"Inception" totem question...

[shawbee]

Hi,

warning, probably contains spoilers

So i have a huge question about this movie... no, i don't want to know the meaning of the ending... i just want to know something simple because i'm really dumb =)...

Cobb's totem... it would spin forever inside someones dream, right?... so my question is: "why?" that is not a normal behavior for such an object... why would people make it spin forever in their dreams?

i would expect the totem to fall after a spinning for a while... i mean, there is normal gravity, there is normal friction...

so, what am i missing?

Please hopefully a simple answer... with no crazy interpretations (unless necesary =D)
Thank you!

[palapiku]

Why are you looking for some deeper meaning there? Inception is hardly a factually accurate movie about dreams. The totem spins forever because they said so, and the real reason is to set up the poignant final shot.

[emeraldemon]

I think the real question isn't "why doesn't the top obey physics". I think the real question is "why does so much other stuff obey physics?" If it's a dream, nothing has to behave "realistically". this is shown in a few places, like the city rolling up on itself, and the zero-gravity part. To me the surprise is that there aren't more situations like that. My dreams are rarely so tame.

[Joaz Banbeck]

Why are you looking for some deeper meaning there? Inception is hardly a factually accurate movie about dreams. The totem spins forever because they said so, and the real reason is to set up the poignant final shot.

Yes, that was the reason that they did it. But, IMHO, they failed miserably. It is realy sloppy storytelling.

One of the essential ideas of telling a story - especially a science fiction story - is that early on the reader/viewer is asked to 'suspend disbelief', to believe that certain things about the story's world are true. The writer makes a pact with ther reader/viewer, that if he accepts certain things at the begining, the story will make sense.
From then on, the story should be true to itself. It is ok to ask the reader/viewer to believe that vampires exist, and it then follows later in the story that they bite people and die if exposed to sunlight, etc. That follows from the definition of vampire. But, if, in the middle of the story, it turns out that vampires can teleport also, the writer is breaking the pact that he made at the begining.
Or if the writer claims that giant worms exist on a world covered in sand, that is fine. But if midway through, they grow arms and start playing banjos, the writer is breaking the pact.

In the first part of 'Inception', when the basic please-suspend-your-disbelief-while-we-tell-you-what-makes-our-world-different descriptions are being told/shown, one of the things that we learn is that certain objects will behave differently in the 'real' world than in a dream. Or, perhaps I should say that we learn that certain objects behave differently in the layer that the protagonist believes is the 'real' world. We learn this because the protagonist and his colleagues have experienced it repeatedly. They have tokens that behave in a predictable manner, and the protagonist describes them to his protoge. It is presented to us as a simple fact.

From that point, the protagonist decends into multiple recursive dreams, then pops back out of each of them, which should put him back in the layer from which he started - what he considers the 'real' world. N - N = 0.

For the sake of a cheap closing trick, the movie then denies one of its own basic premises. Tokens that were certainties in the 'real' world now have a different nature.


PS: The idea of decending downward into some artificial reality and then coming back up with information to question whether or not one's current level is indeed 'real' is not new or original. It has been done much better in the movie '13th Floor'.

[palapiku]

From that point, the protagonist decends into multiple recursive dreams, then pops back out of each of them, which should put him back in the layer from which he started - what he considers the 'real' world. N - N = 0.

For the sake of a cheap closing trick, the movie then denies one of its own basic premises. Tokens that were certainties in the 'real' world now have a different nature.

Nope, he's still dreaming. The end of the movie happens in limbo. The guy dies on the first level of the dream, because he's sitting in the van, which drowns, and nobody comes to rescue him. The ending is quite obviously a dream - a telling sign is the children, who are of exactly the same age and appearance as in his memories.

[palapiku]

The idea of decending downward into some artificial reality and then coming back up with information to question whether or not one's current level is indeed 'real' is not new or original. It has been done much better in the movie '13th Floor'.

And, famously, by Zhuangzi.

[Joaz Banbeck]

The idea of decending downward into some artificial reality and then coming back up with information to question whether or not one's current level is indeed 'real' is not new or original. It has been done much better in the movie '13th Floor'.

And, famously, by Zhuangzi.

Uhh, I disagree. It is a totally different logic. In the butterfly metaphor, there are known number of levels, but their order is uncertain. In 'Inception' and '13th floor', the number of levels is uncertain, but the order is known.

[Monadology]

Nope, he's still dreaming. The end of the movie happens in limbo. The guy dies on the first level of the dream, because he's sitting in the van, which drowns, and nobody comes to rescue him. The ending is quite obviously a dream - a telling sign is the children, who are of exactly the same age and appearance as in his memories.

