My Inception Theory

This is going to be about the movie Inception. But before I write about Inception, I have something to say about another random cultural reference.

Let’s talk for a second about Biz Markie. Can we just muse on the fact that Biz Markie’s friends are named Agnes, Agatha, Jermaine, and Jack? Agnes AND Agatha. I have to assume they are twins. Maybe Jermaine and Jack are, too. Maybe they are Bobbsey twins of Biz Markie’s life. Also, for some reason, I think Biz knows them from church, which is why they don’t come to his show and meet Blahblahblah. Agnes and Agatha would definitely warn Biz that she’s playing him with her “just a friend” bullshit. 

Anyway, back to Inception, a movie many of you may not have seen, and for that, I apologize. I’ll do my best to summarize the movie, but it’s one of the most confusing films this side of Spellbound. I will understand if you wade into this piece and decide to wade right back out and come back next week. 

Inception is a 2010 Christopher Nolan movie starring Leo DiCaprio as Dom Cobb, a professional thief who specializes in entering the dreams of others to extract information from their subconscious. Typically he uses his skills for corporate espionage, but as the movie opens, Dom’s work inside his target Saito’s mind is disrupted first by the presence of his young children on a beach and then by his wife Mal, who has joined Dom in order to warn Saito that his thoughts are being stolen. 

Mal’s appearance is a problem for two reasons. First, she’s messing with his work - Saito wakes after she warns him - and second, because she’s dead (at least, that’s what we are told). Dom’s associates fear that his subconscious fixation on his wife is preventing them from effectively performing their extractions, so Dom promises to put her out of his mind so that they can perform an even trickier feat - planting an idea, rather than extracting one. That’s an inception. Dom’s colleagues won’t agree to his multi-faceted dream hack if Mal is going to show up, so he hides it from them. 

The action of the movie takes place as the dream hackers dive ever deeper into their subject’s psyche, evading the subject’s defenses and dealing with Mal’s efforts to bring Dom over to her “side” - death. At the end of the film, Dom returns home to find his children just as they were when he saw them on the beach in Saito’s mind. In the film, there’s also a totem - a spinning top - which Dom got from Mal. The top spins forever in the dream world but acts like a normal toy in reality. The slight wobble in the top at the end of the movie creates the debate about whether Dom is awake at the end or not.

Many theories swirl around this film, but all the theories assume that Dom is the main character and dreamer whose mind we have entered for this adventure. I have a different theory though, and it’s not one I’ve been able to find substantiated elsewhere. 

My theory is that Mal is the main character and that the entire movie is her dream. I think that the children are not real. Every time they appear, they are the same age and in the same position, their backs to the viewer, a young blond boy kneeling on the ground as a slightly older blond girl leans over him. They seem to be examining something, and they turn partially toward Dom (and it’s always Dom) as he approaches them. They are the same in his dream and they are the same in the house at the end when we are supposed to believe he is awake. I posit that Mal and Dom did not have kids, could not have kids, and that it is Mal’s sadness and ambivalence about this that causes her to stalk Dom in the dream sequences she follows him through. 

In the movie, we learn that Mal killed herself after she and Dom returned from a prolonged dream state where they constructed their own world and Mal could not bear to be back in the real world/did not believe they were back in the real world. We are told that they are in their dream state after their children are born, but why would they go into a dream state if they wanted to be parents to their children? There are no children; Dom knows how to do inception because he has placed the idea of the children into her mind, and in her dream, she is trying to work out how to tie them back to Dom. 

Both infertility and ambivalence about motherhood are deeply painful for women. Either would be particularly devastating for a woman whose husband is able to control her mind (or at least tries to) and who struggles with depression and for her autonomy. I can imagine such a woman might feel that her husband and her father are in league against her to have a conventional family when she doesn’t want it or cannot have it. 

My theory is supported by Christopher Nolan’s portrayal of Kitty Oppenheimer in the 2023 movie of that name. Through Kitty, Nolan shows a strong sensitivity to the reality of motherhood and women’s ambivalence about the role.  Kitty is terribly unhappy as a mother and a wife, and Nolan does not sugarcoat how difficult her role is. Nor does he judge her for anger and coldness toward her children. He contextualizes Kitty’s anger and loneliness. Rather than portray her as a shrew, she’s a woman of unbending courage and integrity when her husband is not. Kitty did not want to be a mother; her marriage to Oppy followed her accidental pregnancy. Mal strikes me as being similar to Kitty Oppenheimer - forced by a more intellectually powerful man into circumstances that required her to stand up for the life they had rather than the one he wanted. 

If you made it this far, it means you probably watched Inception. My apologies for taking 13 years to get around to watching this movie. I might not have considered Mal’s agency if I hadn’t seen Oppenheimer first, but I do think the fact that DiCaprio is the least plausible “dad” actor on the planet, combined with the fact that Dom’s “dream” and “reality” scenes are identical lead me to conclude that we are in Mal’s dream, not Dom’s. Also, we are told that the top is MAL’s top. Inception is Mal’s subconscious working through her marriage, her family, her husband’s job, and the toll it has taken on her personally.

If you think someone you know would vehemently agree with me about this, please: