I'm reading the Salon recap/analysis and liking it. Particularly these bits:

"Inception." Is not. About dreams. Not real ones, anyway. The dreams in which much of the movie takes place are artificial constructs, rational, rectilinear simulacra designed to achieve specific ends. The dreamers are lucid, exercising conscious authority over its landscape, which means that the mercurial logic of dreams never has a chance to assert itself.

Is it convenient that the worlds the dreamers construct so closely resemble the landscape of a James Bond movie? Well, sure. Warner Bros. isn’t about to shell out $200 million for Nolan to make some arty thesis film. But it’s not merely commercial calculation that dictates the goal-oriented nature of what "Inception" calls dreams.

And most particularly this: But for me, it makes most sense as a movie about the shared dream of movies, those half-created, half-imagined worlds that are always co-creations of the filmmaker and her audience... If you read "Inception" as an analogue for filmmaking, then Fischer’s journey represents the artist breaking free from the influence of his artistic forbears, taking them apart and building something new from their component parts, and Cobb’s represents the creator freeing himself from the shackles of his own experience, gaining the ability to incorporate pieces of his personal history without being defined by it.

Yeah, I dig that whole piece. Pretty much exactly how I interpreted it and felt about it, with some added brain spiciness.

Just saw Inception. Going to go back and read all the whitefont! But first going to get some thoughts down - DH and I had some pretty different readings, which I always love coming out of a movie.

DH was convinced that the end is the real world, and that the non-falling top was tottering towards the end just so Nolan could leave some ambiguity there.

I disagree. The recurring theme of the 'old man, waiting to die alone' kind of convinced me that whole thing was Cobb's dream.

Now for whitefont!

cinematical has an Inception rundown. Spoilers.

After reading more about the IT WAS ALL A DREAM interpretation, I can see more of the appeal and how it can still be a good, rewarding story that way. I think it was in Cleolinda's journal someone brought up the fact that Fischer's emotional catharsis is fake: it's his subconscious creating a scenario where Daddy loved him. It may or may not have actually been true. Yet, that fake catharsis is still powerful and affecting for him. In the same way, if all of Cobb we see is a dream, if we never see the real Cobb, the dream-Cobb's story still has resonance in and of itself, which plays into the meta-commentary on movies.

I'm still sticking with my read, though. But I do love having a movie that generates such interesting discussion. I feel like there hasn't been one in a while.

I wanted to see it anyway, but the tons of discussion here strongly reinforce that. Hopefully I'll see it soon, before I cave and start reading whitefont.

I have mixed feelings about agreeing with Salon, but I'll take it. I’m sad they didn't mention that projections are basically the audience. (Screw around the world you've established, and people notice. And get pissed off.) The other simple example is Arthur's "give me a kiss" thing. It's funny only because we've seen that in other movies.

I definitely agree that the ending is meant to be ambiguous and that trying to come up with a definitive "answer" is good fun, but... we can't know for sure, and neither can Cobb. And I think that's the actual point; it's not meant to be a puzzle you go through frame-by-frame to solve.

Strega, I agree. As Rao said, the important thing about the ending is that Cobb walks away without looking to see whether the top fell. He's going to accept this as reality, regardless. Just like me.

Well... I have trouble with that as well. If that was what we were supposed to hold on to, the camera would follow him out instead of moving back to the top.

But we've already seen him walk outside. He made his choice. The camera goes to the top because the audience has not, but then, in a sense, forces us to make the same choice Cobb did: not knowing.

How would that be different from following him out? Either way, what we know is incomplete.

And Cobb has an option we don't: he can come back to the table later. Except he can't, because his movie ended.

I imagine that Cobb comes back to find the top fallen over. Except there's a cat on the table so he can't know whether it fell over on its own or not.