I’ve been writing essays about criminal minds so much that you’d think it’s my number one hyperfixation, but that actually isn’t true. It was back when I first watched it, but my writing about criminal minds is more of a “research” project to me than an intense fixation. Inception, however? Oh boy. This is a long winded way of me saying I’m about to write so incredibly much about this movie that is really, truly unnecessary. I’ve done this before on letterboxd on my last rewatch, but on this rewatch, I figured I’d have more fun writing here.
I decided to rewatch mostly on a whim, deciding to take handwritten notes that’ll stay private because it’s mostly just nonsense and the bones of what I’m writing about here. I’m constantly thinking about this movie. It’s a 24/7, 365 days type of thing. This fucking film is entrenched in my every day existence to the point that I genuinely don’t think I’ve gone a day without thinking about it since the hyperfixation took hold over two years ago. In a way, Inception sort of got performed on me when I watched this. An idea got implanted, and it’s come to define me. Part of why I rewatched, I suppose, is because of all the work I’ve been putting into the Eames x Arthur fic I’ve been writing. It’s been a multi-month affair, and I recently finally hit roughly halfway through the behemoth of a story. As I’m sure you can tell, conciseness isn’t my strong suit. Never has been.
With that, I think I’ll start this analysis/essay/rambling with those two idiots. The Eames x Arthur ship (do we call it dreamhusbands? I like that even if it’s kinda corny) is what kickstarted my obsession with this film. It actually wasn’t my first watch that sent me into this never ending spiral. When I first saw it, I was sitting on my dad’s couch and was like “whoa cool movie.” Then, on a second watch, I thought, “whoa cool movie. Those two are definitely gay.” And here we are. I know any fan of this ship has picked apart every Eames-Arthur scene, considering they really don’t get a ton of screen time together. But I think I differ from a lot of the typical analysis of these two. I think a lot of people see them as scorned exes or something similar. I definitely get that lens, but I’ve personally never seen it that way. To me, they’re more so two people who have built up so much tension over time that they pretty much want to kill each other in the process of wanting to sleep together. Their conversations are all so flirty in a way I don’t think bitter exes would be. The fling theory works a little better for me, but I just don’t think two people who had already been together would act like this. There’s too much unknown, too much tension. That’s just my opinion, though. It’s hard to pick a favorite scene between the two of them, but lately it’s been the small one in the car. After the shooting and the chase, Arthur screams out to Eames asking if he’s alright. Eames is a little taken aback by the fear and urgency in Arthur’s voice, but he answers gently and assures him he’s okay. Meanwhile, poor Saito is bleeding out in the front seat actively. He’s probably wishing he got stuck with any other pairing of people. Arthur and Eames are too busy staring at each other to give a damn about anyone else. The two have an almost comical focus on each other throughout the movie. I genuinely don’t know why Christopher Nolan did that. I know a large part of it is how JGL and Tom Hardy chose to play the characters, but I mean, Nolan still wrote the scenes, right? He approved them. Did he know what he was doing?? Then why include the stupid Ariadne-Arthur kiss? I genuinely love Nolan’s work, but the thought of asking him about this makes me want to throw up. I feel like he’d call me an idiot. “How dare you turn my masterpiece into some gay love story?” Sorry, man, but that’s what my life has come to.
On that note, I do think it’s worthwhile to discuss this movie outside that focus. Despite my joking, I do think it’s a little reductive to boil this movie down to the queerness implied between two side characters. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s genuinely important to the movie and definitely very important to me, but there’s so much else about this movie that I’m itching to talk about. I typically find myself focusing on one character through a rewatch. The watch before this one, it was Ariadne. I wrote a lot about her in my letterboxd post. This time, it was actually a mix of Cobb and Saito. I know, wow, I focused partly on the main character, what a surprise. But Cobb actually is very rarely my focus when I watch this movie. He remains in the background a lot of the time to me, but this time, he caught my eye again. Mainly, his relationship with Saito. I did touch on this the last time I watched this, but it was only toward the end. This time, the full picture became clear. It is entirely fascinating to me that Saito becomes representative of Mal. It reminds me of how in Disco Elysium, Kim Kitsuragi in a way replaces Dora, Harry’s ex-wife. If you don’t know that game I guess that comparison is entirely unhelpful, but it helps me, my bad about that. Anyway, Saito becomes a way for Cobb to right his past wrongs. In Saito, he sees Mal. He sees the mistakes he made and seeks to correct them. A lot of the lines Saito says are lines Mal says as well. “A leap of faith.” Something Mal asked for, something Cobb couldn’t do. Something Saito then asks for, something Cobb becomes brave enough to complete. “This world is not real.” Something Cobb tells Mal, something that ruins Mal’s life. Something Cobb tells Saito, something that saves Saito’s life. Through Saito, Cobb can find the same catharsis that Robert is searching for. He can right the wrongs of his past. Like Robert’s catharsis, Cobb’s isn’t strictly “real.” But is there one reality? The movie tends to say “no.” So, in some world, both Robert and Cobb can heal their pains of the past. And isn’t that how life works? You can’t really right past wrongs. You can only decide that you have. I can be hurt by someone and forgive them for it. That doesn’t right what they’ve done, but it gives me peace. I think catharsis isn’t about fixing. It’s about release.
