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guy44 · 07-20-2010, 10:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jove

Article

Inception’s Dileep Rao Answers All Your Questions About Inception. Spoilers in the above article, so only read it if you have already viewed the film.

That's a great article. I'm struck by how intelligent Rao's responses are; he seems like a very bright guy. I've always liked him as an actor, too (he was great in Drag Me To Hell).

Anyways, he says exactly what I'd like to say here about some of the theories floating around, but in a much more intelligent fashion:

Spoiler: What if Leo is the one being "incepted" with an idea? We keep hearing the phrase "Do you want to become an old man, filled with regret?" and it's like someone — maybe Ellen Page's character because she's the catalyst of his emotional catharsis — has set this all up so he can let go of his regret over Mal's death. That's why at the end with Saito he offers to come back and be young again (not old, full of regret). Even the Edith Piaf song they use to signal ten seconds before kick translates to "No, I regret nothing." And there's so many scenes where Ellen Page is talking to Leo, getting him to reveal his issues, in the same way that Eames tricks Fischer into revealing his issues. Also, Leo's kids are the same age at the end, right?

I'm not trying to be authoritative, so this is just my understanding of how I approached it from my work on it. But you're saying it's like some sort of crazy-ass psychotherapy session where the whole thing is a constructed narrative of massive complexity only to distract Cobb so that he will achieve his change? I mean sure, you could totally say that that's what it is. In a way, that's what we're doing to Fischer, so it's not unfounded.

The problem for me is that you're using negative evidence to support a story that isn't there. I don't know what to say about a character who only exists before and after the movie. You're talking about a character who isn't onscreen. And I mean on one hand, it's awesome that this movie can sustain that kind of discussion. It shows you just how well-thought-through and comprehensive it is, but I mean I don't know where that kind of speculation ends. It's like people who are convinced 9/11 is an inside job. It's a mental heuristic failure to think that one or two minor details explain absolutely everything. I mean, kids wear the same clothes all the time.

To me, it's a far more elegant story if it's a vast job that Leo has to pull off. The threat is real, the growth is real, the adversary is real. The weakness of "It's all a dream" — why we hate that, why we feel cheated when narratively anything is revealed to be all a dream — is that you've just asked me to spend so much time and emotional capital investing in the stakes of this, and you've now swept it away with the most anti-narrative structuralism that doesn't have anything to substitute in its place. It's laughing at you for even taking it seriously. You don't want to feel like a victim of the narrative, and I don't think Christopher Nolan would do that.