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Inception 2 – Sin & Reality

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In Inception, death is a constant presence. It moves a person from one form of reality to another. However, Dom’s imagination, the memory of his wife, the guilt he lives with keeps him returning to a fantasy world of the mind. That fantasy world is an attraction, a pull, even a call to death. It is what draws him to what killed his wife, and it keeps him from the reality of his own children. Is not sin a belief in more than one reality, as Mal asks at the end? Therefore, what can destroy Dom is his sin? Sin allures us with attractive fantasies, and it justifies our engaging in it because their can’t be just one reality, that of God and His just hatred of sin.

Interestingly, the person who most often confronts Dom about his problem is Ariadne, who of all the characters in the book, dies the most. Three times she dies in a dream – in her first encounter with a workshop of shared dreaming, when Mal stabs her in part 2 of that same workshop, and at the end when she leaps from a tall building. And we see it register in her face. She, in spite of her name which is taken from the ancient goddess of dreams, is the person most rooted in reality and able to judge Dom’s inordinate fascination with what can kill him and harm others who join him on his projects.

Inception is a fascinating and imaginative study of the human psyche, the effect of guilt, and the need for purging that guilt by death. Thus, it not only shows the importance of the relationship with God the Father (see earlier post on the core theme), but it also demonstrates the need for atonement and sacrifice. But the sacrifice is not our own, or Dom would have died at the end of the movie to pay for his sin. Instead, he is restored to his family. Dom is restored from his guilty state by engaging in a project that restores a son, Robert, to his father, Maurice. But Robert must die first, and who kills him in the dream? Mal, the person who gave herself over to the other reality, who believes in more than one reality, and who is trying to draw Dom to death.