Inception is arguably one of the best movies this year and another solid blockbuster hit from the director of The Dark Knight, Batman Begins, and Memento. He has made seven feature films up to this point and a short. All of them have been at least good, a few extraordinary, and a couple revolutionary. While Inception, in my opinion, is not his best, it is still pretty good.
The ending of Inception is quite spoken of, and for you who have not seen it do so. Then you can either hate it or love it, either way it's a fun ride from "coast to coast" and beyond.
If you haven't seen it, I suggest that you stop reading now and go rent it for a buck at Red Box at least. As for those who have seen it, let's move on to the interview.
SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT
There's the man, Chris Nolan, staring out an infamous window.
Here is a few highlights from the interview. To see the whole thing (which is four web pages long), check out the source.
First off, Nolan's reaction to internet discussions about the movie:
Wired: Have you read the online discussions of the film?
Nolan: I’ve seen some of it, yeah. People seem to be noticing the things they’re meant to notice, the things that are meant to either create ambiguities or push you in one direction or another. But I’ve also read plenty of very off-the-wall interpretations. One of the things you do as a writer and as a filmmaker is grasp for resonant symbols and imagery without necessarily fully understanding it yourself. And so there are interpretations to be imposed on the film that aren’t necessarily what I had in my head.
It helps to watch the movie knowing Nolan meant to leave it open to discussion. But let's move on.
The next refers to Ellen Page's character, Adriadne, and some classical plot devices used in
Inception:
Wired: Inception is also a classic heroic epic—a Joseph Campbell The Hero with a Thousand Faces type of story.
Nolan: I’ve never read Joseph Campbell, and I don’t know all that much about story archetypes. But things like The Inferno and the labyrinth and the Minotaur were definitely in my mind.
Wired: There’s a character called Ariadne, named after the woman who helped guide Theseus through the labyrinth and defeat the Minotaur.
Nolan: Yeah, I wanted to have that to help explain the importance of the labyrinth to the audience. I don’t know how many people pick up on that association when they’re watching the film. It was just a little pointer, really. I like the idea of her being Cobb’s guide.
I find this interesting due to my interpretation of the movie. To me this confirms a lot.
The next highlight is about the Mombasa scene. I originally thought that this scene was a baseline to the interpretation that everything from Mombasa to the end is a dream. But his comments here makes it more ambiguous again.
Wired: Three times in Inception the camera takes a long pass over a city. You have Tokyo looking sort of fractal, Paris look–ing very rectilinear, and Mombasa looking very mazelike. What were you conveying?
Nolan: The idea of showing Mombasa as mazelike was, for me, a very specific narrative point in the film. When Cobb finally confronts Mal at the end and she brings up the idea that Cobb no longer believes in one reality, you need to have shown the audience the potential for the real world to have the same rule set as the dreams. The mazelike nature of Mombasa was very important for this.
(Huge hint for some, all three kids above were in the movie)
Now here's a detail that people may have missed and a hint Nolan gives us, the only hint I guess:
Wired: Any other clues that you’d like the DVD audience to pay attention to?
Nolan: The one thing I have heard a lot is the kids are wearing the same clothes at the end. And they’re not. [Laughs.]
Wired: They’re not?
Nolan: No, they’re not. I’m not giving anything away there. Also I’ve read a lot of misunderstanding or misremembering of the way those kids are portrayed onscreen. But on the Blu-ray, people will be able to check, say, the ages of the kids.
Wired: The kids are in different clothes and are older at the end?
Nolan: Yes, two sets of kids! The younger version of the boy is actually my son, and it’s not him who turns around at the end. There’s no ambiguity here.
Wired: I was so convinced that they were wearing the same clothes.
Nolan: They’re very similar but not the same. That I would very much like people to notice, because it was a very, very difficult thing to pull off, taking two sets of kids all around the world and filming things two different ways.
Wired: Wait—is it the second set of kids just at the very end? Or do you interchange them somewhere else?
Nolan: I don’t want to specify too much.
Wired: Wha?
Don't you just love Nolan's secretive nature and sense of humor? Grrr...
Now the last bit I am going to put on here refers to Nolan's own interpretation of the movie, whether there is a right and wrong answer. This is my favorite part of the interview.
Nolan: If I start ruling things out, where do I stop? I will go as far as saying that wasn’t the way I read it. [Laughs.] How did you read the end of the film?
Wired: My reading is that the movie has purposefully done a couple of things to point you in different directions. I think at the end you’re supposed to remember the line about taking a leap of faith. For your own personal catharsis as an audience member, you have to decide what is real for yourself. So I personally choose to believe that Cobb gets back to his kids, because I have young kids. I want him to get home.
Nolan: People who have kids definitely read it differently than people who don’t. Which isn’t the same as saying there’s no answer. Sometimes I think people lose the importance of the way the thing is staged with the spinning top at the end. Because the most important emotional thing is that Cobb’s not looking at it. He doesn’t care.
Wired: Either way, he has found a reality where he got what he needed. I know that you’re not going to tell me, but I would have guessed that really, because the audience fills in the gaps, you yourself would say, “I don’t have an answer.”
Nolan: Oh no, I’ve got an answer.
Wired: You do?!
Nolan: Oh yeah. I’ve always believed that if you make a film with ambiguity, it needs to be based on a sincere interpretation. If it’s not, then it will contradict itself, or it will be somehow insubstantial and end up making the audience feel cheated. I think the only way to make ambiguity satisfying is to base it on a very solid point of view of what you think is going on, and then allow the ambiguity to come from the inability of the character to know, and the alignment of the audience with that character.
Wired: Oh. That’s a terrible tease.
And there you have it. Some good insight to Christopher Nolan's nature and clues to Inception. Check out the full interview for more bits of trivia, but I think I got all the major stuff here.
As for the Dark Knight Rises, I am confident it will be just as good as the Dark Knight. I know that's presumptious to say, but I have my reasons.
I will post a review of the Blu-Ray features of the movie and my interpretation later, and signs of what to expect in Nolan's third Batman film.