1. Philosopher Immanuel Kant would likely say that both inception and extraction are immoral, despite your intentions, because because you (as the extractor) are violating the autonomy of the individual. These actions disrespect humanity because your personal autonomy (or ability to control yourself, your thoughts, and actions) is a mark of your humanity, what makes you different than other animals in this world. If someone has implanted an idea in your head, how can you be responsible for it or the actions that come from it?
2. Ariadne acts like Cobb's therapist throughout the movie and helps him with the guilt that is sabotaging his dreams and memories. In the first dream (Yusuf's, in the scene in the warehouse), Cobb tells her why he feels so guilty - because, after 50 years in Limbo, he had planted the idea in Mal's head that this world (Limbo) wasn't real and that they needed to kill themselves to get back to reality (being awake). She brought this idea back with her into reality and flipped the idea around - her waking state was Limbo and that she needed to get back to reality (in her mind, Limbo). My question for you is: is Ariadne practicing her own version of inception w/ Cobb by placing the ideas in his head that he needs to confront Mal's projection and rid himself of the guilt of her suicide (which he eventually succeeds in doing)? Why or why not?
3. Catharsis -- a concept first introduced to us by Aristotle (a purging or purification of the self or the transformation as a result of the catharsis), Cobb, Arthur and Eames have all talked about Fischer reaching a state of catharsis with his father so that their inception idea can take hold. Reconciliation with positive emotion is much stronger, according to Cobb, than with a negative emotion. So we see that Fischer is reconciled with his father at the end and decides to break up his company when he awakes from the kidnapping scene. But, does Cobb reach his own catharsis when he finds that he's allowed into the United States and can finally see his children's faces again? Throughout the movie, that's all he's ever wanted is to get back home to his kids, and the ending scene shows that reunion (with his children a couple of years older - I checked the credits - there are two different pairs of child actors). But does this catharsis really happen because of the ending scene with the top? Did the scene turn off before the top fell over?
- Cobb also has another scene of catharsis near the end in limbo when he says goodbye to Mal "you're just a shade of my real wife..."
4. Movie - Making - Inception, as a film, is all a dream, but it's also an extended metaphor for filmmaker Christopher Nolan. Like a dream, the movie is a shared dream for the audience and has its own rules and functions along those lines. Some characters and scenes happen like dreams in which there seems to be no rhyme or reason: Mal comes out of a crowd and stabs Ariadne; the train in the first dream that blasts through downtown where there's no tracks; the elder Fischer's hospital bed in a huge vault inside of a mountain fortress; Cobb squeezing between an amazingly small gap of two buildings. Mal even makes the case to Cobb at the end that he is in fact still stuck in a dream, with feelings of persecution (the authorities or Cobol's security forces), creeping doubts, and little remembrance of how he got there. On another thought, the way the dream team works is similar to how a movie is made - they plan the scenes and the movie sets down to the smallest details, always conscious of the audience (the dreamer's projections) and its reaction. And, the way the movie ends with the cut scene of the top and then kicking into the music (Edith Piaf's haunting melody) as the credits roll is kind of like a dream because sometimes we are ripped out of a dream before its ending and we want to know how it ends. Yet we can't go back.
-- all of this is controlled by the master manipulator, the director, Christopher Nolan. Everything in this movie is done for a reason. Cobb is the director, Arthur is the producer who does the research, Ariadne the screenwriter when she acts as the architect, Eames is the actor and Yusuf is the technical guy that makes it all happen. Saito is the money guy (also a producer) who finances the whole operation and Fischer is the audience who is taken for an exciting adventure by the director, Cobb. Yet we are also the audience too, since this is a movie. Arthur mentions continuously that they cannot mess with the dream too much, otherwise the dreamer knows something is wrong. The same can be said for movies - when there's too much fakery or interference from the director, we as the audience snap out of the trance that the movie is weaving for us and see the movie for what it is. We lose ourselves in well-made movies b/c we're not paying attention to the poor acting or screenwriting or plotholes or ridiculous scenes. We care about the characters and want to see a satisfying resolution. And so Cobb, as the director, makes an amazing movie, but also brings part of himself into the movie (Mal) which can influence the audience (she shoots Fischer in the 3rd dream). Most of the jarring scenes in Inception include Mal. And it's Mal who questions Cobb and raises doubt as to his true purpose.
- And since the movie is like a dream, it has planted the idea of itself in the mind of the movie audience as well - is this a movie or was the whole thing a dream? This is where the movie becomes almost a meta-movie; it is Christopher Nolan dreaming about Cobb.
Please discuss your thoughts on 3 of 4 of these topics. 350 words minimum for your total comment.
Due Friday, May 3 by class.
The idea of inception is an interesting concept, we have talked about how one can change a person’s view point or thought by just placing am idea into someone’s mind; we have talked about this during our unit of what makes us, us, and the body mind theory. Thusly, there are three main questions that I would like to discuss about in this today’s blog, I thusly state them as follows, if someone has implanted an idea in my head, how can you be responsible for it or the actions that come from it? Is Ariadne practicing her own version of inception with Cobb by placing the ideas in his head? And finally, is this movie a dream?
ReplyDeleteHaving said that let’s jump in to the first question. Having an idea implanted in someone’s head by an external force would provoke the question if one is indeed responsible for that set actions that would result form the foreign idea. Well if you want to argue free will wise, since inherently our culture and society does believe we can make choice, you do have the choice to not follow through with the idea given to you. By that reasoning, the person is guilty and responsible for what ever they may want to do. If you want to argue fate or destiny wise, then the idea implanted was bound to happen; therefore, the person would have no control of what is or was going to happen even with that idea.
Which leads into the question about Ariadne and how she is manipulating Cobb by planting ideas inside his mind to rid the projections of his lost wife, Mal. I dint really pay much attention to this aspect of the movie but now looking back to it, I think Ariadne did indeed have an agenda. I mean she did it for the sake of the mission and for Cobb’s wellbeing, which in the end did succeed. With out her as that therapist to Cobb this whole operation may have been a complete disaster.
Now, I honestly have no idea if we are in fact dreaming this or if Christopher Nolan is, which I would know nothing about, but I like the idea of I think, therefore, I am notion. If I’m indeed dreaming this then there is no way for knowing for certain. I mean, how would one prove this? I cannot see a clear answer to this question. There are too many variables that are uncertain.
Roberto Romano
ReplyDeleteIn the movie Cobb says that once you implant an idea in someone’s mind that it eats away at the person it is implanted in until they fulfil the path that the implanter set for them. With that knowledge I think that if the actions are done to fofile the implanted ideas then they can’t entirely be considered the fault of the person that was implanted if the action is bad the implanter should take some of the blame because they drove them to do whatever socially incorrect action that would further the goals of the inceptor. Yet the person who was incepted is also somewhat to blame because the inceptor only planted the simplest idea of the resulting action but the incepted person still came to the conclusion that the illegal or morally wrong thing was still the best option available to achieve the goal of the inceptor.
As for the second question I think that she is using a different form of inception but this time the subject is aware of it and is merely coursed into it. I think this because she is still manipulating his thoughts but she is being less subtle about it than they do when they are trying to incept someone. I also think that Cobb should not forget because he did literally plant the idea in Mal’s head that made her jump off of the window sill.
I don’t think that the part where he came back to his kids was a dream because they said that there were only three layers of subconscious until you reach limbo so they can’t have gone one layer deeper earlier in the film now as for Saito making his call and getting Cobb back into the US he could have just abducted him when the plane landed and had all of the rest of the movie be a dream. The second idea I think is more plausible because one Cobb has spent so long in dreams that they probably feel more real than reality so he probably wouldn’t mind and two he has finally gotten rid of the Mal projection so he can finally create dream worlds of his own.
Inception was a very interesting movie, especially given the fact that it was my first time watching it. The movie relates much to the philosophers that we are learning in Sophie’s World, as people like Descartes and Spinoza do not trust their senses, which the characters in the movie had to be able to tell the difference between reality and the dream world.
ReplyDeleteThe main job of the extractors such as Cobb and Arthur were to enter someone’s dream and obtain information. There were some people such as Fischer and Saito who had defenses put in place to protect themselves against extractors, but if an extractor is skilled enough they can get the job done before the projections kill them. Another ability extractors have is to put ideas in the subject’s head, overall changing the choices the person makes after they wake up. If the question is asked if a person who has an idea placed in their head if they are responsible for the choices they make because of it, I would have to say yes. People are in conflicting opinions all the time. I am sure there are tons of people discussing how they feel about Black Widow dying in Avengers Endgame instead of Hawkeye. People try to convince other people of their opinions and persuade them to agree. In the end, we all have the ability to make a choice. Even when others successfully sway us to agree with another opinion, we still make a conscious choice act in a different way, which makes us accountable for what we end up doing.
Cobb and Ariadne had an interesting relationship going on during the film. Cobb obviously had pent up guilt from the death of his wife Mal, and he even ended up suffering because of it. Ariadne was the only person out of the group who actually was aware of what Cobb was going through and the risk he was putting the others at because Mal was still in his head. Holding in all those emotions for so long really is not healthy, trust me I know from experiences. Despite not getting consent from Cobb beforehand, Ariadne went into Cobb’s dream and learned about Mal, which inadvertently forced Cobb to talk about Mal with Ariadne. This gave Ariadne a chance to guide Cobb to control Mal and eventually move on, realizing that the Mal in his head was only a projection of her and was not his real wife.
Cobb has experienced a lot of emotions while doing inception on Fischer. When they first went under, the train from limbo broke through and began hitting the group as they were driving. Things only got worse once Saito getting shot, which forced Cobb and the group to modify their entire plan to help them avoid getting killed and ending up in limbo, just like Cobb and Mal. Then when they were on top of the mountain heading for the snow base, Mal broke through and shot Fischer, which at first made the group want to give up, but they then chose to go limbo and rescue him. Only after Ariadne shooting Mal in limbo, Cobb rescuing Saito in limbo, and mysteriously off-screen escaping limbo was Cobb able to return home to his kids. It was at this point where the audience could see the faces of the kids. I must say that after all that, Cobb must have experienced catharsis, as his dream of seeing his kids again had finally come true.
-Jordan Matthews
2.) Yes I think that Ariadne is performing her own version of Inception. Much like Mal, Cobb is misinterpreting the reality of their consciousness. Mal had been stuck in Limbo for so long, creating and living with Cobb, that she had come to the conclusion that Limbo was her real life. This thought haunted her as Cobb was trying to take her back to reality, to their kids but she was uninterested in this. In order to fix this mistake in her thought Cobb incepts the idea that this is not her reality. Cobb also has a mistake in thought, he has lived with the guilt that it is his fault Mal has killed herself. His Inception made her mistake real life for a dream. Theory has it that Miles, Michael Caine's character employed Ariadne to use Inception to correct Cobb's guilt. Ariadne during the course of the heist constantly reminds Cobb that his guilt is bringing Mal in to interfere. Even at the end in Limbo Ariadne is the one that fires the bullet that ultimately kills Cobb's guilty manifestation of his deceased wife. Finally even her name clues into her true goal, Ariadne in Greek mythology is the Princess of Thebes and gives the hero Theseus the tools he needs to escape the labyrinth.
ReplyDelete3.) While legally Cobb cannot get back to his family, I also think that he has a mental block that keeps him from them. Cobb is enveloped in guilt from the death of his wife as a result of his inception. I think that Cobb fears facing his children while he feels this guilt. Cobb has his moment of catharsis in Limbo as he holds his dying wife in his arms and says you're just a shade of my real wife. When he returns to the real world he can now face his children guilt free. I think Nolan includes the top at the end to leave it up to your own imagination if it is real, however I think that the top begins to fall at the end. I also believe that it is real because Nolan casted new kids to be older because Cobb wouldn't know what they looked like grown up in his dream, also Nolan has revealed that scenes that Michael Caine are in are in fact real.
4.) I think that all movies are like a dream. They are complete immersions into a fictional reality that is not our own. Characters are meant to relate to the audience in some sort of way and moviegoers are meant to imagine themselves as the main character. This is why it seems watching the movie in theaters is so much better. The darkness and the lack of disruptions makes it feel like you are living in the movie. The horror genre feeds off of this phenomena, if people were really cognoscente of the movie's artificial nature then nobody would ever be scared. But because the movie and the characters feel so real to the viewer we are terrified.
1. I neither agree nor disagree with Kant. Instead, I ask what constitutes free will if the technology of Inception is to be considered real. Is it not somehow considerable that the mind is always, constantly, having such information shift and distort? Kant asks, “wouldn’t extraction and inception violate free will?” I ask, “do these things exist at all?” Do these practices not evoke the image of a foot in the door, showing that, to a certain extent, your mind is liable to be completely altered? I can imagine (as the movie did state that the technology was invented by the military) a government agency entering a person’s mind with a cohort of extractors, who promptly destroy whatever scape they find themselves in, then constructing their own. This would be, in essence, brainwashing.
ReplyDelete3. Catharsis, for Cobb, comes in the form of seeing his children after being away for years. Catharsis can be defined as “the purification and purgation of emotions—particularly pity and fear—through art or any extreme change in emotion that results in renewal and restoration.” This certainly applies to Cobb. By seeing his children, Cobb purges his emotions of regret towards not giving them a proper goodbye, as well as in part purging emotions for unintentionally causing his wife to kill herself. He begins a new life in the United States with his kids, now absolved of the sins he did not want to commit.
4. Inception is a great tunnel of realities and imagined worlds. In Inception, the bottommost vista is Limbo, the eerie dream state where Mal resides. Above it lies the snow fortress. Above that lies the disorienting Hotel. On the reality surmounting that is the bridge. Above that is the plane of reality (see what I did there?). This is Cobb’s reality, the highest reality he can access. But perhaps, above that, lies the mind of Christopher Nolan in 2002, typing away at his computer. Now this is OUR reality, right? Perhaps, but I ask this: how can we know for sure? Did someone else write this mind-boggling movie? We cannot know for sure, only Nolan can. For the other seven billion of us, we can only imagine Nolan doing it. We can dream of it. But we cannot know. We only know our reality- one above his.
Now, this may seem semantic, and it kind of is. But this is to suggest that dreams are like movies. There are a few similarities to 2001: A Space Odyssey in Inception. The spinning hotel corridor was constructed in precisely the same way the 2001 one was. Each movie ends with seeing someone grow old in an ethereal, eldritch plane. But 2001’s most iconic element is simply a black rectangle: the Monolith. The Monolith, through many a film analysis, has been compared to a TV screen.
http://www.collativelearning.com/2001%20chapter%202.html
Towards the end of 2001, the astronaut Dave Bowman reaches out to touch the Monolith from a bed. But when the shot changes to behind his head, the monolith appears above him on the screen. He then reaches upwards, like he knows he’s on a screen of some kind. This is similar, to me, to Inception. Mal must have, somehow, realized her place as a movie character and tried to escape.
Jake Stollman
Question 1:
ReplyDeleteSome might argue that if someone plants an idea in your head, the possible outcome might be their fault; however, I disagree with this statement. Even though it may not have been your idea to begin with, it doesn't mean that you can't take responsibility for your actions. You decided to act on it, therefore it was your decision.
Ideas are planted in our minds on a daily basis, not just by people, but also by our surroundings. If we blamed each and every idea in our head on something else, we would never be held accountable for our actions.
Question 2:
I do not believe that Ariadne is practicing inception by placing the idea in Cobb's head that he needs to confront Mal. I say this because I believe that Cobb knew all along that he would have to eventually confront her, however, his conversation with Ariadne simply sped up the process.
Throughout the movie, Cobb runs into Mal's projection multiple times. Each time he encounters her, something bad happens; for example, when he takes Ariadne to the hotel where he and Mal once celebrated their honeymoon, Mal began screaming and lunged towards Cobb. If he and Ariadne hadn't have been able to get behind the elevator door, who knows how Mal could have hurt them.
My point is that Cobb knows all along that he needs to do something to stop Mal from interfering with his inceptions. He knew that he needed to let her go. He might not have had the strength to do so without talking to Ariadne, but he knew that it was something that must be done in order to successfully enter more dreams.
Question 3:
In my opinion, this catharsis does occur because of the ending scene with the top. Throughout the movie, it is repeated that Cobb’s main focus is going back to the States to be with his children. The ending scene showed the top spinning, and the movie cuts off before we can see if it falls over or not. I would like to believe that it did indeed fall over. Cobb makes it back to the States to be with his real children -- not his “dream” children. He makes it back to reality, and since he has completed his goal, he reaches his own state of catharsis.
Riana Richards
ReplyDelete1) I agree with the thought that Immanuel Kant would think that the actions taking place in this movie are essentially immoral. He believes that you should not alter your humanity and when extracting or doing anything inception related that is really the basis of what you are doing. By implanting an idea in someone else head your stripping away their right to control their own actions and reactions; Doing so could also leave you with horrible consequences. Such as with what Cobb has done with Mal. Of course he didn't mean to implant this horrible idea in her head that caused her to commit suicide, but that was the consequence of him taking away her ability to control her decisions.
2)I think that Ariadne is trying to help Cobb get rid of his own sense of guilt throughout the film. I think that she feels bad about what has happened to him and thinks that he deserves to live a life without this heavy burden weighing on his mind. I don't think that this is the only reason though. I feel that even though Ariadne does feel bad for Cobb that she is also looking out for the safety of not just herself but also the safety of everyone else in the group. Cobb’s actions throughout the movie were slightly detrimental to them, such as when Mal shoots Fischer and then when he kept seeing his young children playing in the hotel during the Mr. Charles scene. I think that she does a little bit of both: Trying to help him fight his own demons while simultaneously saving everyone else from the aftermath.
3)I feel like Catharsis was a major factor within this movie. When Cobb gets to see his children in that same moment that he and Ariadne saw obviously meant so much to him and the look of pure happiness on his face when his children turned was really touching. The moment with the top was pretty frustrating. It looked as if it was going to fall over but I guess we truly can't know. I think that was an interesting way to end the movie and it really does add a sense of fear and wonder to it but I would have also be content with a clear ending.
Riley
ReplyDeleteYes, I agree that inception and extraction are very immoral. Not only are you planting ideas in others’ minds but it is without their knowledge. Fischer does not know he was manipulated and so he cannot even defend himself because he does not know he needs to be defended. I do understand why Cobb made the decision to partake though and agree that it was the right decision for him because him raising his children is more important than any money. But Saito never should have hired him as inception and extraction are a violation of nature and the human body. The mind should not be altered, especially not without permission. No, Ariadne is not using inception because she is telling Cobb blatantly that he needs to confront Mal’s projection. She is not deceptive. She is just trying to help him come to terms so they can best accomplish their mission and he can move on in his life. Cobb closed himself off and didn’t talk about what was going on with Mal in his dreams. He didn’t want to discuss it with anyone but Ariadne forced the discussion forward which was necessary for him to rid himself of his guilt and reach catharsis. But then again what if the top actually does keep spinning and we are in Cobb’s dream this whole time we thought we were in reality? Maybe the purpose of this dream that we think is reality is for Ariadne to incept Cobb. I do believe that Cobb reaches catharsis. I think the top was about to stop spinning and that he is in reality; the director just wanted to have the movie end with the audience on their toes. In limbo Cobb said his final goodbye to Mal, knowing that his perception of her in limbo was only part of the woman he married and his children back in reality are more important. The best way to remember the woman he married is to take care of them not hold on to a ghost. I think Cobb plans on staying away from inception and extraction and just happily raising his kids.
1. If someone implanted an idea in my head, it will look like my fault and that I am responsible for the actions that come from it. But it will be the person who implanted the idea in my heads fault. Yes, only you can control your actions and what you do with the ideas so it is possible to avoid the actions you may do with this idea in your brain. But it is hard because when the idea is planted into your brain, it can develop into something bigger than an idea, you may think it is right and you may not want to try and avoid it. So it is the person who implanted the idea into my brains fault for my actions
ReplyDelete2. I don’t believe that Ariadne was using inception on Cobb. I never even considered that, that is a peculiar idea. I never thought about her using inception on Cobb. I feel like she just continued to talk to him and use her words to convince him that he was not in fault for Mal killing herself. I see ariadne as more of a therapist rather than using inception on Cobb. Don’t you need to put an idea in his brain during a dream to use inception. WAIT, they were in dreams when she kept telling him it isn’t his fault and that it isn’t healthy. Wait, maybe she did use inception, wow you really had to think deeply about this one. Do you think she realized herself that she used inception or do you think she was just trying to help out her friend.
4. There is a very reasonable possibility that this entire movie was just a large, detailed dream. There is no way of knowing for sure, but this movie is just like any other movie. All fiction movies can be a dream the end abruptly with the ending cut off. It can be argued that all movies that have cliffhanger endings could just be the moment when the director woke up from his dream. This idea makes me think, if I could remember all my dreams, would they tell a story like Inception or would the be completely different and shorter.
-Brody Hiipakka
I’m going to jump right into it. First, I’ll counter your question with a question. If the nicest, kindest, gentlest person on Earth gets drunk, belligerent and gets in a fight should he be charged with a crime? Both these scenarios revolve around the idea of someone doing something because of another variable. On the basis of ideas being planted in our heads, most of the ideas in our heads have been planted there, however not through sedation and intense Leonardo Dicaprio fighting, but through our environments. As children, we are constantly being fed and learning information through our parents and everything we see. For example, a child who is not racist, learns through his parents that one particular race is better or worse than another, then that child has had the idea of racism planted in his mind. Second, Ariadne is not practicing her own version of Limbo as Cobb used a completely different, very specific, objective method to convince Mal of her reality. Through the never-ending top, Cobb showed Mal something she couldn’t argue, something absolute and unarguable. Ariadne however is only convincing Cobb about Mal. She is using her subjective opinion to win Cobb over, which eventually ends up working just as well. Third, Cobb does reach some form of catharsis when he finally sees his children’s faces again. We see Cobb look away when Mal tries to show him artificial children, so it seems like he really knows when he’s dreaming, and when he’s not. Also, less fun, Christopher Nolan told Michael Caine when he is in a scene, that scene is real. Lastly, I think this last question plays back to the idea of planting an idea in someone’s head. This movie is a movie, not a dream. Or this is the longest dream ever. It’s easy to tell when you wake up from a dream, you were in a dream, but you seldom recognize your in a dream while you are dreaming. Maybe we are all dreaming right now, or all this is just in my head, both literally and figuratively. Inception is possible and happens all around us, all the time.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't go as far as to call extraction and inception immoral but I would agree with Immanuel Kant that it is disrespectful. Humans are the only free thinking, free willed individuals that we know of. But by creating a method where another human can change the thoughts you have, it would destroy your free will. You no longer cannot think on your own because someone else has influenced you in a different way without your control. In a perfect world, you shouldn't be held responsible for this similarly to pleading innocence for reason of insanity. It's not something you have control over rather just popped into your head by someone else's actions.
ReplyDeleteAriadne is most definitely not practicing her own version of inception by influencing Cobb to confront Mal's projection and rid himself of the guilt of her suicide. She notices Cobb's struggles and so does Cobb. He knows he has a hard time coping with Mal's suicide so he fully understands what he is doing while Ariadne helps him. Cobb is willing to get help and listen to Ariadne while Mal was forced to have inception in order to be helped. Mal didn't see a problem with herself while Cobb did. Cobb was willing and wanted to change while Mal, not so much.
When we saw Inception in class, it was the first time I have ever seen the movie. And I can say Cobb did in fact reach catharsis. In the last scene, there was no doubt in my mind that the top was about to fall the way it was wobbling and it's balance was failing. Although I was disappointed in the ending. I was hoping to see a little more on what happened after he returned to his life in America. Because he reached catharsis has finally seen his kids again, will they no longer be in his dreams? Is he still unable to dream without the machine? And will Mal's suicide no longer torment him? But then again, I understand why they didn't really add much to the ending since it was already a 2 and a half hour movie so it would of been just another Endgame type movie but less exciting.
I think I agree with Kant in saying that extraction and inception are immoral, because I believe that your thoughts can be apart of who you are, especially your thoughts on life, thoughts on morals, and thoughts about decisions you make. If an inception of extraction alters your decisions or way you perceive things, doesn’t that sort of change who you are a little bit too? When it comes to whether you are responsible for actions you make due to ideas planted in your head, I would have to say you are only partly responsible. Since you are the one doing the action, you are responsible because if you think about it from the free will perspective, we have free will; therefore we have the choice of whether to commit the act or not. However since a thought was placed into your brain, the extractors are responsible for causing this thought in the first place.
ReplyDeleteI do think Ariadne is practicing her own version of inception with Cobb. She is doing so to help the team complete their mission without anyone getting stuck in limbo, and because she cares for Cobb and for his well being. She was able to quickly notice that Mal was a very prominent part of Cobb’s subconscious so she knew he needed to be convinced to let go of her and his guilt a little bit. How Ariadne uses “inception” with Cobb is different however, because he is aware of what she is trying to do, she just found a way to help him realize that she was correct and that he needed to confront Mal and his growing guilt. The reason I think you can call it inception is because she entered Cobb’s subconscious without his permission and learned about Mal, making Cobb then talk to her about his feelings, so that Ariadne could then help him overcome his guilt.
I do think Cobb reached a state of catharsis at the end of the movie when he saw his kids. For years all he had wanted was to be reunited with them, and with the help of Ariadne and Saito, he was able to do so. Saito helped him get back to his children by allowing him to get into the US again, while Ariadne helped him mentally. She helped Cobb by proving to him that he needed to confront his guilt and his wife Mal, which allowed Cobb to be more mentally stable and open to seeing his children again for the first time in years.
Hailey VW
ReplyDeleteI think that Inception is immoral. But almost definitely impossible to resist once the technology to perform such feats is available. Both extraction and inception will always create a spiral of events that cannot be undone and cause effects that are impossible to predict. But then again, if we are going of the mindset that every action causes a reaction, everything will be "messed up" into chaos anyway because there is no set path. I want to say that inception is a very dangerous idea, and I definitely wouldn't want anyone poking around in my head, but I do not know if I can confidently say that I believe it should be avoided at all costs.
I do not think that Adriane is practicing inception in her unofficial dual role as Cobb's therapist. Since they are within a dream, technically she is incepting him but it is not taking her the same amount of master mindery to guide and console Cobb as it is for the whole team to incept Fischer. I think she is acting like a friend. And yes that does create a cause and effect relationship in the dream world but I will return to my same point that everything has a cause and effect, so what is so different about it occurring in a dream?
The ending is very much dreamlike, in the fact that we are ripped from a guaranteed resolution. But I do believe the top was going to fall. I am not sure if this is because my mind wants to put the movie to rest and it is a lot easier for me to move on if I decide that there was a big happy ending and everything turned out fine, or if it is because I truly believe that Cobb was freed from the dream. But I will go with the second choice. I do think that Cobb was truly freed and reached catharsis. Mal had his grip on Cobb, even as a projection in his dreaming state. Seeing his children was not the ultimate state of catharsis, but Cobb releasing Mal was when Cobb was truly free THEN able to go see his children. Mal represents the dream world of Cobb and his children are the reality, which Mal could never succumb to.