Its important for me to dream. Without it, I'm good as dead.
This blog has been frequently infused with lots of posts from my dreams, or things inspired by my dreams. I pay good attention to them, for I believe everyone is equipped with a subconscious mind that is prepared to be your guide and your defense to daily life.
I watched the movie Inception last night. I was quite surprised it didn't get me dizzy, nor confused. I've heard a lot of comments about it, including those that say, "You'd understand the movie better after the second time". Nope, not for me, and I'm not alone. For people who pay attention to their dreams, and practice lucid dreaming, this is far from confusing. Its the closest to bringing their experience to a wide audience. A perfect demonstration of its possibilities. Every night, each of us would dream about 5-6 dreams. The technique is to remember them all in full detail and full color.
They say a dream connects us all in different ways. Dreams are messengers and a portal to another dimension. Since we only use a tenth of our minds, dreaming opens us to a whole new world that could benefit us or harm us in many ways.
Inception is defined as, origin: an event that is a beginning; a first part or stage of subsequent events
Image source: http://godsofart.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Inception-Movie-Poster-Christopher-Nolan-Leonardo-DiCaprio.jpg
The movie starts out from the end and works its way back to the beginning. Its a story about wanting an idea to be conceived as its own from the perspective of the thinker. A very wonderful movie about logic and proposition. Simply put, I have an idea. If I tell it to you, you'll think about it and can act on it; but that would mean, you fed on my idea and its not yours. In order to make it originally yours, it should be put to your subconcious as an input, so that the idea's origin would solely be yours.
Leonardo, as Mr. Cobb, was an expert in dream invasion. He invades dreams and extracts important information from his subjects' mind. This expertise of him was what actually caused him to lose his wife when he attempted to make an inception within his own wife's subconscious mind. This in turn caused his wife to wake up, still carrying the thought that the world she was in was still in a dream. With this, the thought of death consumed her; for, it is only in dying in a dream will you be able to wake up. Unfortunately for her, it was already the reality she was in.
This haunted Mr. Cobb's subconscious mind which has repeatedly caused jeopardy in their mission. Mal, his wife, remained alive in his subconscious mind and projects herself in Mr. Cobb's dreams. When Mal jumped off their hotel room, she left documents to point to Mr. Cobb's crime. This in turn made him a fugitive in his own country and can't go back to his own family. Saito offered him a job he couldn't resist. This job was his last chance and could bring his life back with his children.
This was the job for the inception. He was expert with stealing ideas from dreams, but this time, the job was different. It was to plant an idea in somebody else's mind. He gathered a good team for the job which consisted of Ariadne, a good architect, the creator of a dream setting; Yusuf, a chemist, to provide a strong drug to induce a deep sleep and provide support for multi level dreaming; Eames, an imitator, one who can impersonate in dreams; and Arthur his partner.
They construct a maze in the dream, and practice at it. They would all meet in the dream and plan for their steps. They made research on their subject, Mr. Fischer, and built on it to execute their plan. They would kidnap Mr. Fischer and make him remember the combination for his father's safe. They agree on their next steps and devised a "kick" which would be the equivalent of falling in a dream to wake them up. To maintain their sanity and reality check, every dreamer should have their own totem which is unique to them and doesn't change. Only the owner knows the difference of holding this totem in reality or in a dreamworld. Mr. Cobb holds a metal top, Ariadne-the architect created her own pawn piece, and Arthur holds a dice. In a dream, Mr. Cobb's top spins endlessly; the others' totems change in weight.
I think the movie was good and based on strong foundations of what man has known so far as to how extensively beneficial / dangerous a dream is. In a multi level dream, when you die before the time you 'need' to wake up, you end up in a coma. This is what happened to Saito, their employer. He got shot in the dream. Since they were all heavily drugged, dying in the dream before waking up means his mind would be trapped in ages in the dreamworld.
The only potential problem that wasn't explicitly discussed in the movie is the fact that, even if you plant an idea in somebody else's head, it doesn't mean that it gets accepted and executed. It could either grow on them or not. A logical conflict would also take place if the operation would actually be null and void from the very beginning. What if the subject already has that thought deep down in his subconscious but denies this?
Another idea worth exploring is the ability to measure time in dreams. In as far as my extensive dreaming is concerned, I have never found time to be in consistent with reality. No amount of clock staring would define how short or long your stay in dreamland is. However, I do believe this was an important factor they need to toy with in order to express the gravity of the situation in the movie. It was an easy task otherwise.
The whole movie got me stressed and tensed up they might not be able to have their kicks realized. Either this was the real horror, or dying in this multi level dream was a far greater disaster. In the end, they had to improvise. At their last 20 minutes in the third level, Mal appears and shoots Mr. Fischer. The only way to complete the mission was to go deeper into the subconscious and retrieve Mr. Fischer who was abducted by his wife Mal. This implied that Mr. Cobb had to face his wife and confront the reality that she was dead and he needed to let go of her.
The team made it to the kick back to the first level dream, except Mr. Cobb. He stayed for Mal and bade her goodbye. Before the end, he came across with Saito as an old dying man. Saito shoots him and he wakes up in the plane with the rest of the dreaming team. He passes the immigration and goes home to this children. To check his reality, he spins his totem has his kids turn around and he sees their faces for the first time in years since his wife died.
Movie clips its end focusing on the top which looked like its about to wobble and stop.. but doesn't, or at least it seems it won't.