While I think this is probably the correct reading, I don't think it's very poignant. Consider the fact that we know Cobb has left limbo before. We're left without knowing whether he will wake up in the future and if so what will happen. Apparently killing yourself in limbo does the trick, so why doesn't he do it now? Is he unaware that he's in limbo? In which case the end is kind of a cruel trick (and we still don't know if he'll wake up and what will happen). Cobb is also defined emotionally as the movie progresses by his rejection of the simulacra of his children when originally in limbo, and the eventually even of his wife. We have no real sense that he has gone back on this, so it seems inconsistent that he would choose his children in limbo over awakening.

Basically, we're left without really knowing what this means in the broader context. If it's supposed to be something that will happen in perpetuity, which is the only satisfactory ending, then we should have some indication that he will never be leaving limbo. But we don't. Because the basic plot of the film requires Cobb (AND his wife) to have escaped limb before.

[Joaz Banbeck]

... Consider the fact that we know Cobb has left limbo before. We're left without knowing whether he will wake up in the future and if so what will happen. Apparently killing yourself in limbo does the trick, so why doesn't he do it now? Is he unaware that he's in limbo?

If you were in the situation in which you did not know if you were dreaming or awake, and you had a tool - the top - that would tell you, would you not check at the first safe opportunity after entering a level?
To not do so verges on insanity.

[Chew Terr]

In response to the original question... I think the creators were aiming at something like this:

It spins forever in his dreams because he's convinced himself it does. He has just ingrained 'this is how it works' enough that if his mind can make it, it will.

[shawbee]

Why are you looking for some deeper meaning there? Inception is hardly a factually accurate movie about dreams. The totem spins forever because they said so, and the real reason is to set up the poignant final shot.

I'm not looking for a deeper meaning, i never said i was... i'm looking for a simple answer... because i thought i missed it while watching the film. Aparently i didn't, since none of you had a "movie based" answer to my question

I guess the answer but be something along the lines of what Chew Terr says...

(...)
We learn this because the protagonist and his colleagues have experienced it repeatedly. They have tokens that behave in a predictable manner, and the protagonist describes them to his protoge. It is presented to us as a simple fact.
(...)

You are right, but to me it is kind of different. For example, they didn't give me an explanation of how that dream sharing worked. They only presented this little machine which everyone plugs into and start dreaming... ok, that's enough to me. I don't understand how it works, there are no logic mechanics there, but whatever, i believe it works, let's move on... i'm in that state that you describe where the movie creators are introducing you to their world; and that's ok.

But on the totem... they give me logic examples:
* The dice... arthur knows how it works on real life because its loaded... so, let say, always gets a 5... in the dream someone who doesn't know the dice will make it roll like a normal dice... bang! arthur knows is inside a dream...
* Ariadne's bishop apparently works similar... she changes its weight so it's probably easier to make it fall (or harder, i don't know).

But cobb's totem... i couldn't make sense of it at all.

I'm gonna be honest with you, i totally understood wrong the totem while watching the movie. I thought it worked the other way around. To me, Cobb had built a top that didn't fall in the real world... it was a perfect top (again: how? i don't care, they told he did it...); and in peoples dream... it fell... because that's what a top is suppose to do...

I watched the whole movie thinking this... (it solves my question... but brings out a lot of new ones though)

[palapiku]

In all fairness it's a pretty dumb movie and I don't think such a deep study of it could be rewarding.

[fwiffo]

Pretty much every other movie I've ever seen has done a better job exploring the weirdness of dreams, including Spaceballs.

[shawbee]

In all fairness it's a pretty dumb movie and I don't think such a deep study of it could be rewarding.

Again with that attitude of "just relax it's just a movie"... don't worry, palapiku, no one here is treating this movie as uber awesome... definetely noone is studying it...

As far as i see it, it is rewarding to understand something... be it a movie, a comic you saw in the newspaper, a tv show or that silly game i keep playing but noone around me really cares...


The question is still open is someone has the answer... Chew Terr so far has my vote.

[ZeroKun]

Everyone's thinking too deep into this, Cobb's wife and himself just added another identifier to the item.

A Totem is an object that is used to test if oneself is in one's own reality (dream or non-dream) and not in another person's dream. A Totem has a specially modified weight, balance, or feel in the real world but in a dream of someone who does not know it well, the characteristics of the totem will very likely be off. In order to protect its integrity, only the totem's owner should ever handle it. That way, the owner is able to tell whether or not they are in someone else's dream. In the owner's own dream world, the totem will feel correct. Any ordinary object which has been in some way modified to affect its balance, weight, or feel will work as a totem.