Okay, so my second viewing of “Inception” has spoilers:
- I understand the plot 100% this time. I’m glad for that.
- My gut reaction the first time I saw the film was a 7, than while writing my review I moved the film to a 9.5 and now it’s a 10 and I feel it’s Christopher Nolan’s masterpiece. I enjoy “The Prestige” and “Insomnia” more, but “Inception” is fucking fantastic.
- “Inception” is better than “The Matrix”.
- I still feel the same way about the ending. I think that the only way Cobb could “live” was in a dream. Saito’s way of standing up to his part of their bargain was having Ellen Page architect Cobb’s dream. I think that when the totem shakes at the end, represents something happening in Page’s reality causing the totem to shake.
- Ellen Page was mediocre the second time around.
- Ken Watanabe is fucking fantastic.
- What if the ending is actually inception?
Pompous Film Snob 
Did you figure out who that kid was on the train in the beginning? Because it is seriously haunting my psyche now. Also, poor Nash.
The ending is inception…how so?
I saw this a second time, and I really did fully understand everything that was done.
I NEED TO SEE IT AGAIN SO BADLY!
And by the way, I still need your answers for “The Origins Project,” man! Shoot me an e-mail because I really want to feature you!
While this is the best sci-fi film in years there’s no way that this tops the Matrix my fine sir. The only upmanship Inception has will be not having two of the shittest sequels in movie history.
I’m going to have to disagree about what your theory about the ending, Page’s character only builds the levels of the dream and doesn’t influence the projections. If it was Nolan’s goal to hint that Page had created a world where DeCaprio could be happy in then I think he did a real poor job in doing so because if it were so he’d have had a 5 minute exposition scene explaining it.
That last point is good. Stop mindfucking me, man!
What makes Inception so great is that it can be interpreted in a number of different ways. Arguably, the whole thing is Cobb’s dream. Or the film is Cobb’s dream after he falls asleep to test Yusef’s compound. Or Ariadne used her talents as the architect to engineer a world in which Cobb could live happily. Or Cobb is only dreaming at the end. Or Cobb is awake at the end. Or or or. It goes on and on and on. And the reason the interpretations are so myriad isn’t because Nolan made an obtuse film that cannot be understood, but rather because he made a film that’s straightforward on the surface but layered with nuance and complexity beneath.
For me the entire film is about Nolan’s process as a filmmaker in much the same way that 8&1/2 is about Fellini’s.
The Av club has a pretty interesting discussion on the interpretation of Inception:
http://www.avclub.com/articles/salt-inception-indepth,43413/, skip to around to 11:00 min to jump past the review of SALT if you have no interest.
I particularly like when they point out that the dreams in Nolan’s movie aren’t as whimsical as some critics would like because they’re not real dreams, they’re constructions that the team has created.