Can you imagine a city twisting and turning in front of you? Have you ever seen a large train roaring down the street, crashing in to cars and buses? “These can only happen in my dream” you may say. Indeed, the movie Inception brought you and me into a land of dreams.  Everything in the movie was not only about some showy special effects but also about some forms of philosophical truths that had philosophers debate for thousands of years: “The nature of dreams and their depth”.

 Water flooding into the weird looking traditional Japanese palace, people floating up in the air while shooting each other and staircases leading you endlessly to your starting point, all seemed like ideas coming out of a mad house or from any human dream. 

It’s difficult to imagine how our dear old Freud may feel if he were to discover that some his theories, notably how would ego behave in an environment freed from judgments, were labelled “Made in Hollywood” and were being shown under the crispy sound of chewing popcorns. The movie Inception itself, like the famous Escher’s staircase, incepts impossibility under the possibility, or the common sense.

Cobb, the main character, is a skilful thief. He is not those pick pockets interested in mobile phones or wallets, but a professional ‘dream maker.’ He steals information and uncovers all kinds of secrets from people by getting into their dreams and reading their sub conscious mind. In the movie, Cobb was hired by a Japanese energy bigwig, Saito, to try to make Fischer the junior, the boss of another large company, to believe that his father, the previous boss, wanted him to give up competing with Saito, simply by incepting a thought through Fischer’s dream.

It’s difficult to tell the difference between real life and dream, because real life is just another form of dream, and dream is simply an image of real life. The dream-making team used this very theory to break into Fischer’s brain and make him believe in something without raising any suspicion. However this technique, apart from being Cobb’s saviour, was also the very reason why Cobb’s wife committed suicide several years ago.

The movie is voluntarily creating confusion at this point. Not only can’t Fischer tell the dream and real world apart but also the audience suddenly finds out that a terribly bewildering maze has been set and that no one is to be able to get out. At the end of the movie, the director left a big question mark in my head. “Will that top stop spinning?”

My answer is, it will stop and continue spinning at the same time. Remember Cobb’s talk with Ariadne? He said that when you are in a dream, you will not be able to recall the very beginning of the dream.

Let’s focus on the beginning of the movie. Cobb woke up on a beach near the Japanese palace. That place appeared again after Cobb was killed in the dream and fell in to the ‘Limbo’ in the last part. This was a perfect Escher’s staircase! There’s no beginning, because the beginning was an ending itself. We don’t know how Cobb began his life of making dreams, because the movie simply did not explain why. Then, the shocking fact revealed to us: The entire story could be a dream itself! 

Then, you may ask, how can the top stop spinning if everything is a dream? Don't forget the fourth dimension: Time. Although we may get to the same point again and again on the Escher’s staircase, that so-called “same point” only means two points sharing the same location, or in other words, the three dimension numbers. We are ignoring the fourth one, as the time we get to these two points are different. This can make great difference. The top can do different things, for time can help it exist in the same place, in the same situation but in DIFFERENT TIMES! It is like a street crossing, different thing could happen when you choose a different way.

These might be a bit confusing. Let’s get to a much simpler explanation. If you read the actors’ names at the back of the movie, you will find out something. There are four people acting in the roles of Cobb’s children. Two of them are three years old and the other two are five years old. You see, it’s still time playing tricks on us.