At 44 min. in, Inception kicks me in the nuts *again*.

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Ok, what did you guys figure out about the following?

I keep analyzing this film and on the 6th time around (this one time just hopping around) I came across the scene in Mombasa where Cobb tries the sleeping drug made by the chemist.

(The scene where all the folks are in the basement dreaming.) "They come here to wake up" (or words to that effect).

When Cobb wakes up, everything seems semi-surreal. He runs to the bathroom, tries to use is totem and it roles off the counter. Saito appears in the door asking if he's ok. The camera in this scene makes a point of showing that the totem is on the floor.

The very next scene is Saito giving him the folder of information.

1. Is Cobb dreaming from 44min (netflix time) on?
2. Is Cobb dreaming from before this?
3. Is this entire movie about Saito trying to extract information from Cobb about how to perform inceptions in the first place?

This movie is turning out to be more crafty than Mulholland Drive.



Yeah, I remember thinking this at the time. When the totem falls on the floor I thought "okay, make a mental note, maybe everything from this point forward is a dream." I'm inclined to think it's just caginess, showing people the rule and then deliberately not answering it. I think this is one of those situations where you can throw a couple of things like that into the film and it immediately creates all sorts of theorizing opportunities the filmmaker might not even have intended, but they have a good instinct for the kinds of things that create those possibilities.

The part that interests me isn't so much that internal rule, but the clever little way the cut to him being handed the folder simultaneously fits with jumping around in a dream and the medium of film, where those jumps happen all the time and are completely unremarkable. Suddenly, every single cut in the film has to be looked at in a new way.



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I'm still off and on digging on the specifics of the scene I mention in post 1. BTW, Christopher Nolan both wrote and directed the film.

I can't seem to find any clarifications online that are solid.

Here is an example of what you /can/ find, such as this 3rd hand rendition from Michael Caine.


Caine is convinced that the ending is real, because he reportedly asked Christopher Nolan which scenes were real and which were dreams. Nolan said that any scene involving his character was reality and the others were dreams.

.........Ugh. This could just be Nolan directing an actor on how to feel and behave in front of the camera.
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Rules:
When women have a poet, they want a cowboy.
When they have a cowboy, they want a poet.
They'll say "I don't care if he's a poet or cowboy, so long as he's a nice guy. But oh, I'm so attracted to that bad guy over there."
Understand this last part, and you'll get them all.