Inception (2010): Limbo and Reality

What is limbo? What is real? These are some questions the classic sci-fi movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Ken Watanabe answer.

I watched Inception toward the end of my senior year of college three times over the course of 24 hours. It completely floored me. It was the best sci-fi action movie I had seen since The Matrix (1999). It seemed like I had been waiting eleven years for this, like Saito waits an eternity for Cobb to rescue him from limbo in the movie.

What is limbo?

If you haven’t seen Inception yet, I’m excited for you to find out. It’s a word I had never used before watching this movie, but a concept we all know as humans.

It has a specific meaning in the movie to explain the last of the dreamy states of consciousness the characters bounce between, but it also carries metaphorical weight. Put simply, when you’re in limbo, you’re lost. You’ve lost your sense of home. You’ve lost sight of truth. You’ve lost sight of what’s real.

This is what happens to the main characters Cobb and Saito at the end of the movie, but by a stroke of faith they remember what’s real. Or, at least, what they believe to be real — at least another “level up”.

What is real?

Well now, this is a question at the heart of The Matrix that’s also at the heart of Inception. If you can help people answer this question with a compelling plot and series of original action sequences, you’ve got yourself a classic. And that’s exactly what Inception is — a classic.

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