*Spoiler Reflections* On Perception in Inception

Last week I wrote a post about the ending of Inception. Is it a perception that exists only in Dom's (Leonardo DiCaprio) mind, or does he really get back to his family? My conclusion was that he gets back to his family, although I admit the evidence is shaky either way. This week, I want to add a little footnote that was just enough out of place to be unfit for the post last week.

With the question about whether Dom is caught in limbo or not comes another question: Does it matter to him? In other words, does it matter whether his happy ending is real, or is it sufficient that he thinks it is real? The answer is: Of course it matters, stupid! Reality is always better than an illusion - Dom says so himself to his projection of his wife Mal (Marion Cottilard). She is only a figment of his imagination, and he rejects her because she is not his real wife. She is, in effect, a simplification of the real Mal, and nothing less than the real Mal will satisfy him.

The same principle applies to reality. A good illustration is The Matrix. Neo (Keanu Reeves) is convinced that he lives in the real world. He goes about his business, and is reasonably happy. But he knows there's something more. Soon he finds out that his brain has been hooked up to a machine, and, as he says, none of his memories really happened. It takes him a while to adjust to this idea, but he never questions that reality is better than the illusion he had been living.
So is a false happy ending better than a real tragic ending? No. It is better to know the reality than to live under an illusion. Sooner or later reality will come and hit you over the head, sometimes with unpleasant consequences. Besides, reality goes hand in hand with truth, and Truth is God. So it is always better to know the reality (at least of the things that really matter) than to be deceived, even by yourself.

The cleverness of Christopher Nolan is revealed in the way he handled the final scene of Inception. It evokes all sorts of questions, including the question of whether or not a happy ending that exists only in a character's mind is really a happy ending. But the ultimate irony is that the ending itself arguably exists only in the viewers' minds. Since none of us can really know how the movie ends, we can all draw our own conclusions. So Nolan took the idea of an ending that is perceived (perhaps wrongly) by a character and projected that onto the viewers. That is clever writing.