Robert is a heartbreaking character. Cillian Murphy plays him with such skill. I am forever haunted by his last scenes with his dying father. He’s in this quite frankly frightening room, a room that any sane person could tell you is not real. But it’s real to Robert because it has to be. He needs it to be. He finds that pinwheel in the safe and it’s not enough, but it almost is. It’s a chance. It’s a tiny piece of evidence that his father may have loved him. Despite years and years of evidence otherwise, if you were him, wouldn’t you believe it, too? Wouldn’t you want to believe that despite everything, your father did really love you? How would you ever be able to convince yourself that, “no, it was a fluke, that doesn’t mean anything.” That pinwheel fucking means something. It gives Robert hope. More than anything, he needs that. He cries by his father’s side and he’s finally, finally allowed to mourn him. He can clear the guilt in his heart created by all that anger. He doesn’t have to feel bad for his sadness nor his ambivalence.
“That guilt is always there, reminding me the truth.” Guilt is something that I think is incredibly difficult to dispel. I know that it unfortunately drives me. I wish it didn’t. I wish I was driven by love, or hope, or righteousness. But a lot of my motivation is guilt. I still feel guilty for things I did years and years ago, things that weren’t even my fault. Things I’ve apologized for, things I’ve attempted to make up for, wrongs I’ve (pointlessly?) tried to right. Guilt is so powerful because trying to dispel it requires something humans aren’t built to do: letting go. Love doesn’t take that. Sure, “if you love someone, let them go,” but you don’t have to lose love to let someone go. You can let someone go because you love them and still love them. But guilt? You have no choice but to let go, or it’ll eat you alive. You have to release, you have to let memories die, you have to do the one thing we’re taught to avoid and forget. Cobb has to leave Mal behind. He has to accept that he will forget her face, has to learn to live with the loss. The bravest thing we can do is stand strong in the face of time.
Cobb is a man out of time. He is constantly fighting against the clock, racing through the stages of his life over and over again. He has to change those memories, and yet he can’t. He traps himself in a paradox. You can’t beat time. You can’t go back, you can’t push far forward. Cobb has to accept that no matter how hard he tries, Mal is gone. How do you accept that? I sure as hell don’t know. I haven’t faced any major life deaths yet, but I’ve lost things. Lost people in ways other than death. Lost pieces of them. I still can’t accept it. I still remember them on their birthdays, still look for my dead cats on the windowsill, still think fondly of the past and long for it. Just like Cobb, I sometimes wish I could hop in an elevator and go back. Just to watch. To watch those memories, good and bad, and take them in with the knowledge I know now. Just to hold on to them a little longer. But we can’t. I can’t. I try to learn that with every rewatch. Maybe one day, it’ll take.
On a lighter, less outlandish and pretentiously philosophical note, I want to pivot and talk about Arthur a little. My beloved Arthur. I think Eames tends to be the fan favorite, and I definitely understand that. He’s funny, witty, and he’s Tom Hardy. There’s not much you can fault him for. But I don’t care, Arthur will always be my favorite. He’s more complex than he gets credit for. On the surface, he’s this no-nonsense, intelligent point man with a massive ego and a one-track mind. But I think there’s more to him. There’s a moment I always reflect on in this movie, and it’s when Arthur reveals to Ariadne that Mal has died. He gets so…quiet. So gentle. He almost struggles to get the words out. “She was lovely.” That haunts me. He becomes almost childlike. He’s spent the entire movie to this point being the “suave, smart teacher” dude. But this moment humanizes him. It shows us that he’s got a past, that Mal meant something to him, that he acts the way he does not because it’s who he is but because it’s who he has to be.
Arthur’s relationship with Cobb is another thing I get stuck on. I know that Arthur x Cobb is a ship but wow I do not see that at all. In fact, on this rewatch, I noticed a lot of animosity between them that I haven’t before. Cobb not wanting to tell Arthur the truth about Mal, Cobb telling Arthur blatantly “it’s every man for himself,” Cobb treating Arthur almost like he’s disposable. I’ve always seen it in my head that Arthur and Cobb have a long history of working together. I’ve even at times seen them as close friends. But who calls their close friend by his last name? It’s not a nickname, because Mal calls him Dom. It’s a professional courtesy. On this watch, I think I saw Arthur as stuck in some odd, mentor-mentee relationship with Cobb. Cobb taught him this world, maybe even introduced him to it, but won’t get any closer. He has to keep Arthur away to some capacity. I haven’t written them this way in most of my fics, mostly because I prefer the idea that this team could all be some big happy family. But in reality, I think Arthur’s constantly pulling at straws trying to figure Cobb out, but can never quite do it. I also like to pretend that Arthur and Mal were close before she died, but how he treats seeing her puts doubt on that. In the first dream sequence, he harshly says something like, “Why is she here?” If they had been close, I don’t know if he’d react that way. Maybe he was just in “job mode” and had to turn off his emotions. Or something like that. I’m rambling, I know I am, I should move on.
The conversation about this movie always goes back to that top. But I don’t really want to discuss that more than I already have. I believe it fell, but I understand why it’s more complicated than that. Either way, this movie is a happy ending. Cobb gets his family back. He’s able to believe in them. That’s what matters. I think a lot about this movie, particularly the little details that in all honesty don’t matter to anyone besides a desperate writer trying to make sense of how to create stories in this world. Luckily, the fic I’ve been writing is an AU, so I’ve been able to avoid a lot of the complications of the movie reality. But half of my notes today were me once again trying to figure out the idiosyncrasies of this world. Straight up, some of it just doesn’t make sense. But like I’ve always concluded, that doesn’t really matter to me. This world is magical and odd and full of an originality I don’t know we’ll ever see again on the big screen. A least, not for a long time. There’s just something special about Inception. It always calls to me like some sort of siren. I’m so attached to this world. The characters feel like friends to me. I’ve spent so long in their heads that I feel like they’ve become a part of me. I know that sounds crazy, and it is. I think I had more to say, but I’m starting to get delirious. All in all…fuck, I love this movie. More than anything. Arthur and Eames should’ve fucked at the end.
I’m kidding! (I’m not kidding)
