Jul 26 2010, 01:16 PM
QUOTE(wankongyew @ Jul 23 2010, 03:41 PM)
6) Cobb's totem is unreliable.
One common objection to the view that the real world is also a dream is that Cobb uses the totem in the real world scenes and it falls over. But Cobb's totem is unreliable. First of all, it wasn't his totem in the first place. It was his wife's totem and he'd already explained how important it was that every dreamer should make his own totem or else it wouldn't work. Secondly, he even explained to other people how it would work, defeating its purpose. Remember how Arthur would not allow Ariadne to touch his die because that would defeat its purpose? Arthur even tells Ariadne that Cobbs always tells people not to do something but then he always does it himself. To me, this indicates that Cobb's totem and his methods for staying safe while in dreams is not reliable.
I don't mean to say that the real world shown is definitively a dream. What I believe is that Nolan deliberately injected clues to make every single level in the film ambiguous and give every single level a dream-like quality. The purpose is to make it so that every and all interpretations are equally true. I guess some people might think that's clever, but I think it's pretty cheap and makes this a much weaker film compared to tightly plotted films like The Prestige and Memento in which there are multiple clues dispersed across a variety of narratives but everything joins back up together to form a single conclusion.
I agree. I've been thinking that something's not right when he kept using his wife's totem.One common objection to the view that the real world is also a dream is that Cobb uses the totem in the real world scenes and it falls over. But Cobb's totem is unreliable. First of all, it wasn't his totem in the first place. It was his wife's totem and he'd already explained how important it was that every dreamer should make his own totem or else it wouldn't work. Secondly, he even explained to other people how it would work, defeating its purpose. Remember how Arthur would not allow Ariadne to touch his die because that would defeat its purpose? Arthur even tells Ariadne that Cobbs always tells people not to do something but then he always does it himself. To me, this indicates that Cobb's totem and his methods for staying safe while in dreams is not reliable.
I don't mean to say that the real world shown is definitively a dream. What I believe is that Nolan deliberately injected clues to make every single level in the film ambiguous and give every single level a dream-like quality. The purpose is to make it so that every and all interpretations are equally true. I guess some people might think that's clever, but I think it's pretty cheap and makes this a much weaker film compared to tightly plotted films like The Prestige and Memento in which there are multiple clues dispersed across a variety of narratives but everything joins back up together to form a single conclusion.
But how about this? Dom's totem is actually his kids
Happy ending
This post has been edited by khelben: Jul 26 2010, 01:16 PM
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So much to talk about.
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