Note: I probably should have mentioned this before the other posts, but this deals very explicitly with the ending of Inception. So, if you haven’t seen the movie, DON’T READ THIS!
No scene in any movie from 2010 has affected me as much the scene where Cobb walks through the airport at the end of Inception. After the team has completed the inception on Fischer and Saito has made his phone call, Cobb reaches the front of the immigration line at the airport. As he hands his passport to the customs officer, there is a brief moment of anxiety that Saito has not honored the arrangement and that Cobb will be arrested. This is irrational, of course (what kind of ending would that be?), but it is still there for that brief moment.
But it disappears as the officer hands the passport back, and an Ennio Morricone-style guitar begins on the soundtrack. This guitar will continue as a counterpoint through the rest of the scene, like the falling van during the climax of the film. Cobb picks up his bag from the baggage claim and starts walking to the exit as Hans Zimmer begins layering strings and horns onto the soundtrack like a pounding heartbeat, keeping the underlying guitar score. As Cobb walks through the airport (it’s a long walk), his eyes meet with the eyes of everyone in his team. They smile and nod as he passes by. Even Fischer has a slight look of recognition on his face when they briefly glance at each other. Cobb walks out of the baggage claim, past a man with sign reading “FISCHER”, and meets up with his father-in-law Miles who’ll take him to his children and a spinning top that Cobb will no longer care to look at.
I’m not entirely sure why, but my breath catches and my heart stops whenever I see this scene (6 or 7 times). It even gives me chills when I think about it. When I think about this rationally, it seems rather silly. Nothing really happens in this scene. It’s just a scene of a guy walking through an airport. And of course, none of these people or places are real. No, I’m not saying it was all a dream. Well, yes, actually, in the sense that it’s just a movie, just lights on a wall.
Why do we feel such strong emotional reactions to things that might not make sense, that might seem silly, and sometimes aren’t even real?
The plot of Inception is about ideas, about how they are created and how they are transferred, but the film itself is not about ideas. It’s about the emotions that define those ideas. Cobb tells the team that “the subconscious is motivated by emotion, not reason.” He goes on to say that the key to inception is emotional catharsis. The hardest part about the inception is creating an emotional catharsis about something that isn’t real. It has relation to reality so that the subject can connect to it, but ultimately, it’s a complete fantasy (in Fischer’s case, it might even be a lie).
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out how dramatizing a whole story to create an emotional reaction from an audience parallels film. It’s even interesting to assign the characters roles in a film production (Cobb=Director; Saito=Producer; Arthur=Screenwriter; Eames=Actor; Ariadne=Set Designer; Yusuf=Composer maybe?). But the parallels don’t stop at film. The use of the word “levels” is an obvious reference to video games. The characters rely heavily on a musical countdown to get them out of dreams.
But the most interesting parallel is to religion and the belief in the afterlife. Just consider this repeated speech: “You’re waiting for a train, a train that will take you far away. You know where you hope this train will take you, but you can’t know for sure. Yet it doesn’t matter because you’ll be together.” Many of us hope for something to happen after death, but we can’t know what that will be. Believing in an afterlife is how a lot of people deal with the idea of mortality.
Why do we need all of these things? Why do we need religion, myth, art, music, video games, books and movies to create an emotional catharsis?
Inception makes the case that we need them to deal with our own subconscious. Christopher Nolan does a brilliant job of visualizing the subconscious: not just as a maze or a city of towering skyscrapers, but also as people capable of physical attack and even passionate dialogue. The characters spend a great deal of time engaged in literal warfare with Fischer’s subconscious. And Cobb spends a great deal of time debating his own subconscious. All of his conversations with Mal in his dreams are actually conversations with himself, with his own guilt and longing. When he tells Mal at the end that she’s “not good enough,” he’s not actually saying that to her. He’s saying that to his image of her, to his idea of her. He is able to do something that few men in the movies have ever been able to do: he realizes that his idea of a woman is not as good as the real thing (and people say this movie is misogynistic?). This is followed by the most violent image in the movie: Cobb’s subconscious literally attacking him. Even though Fischer’s subconscious has exchanged gunfire with the characters, this is the first time a subconscious tries to kill its owner. Cobb tries to throw away his guilt, but incurs a violent response. He is only able to let go of his guilt peacefully, by thinking back over his memories and forgiving himself.
Cobb’s catharsis (his inception?) happens almost at the same time as Fischer’s. This is a little more ethically troublesome. His reconciliation with his father never actually happens. But does that make the catharsis he experiences any less necessary? The movie doesn’t think so. The team is not convincing him that his father actually wants him to split up the company or that he has a secret will. Saito wants Fischer to dissolve the company, but he wants Fischer to think that idea was self-germinated. It’s common for people to have dreams where they have to accomplish some strange task that relates to something in their lives, but makes no sense when they wake up. Fischer is not going to think that the events in his dream actually happened.
But that does not make his catharsis any less real. He is able to have a subconscious reconciliation with his father that he could never have in real life. Of course, he has not actually reconciled with his father, but he has reconciled himself toward his father. Whether he actually dissolves his empire is not important to the film (it’s actually rather brilliant how Nolan takes this pretty mundane corporate idea with “various political motivations and antimonopolistic sentiments” as Eames says and makes it very emotional). What is important is that Fischer is at peace with his father’s memory just as Cobb is at peace with Mal’s memory.
All of these things are only in our heads, and yet they are so important to us. Our subconscious encapsulates all of our fear, doubt, happiness and love. It can be very hard to function in life with an unstable subconscious. Emotions define our ideas, and ideas “are the most resilient parasites.” A “fully formed,” deeply engrained idea can “grow to define” anyone. Sometimes, we need catharsis to help us with our subconscious. We need to experience strong emotions so that we can deal with them in reality. We need religion and myth. We need art. We need movies.
An emotional catharsis is like a long journey. Notice all of the transportation in the movie: the train used for Saito’s extraction, the plane used for Fischer’s, the train “that will take you far away.” Isn’t the aftermath of something profoundly emotional (a religious experience, a great piece of music, a terrific movie) a little like walking through an airport after you’ve landed when you’re heading home? You’re tired, exhausted, drained. But now you’re on solid ground.
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