In a 2010 film Inception, famous American director Cristopher Nolan poses an important question about the relationship between reality and dreams. The main protagonist, Dominick Cobb, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, is an information thief. He infiltrates into the subconscious of a sleeping person and either steals needed information or implants an idea. During the film, the audience finds out in a side plot that while experimenting on this technology, Cobb and his wife Mallorie Miles (Mal) went into “limbo,” a dimension of infinite raw subconscious. After spending a significant “dream time” in such a Matrix of their own, Mal became convinced that it was the reality.
Thinkers in the Western tradition have long concerned themselves with the appearance-reality theme found in this movie. One of the most famous interpretations was proposed by XVII century French philosopher Rene Descartes. In Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes doubts all of his knowledge and tries to find the absolute and guaranteed facts about himself and reality. One of the reasons why he embarks on this journey is his Dream Argument:
… I cannot forget that, at other times I have been deceived in sleep by similar illusions; and, attentively considering those cases, I perceive so clearly that there exist no certain marks by which the state of waking can ever be distinguished from sleep, that I feel greatly astonished; and in amazement I almost persuade myself that I am now dreaming.¹
In order to achieve the desired goal Descartes pretends to think that there is a Great Deceiver who tries to manipulate him and his senses. Through reasoning Descartes “proves” his own existence, existence of God and later the possibility for the existence of other corporeal objects. But his only refutation of the Dream Argument consists in a conviction that instead of his Evil Genius, there is an all-powerful benevolent God who wouldn’t deceive him. And Descartes even acknowledged the fact that humans cannot know the ways of God (let’s suppose that we agree with Descartes’s conclusion that God exists), and that deception may lead to a more perfect world:
And I easily understand that, in so far as I consider myself as a single whole, without reference to any other being in the universe, I should have been much more perfect than I now am, had Deity created me superior to error; but I cannot therefore deny that it is not somehow a greater perfection in the universe, that certain of its parts are not exempt from defect, as others are, than if they were all perfectly alike.²
Therefore, this dilemma remained open even for himself. In Inception, Descartes’ view is represented by the character of Mal. After “living” in limbo for more than 50 years (there is a time dilation in dreams), Mal lost her ability to distinguish what is real. She thought, she existed, but did not realize what limbo was. Only after Cobb implanted into her subconsciousness the idea that it isn’t real, she agreed to leave. But even after returning to the real world, she couldn’t differentiate them and killed herself thinking that she needed to wake up from another dream.
In my opinion, Christopher Nolan gives his own take on this problem in Inception. Even though reality and dreams may appear very similar, there are significant differences by which one can discriminate between them: totems, subconscious reactions, ability of the person to create from nothing in his/her dream world and falling/dying as a way to wake up. The view that there are objective facts by the means of which we can clarify the reality of the perceived world is apparent in the character of Cobb. In multiple scenes of the film he uses his totem — a spinning top — to check the world: if it spins indefinitely than it is a dream world; if it falls — reality. Another way to check is to look for subconscious reactions, if the world seems to be too unrealistic, it will try to attack the intruder. Therefore, Nolan asserts that even if our consciousness isn’t able to separate dreams from reality, there is a part of our mind that constantly checks the perceptions according to the laws of logic. This leads to a very important conclusion: the reality is logical, nothing in it can violate the laws of science and logic, but dreams are illogical, in their pure form (limbo) they are the representation of Absolute Idealism. Thus, the reality of the world can be asserted not only by an observable facts (totem), but also by its accordance with logic. There is also a third way, but it can be used only in retrospect. The reality influences the dreams, but the dreams don’t influence the reality directly (can influence only indirectly if information was stolen, or an idea was implanted). When people dream in Inception all of their memories and thoughts come along with them from the real world, people even enter the dream retaining the same age. But nothing that happens while a person is asleep that directly translates into the external world. Dreams cannot be a direct cause of real events or actions, only if there was a manipulation with a subconscious, but even it will be a real occurrence, not imaginary, since the perception of the self is changed not only inside the dream, but also in the actuality.
Therefore, Nolan establishes three laws of reality: (1) A is A — an object from reality (totem) retains it characteristics even in a dream, (2) Non-contradiction — contradictory things cannot happen in reality (the city cannot be bent 180 degrees as it is shown in one of the scenes of the film), and (3) Causality — everything that happens in reality has some real cause and will have some effect even on the dreams (guilt that Cobb experiences after Mal’s suicide manifests in her constant appearance in his dreams).³
Furthermore, there is still another layer of importance to this film. In the end, Cobb finally returns from the last mission to his children (from whom he was separated after being accused of killing Mal), and just before he gets them on his hands, he spins the spinning top. But the audience cannot see whether it fell or not. Recently, Michael Caine, who played Cobb’s father-in-law, unveiled the secret behind this ending:
When I got the script of Inception, I was a bit puzzled by it,” Caine said. “And I said to [Nolan], ‘I don’t understand where the dream is.’ I said, ‘When is it the dream and when is it reality?’ He said, ‘Well, when you’re in the scene, it is reality.’ So get that — if I’m in it, it is reality. If I’m not in it, it’s a dream.⁴
Caine is in the scene of reunion, therefore, the ending takes place in reality and the spinning top fell. This fact is of tremendous importance since it implies that Cobb finally achieved happiness only when he stopped chasing dreams, when he fully returned to the real world. Thus, according to Nolan, reality isn’t only real and clearly distinct from the dreams, but it is the only place where happiness can be achieved.
- Réné Descartes, The Method, Meditations and Philosophy of Descartes, trans. John Veitch (Washington: M. Walter Dunne, 1901), 240
- Ibid., 256
- Another law — the law of excluded middle — is also implied in the film. There is only one reality, therefore either perceived world is real, or it is a dream. There is no intermediate state.
- McCluskey, Megan. “Let Michael Caine Finally Explain the Ending of Inception Once and For All.” TIME. August 15, 2018 http://time.com/5368056/michael-caine-inception-ending/
