I loved Inception. It was complex, cool, exciting, cathartic and even made sure the Hollywood-ending would itself drag on into conversation beyond the movie theatre. Watching with the eyes and heart of a pastor, I was interested in the loose emotional-ends that collide in the dream scape of the major conflict of the movie. Emotional loose-ends connected to characters, Cobb and Fischer.
Dom Cobb, the main character, has lost his wife and feels the guilt of her loss. His only way beyond that guilt is to find a solution so powerful that he can get home to his children. The only way to do that is to come face to face with his wife deep in the subconscious world where the movie takes place. Like anyone in need of release of this grief but holds on to it, he has locked it away in the layers of a self-created reality which has the potential to create behaviors, reactions and emotions he can't even determine where and when they will turn up.
Fischer is the heir to a fortune and has come to his dying father's side. Only in the last moments does his father seem to communicate with him his "disappointment" in his son. He is left in the hellish position of having no emotional resolution with his father and faced with burying him and taking control of his enormous global company. It is the manipulation of his subconscious that becomes the rich battleground for the future of his father's competitor's power and is the place where Cobb can confront his own history.
In the end, Cobb finds release from his guilt by being pulled deeper into the subconscious than he had gone before in order to complete his mission. In doing so, he faces his grief, lets go and in doing so saves Fischer and completes his task which may give him the opportunity to reunite with his family. In the meantime, Fischer may have found resolution for his own life. We'll never know.
Grief is a funny thing and every person handles it differently. Inception gives us a fictional and sci-glimpse of the power grief plays in these characters lives as they dig into the layers of the subconscious to find and manipulate it's origins. This lays the groundwork for the conflict that reminds the viewer of the power of healing and release that conflict in the soul can bring. Inception provides a glimpse of this healing and release when Cobb is shepherded in this process by a young, gentle and wise soul named Ariadne. I'll need to see this movie again to make sure if I am anywhere near a truth here. I'm just thinking out loud and taking a shot in the dark. Or a layer of the dark!
I enjoyed the show and could run with about 20 different blogs. I was struck by the theme of grief and the major character it played in setting the stage for people to eventually find freedom, restoration and, ultimately, hope for their lives.
