Q: As of this writing, which film is ranked between The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II on IMDb's Top 250?
Inception
I saw Inception twice on opening day – once in the morning and, after a bit of Internet reading, a second time at night to confirm that it's fairly straightforward until the final scene, in which Nolan plants the same seed of doubt in our heads that Cobb plants in Mal's head – a spinning top.
You can easily argue a strong case that the whole film is a dream. In the final scene, for example, Cobb's children look the same as his memory of them.
However, the credits list two sets of children:
Claire Geare…Phillipa (3 years)
Magnus Nolan…James (20 months)
Taylor Geare…Phillipa (5 years)
Johnathan Geare…James (3 years)
Why use two sets of children and specify ages if it is all a dream? Pre-school children looking very similar and wearing the same clothes after 16 months is conceivable.
I'm with Yusuf – an open-and-shut case with a mischievous ending.
Read this on a message board:
one thing i noticed, and id probably have to wait until all the way to the dvd to check this is that the layered scenes of the van/hotel/snow fortress all seem to conform to the time pattern. that is to say, they show the van for 5 seconds, then the hotel for 25 seconds, then the snow fortress for 125 seconds. i noticed that about 3 times, and i hope that was indeed the case.
Someone who hasn't seen Inception yet care to bring a stopwatch?
Also:
The room from which Mal jumped was an exact mirror image of the room out of which Cobb was leaning — same flower arrangement, same couch. [source]
Confirm/deny, please.
» How does Fischer not recognize Saito?
» Old Saito's chin hairs are deliciously nasty.
» You haven't lived until you've seen Leonardo DiCaprio's head in IMAX.
» Why don't projections continue to hunt Arthur in zero gravity?
» Love the cover art for Interpol's fourth album.
• 5 Reasons Why Salt Will Be Bigger Than Inception
1. Christopher Nolan did not direct its action sequences?
I noticed that about the room Mal jumped from as well. I was trying to decide if she had just gotten a separate room in the hotel and was able to arrange for the one across the courtyard from their usual room, or if it was some other weirdness.
That whole seed of doubt makes you want to believe everything weird and coincidental is proof that it was all a dream. Some of Saito and Mal's/Cobb's lines were repeated between all of them throughout the course of the film.
"Why don't projections continue to hunt Arthur in zero gravity?"
It seemed to me that they slowed down the longer Fischer was dreaming in that dream. So I figured perhaps because Fischer's subconscious was now otherwise occupied (in the snow fortress), there were fewer projections in the way. And he was in an elevator shaft for a while there, which would be a decent place to hide as well.