Charlene Alexis A.

Bautista
2007-20996
SocSci2

Reaction Paper: Inception

Confusion. This is what first brought me into a deep trance of drowsiness during the
first few scenes of this so-called epic movie. All the characters in the movie deemed to me
to be oblivious. The subsequent events were a big splash of blur. Everything was just a
mess in my head.

The story begins with an ending. Excerpts of what seemed to be important pieces of
information, like the totem at the beginning, are to be remembered because of its
apparent significance.

As the movie progressed, I came into thinking that the movie was slowly unraveling
its real essence—to make you think. As the plot continues, discoveries of what is
happening in the movie are being made. The movie does not deliver a spoonful of its
whole context to the audience but instead, it compels you to think of how things came to
be and how things would turn out to be.

I was fascinated by the idea of having to enter in someone’s dream and within that
dream, you could dream another, and another, and so on. Truly, I cannot fathom how deep
one can be in such extensive consciousness in their subconscious thoughts. Also, I am
amazed how the dreamer can form his or her own world—distorted and/or altered. In
dreaming your own world, imagination is the key in conspiring with your mind’s capacity.
You need to have ideas of your own. Of course, you may not help but imagine an idea that
exists in the real world. If you get too caught up with developing an idea that is correlated
with one’s real world, it would be hard to differentiate what’s real and what’s not.

It’s just fair to feel a tinge of sympathy for Dom Cobb’s wife. She was not ignorant
of her situation. She was simply dubious if the life she’s living is the real world. And for
this, she ended her life thinking that she could go back to the real world.

In an inception, there were many levels/ stages of dreams. You can live in any level
of world you want. It made me think, why not live in a world you would desire more and
call it to be real? Why not just settle for that? In Plato’s Theory Of Ideas, conception of
knowledge is the highest form of truth and beauty. If one is knowledgeable enough of his/
her own standing, wants and needs in life, then the life he/ she is leading is considered
real. With this idea, I think it would be fine if Dom Cobb settled himself in his own dreams
—in limbo—if it makes him happy. But even though you’d settle yourself with such ideals,
there would always be the thought that the world you’re living is not real. And with that
thought in mind, you will be left with the thinking of what is real and what isn’t.