Regardless of one’s interpretation of Inception’s conclusion, the final minutes of the film exemplify the film’s overarching theme of control. Christopher Nolan’s dream-twisting heist flick may have audiences battling over the “truth” of the final frame, but the undeniable thematic truth is that Inception affirms the individual, conscious desire to control the uncontrollable, be it dreams, emotions or a life spiraling into the hands of fate. Inception, for all its sleek tidiness and meticulous narrative design, is essentially about taking control of the uncontrollable by letting go. Whether Leonardo DiCaprio’s Dom is in the real world or limbo by that closing shot, he decides to abandon the dreams and emotions that ruled his life and rushes to embrace his children, effectively reclaiming control of his life. Dom’s decision punctuates the theme of taking control that reverberates through every facet of Inception, from the setup to each “stage” of its climax to the dénouement.
Long before Inception’s multi-layered climax and perplexing conclusion, Nolan examines the concept of controlling the uncontrollable through co-mingling A-stories: Dom’s struggle to control “Mal” and his team’s quest to control the dreams of Fischer. Both plotlines deftly illustrate how the characters struggle and conspire to control unbound elements of the human psyche, specifically emotions and dreams. From the opening “extraction,” Dom struggles to avoid, ignore and altogether obfuscate “Mal,” the embodiment of his guilt over the death of his wife. Dom cripples his ability to perform dream-share extractions because he cannot control the grief that disturbs his subconscious. So disturbing is this grief that it emanates in the visage of his deceased wife and constantly threatens his team’s missions. Dom’s journey in Inception is as much about returning to his family as it is gaining control over a debilitating emotional handicap, in his case a devastating amount of grief. He fights with “Mal” through the duration of the film—physically, verbally and emotionally—and it is only when he faces her and embraces the irony of control—letting go in order to gain control—does he begin to conquer his emotions and escape his own personal “limbo.” By facing his emotions as an addict does an addiction that has overrun their life—by confronting and releasing the source of the pain—Dom achieves a semblance of control over a seemingly uncontrollable adversary.
Accordingly, Dom’s team plots a meticulous strategy—one that makes use of a wealth of talents to control the heretofore uncontrollable realm of dreams—to manipulate the dreams of global energy conglomerate heir, Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), and plant an idea that will prevent him from monopolizing the energy industry. Each member of Dom’s team represents an attempt to control some aspect of the dream process, from Yusuf (Dileep Rao) the Chemist, whose sedatives initiate near-endless sleep, to Ariadne (Ellen Page) the Architect, who constructs the dream world, to the Eames (Tom Hardy) the Forger, who creates weapons and identities out of thin air. The specialists all prepare clever plans to control their respective aspects during the multi-stage inception, the act of planting an idea in the mind by delving into deeper dream levels, yet they face seemingly preternatural resistance the longer they spend in Fischer’s dreamscape. In response, the dreamer, or controller, of each level must wrest control of their dream level from forces beyond their control, be they physiological or emotional. Inception’s climax bounces between dreamers on each level as they battle subconscious soldiers, anti-gravity, and errant emotional manifestations to regain control of their dream worlds. At crucial points during the climax, each dreamer regains control of their level moments before they are “kicked,” or awakened, into relinquishing control.
The concept of control also surfaces in certain concepts, characterizations and arcs. The very concept of dream-sharing, including the acts of extraction and inception, is built on the foundation of attempting to control a realm of uncontrolled thought. A victim of a dream-share extraction, Saito hires Dom to perform an inception on Fischer in an effort to both prevent Fischer from controlling an industrial monopoly and likely establish his own conglomerate. Even the target of the inception, Fischer, is seeking his deceased father’s approval to control his own life. To varying degrees, each character and concept in Inception is dedicated to echoing the theme of gaining or losing control.
By the conclusion of Inception, the idea of control is prevalent in every aspect of the story from the characterizations to concepts to the props (i.e. totems like Dom’s spinning top, which act as barometers of differences between controlled dreams and reality). When Dom abandons the top in favor of his children at the end, he becomes the embodiment of the idea of control and its inherent irony. He has become a man who has regained control, but only after struggling against, and frequently losing to, forces beyond his control, both internal and external. However, even in this moment of triumph, the irony of control—that delicate balance between losing and gaining control—lords over the scene. As Dom makes his way to his children and exits the frame, the top, which affirms Dom’s presence in reality by falling, he spun seconds earlier continues to spin until it wobbles, seemingly losing control.
