Cobb take it inside limbo.  This could even mean that every time we see the top, it is definitely a dream as the object was taken from inside a dream.


Anyway, as Mal said in the film, you must take a leap of faith that your world is either a dream or reality and in Inception, you also must take a leap of faith on what is a dream and what is reality.