A careful Psychological analysis

Rating: 10/10 (19 December 2011)

SPOILERS AHEAD
Inception is definitely one of the best movies I've ever seen and I its so good because it appeals to people on so many different levels.
First, one could superficially look at this as an action movie with an amazing score by Hans Zimmer. This has to be one of my favorite movie soundtracks and I listen to it by itself frequently. As for action there is plenty of fighting/shooting scenes to appeal to some of the most die-hard action fans with my favorite example being the snow fort ending scene.
Second, one could look at the movie as a man desperate to see his children once again after so many yea. I think any parent could understand the depression Cobb must have felt at having his children effectually taken away from him and the tremendous joy at finally seeing them again for the first time in years.
Finally, I think we must look at this movie for what it is really about. This movie is about coping with heartache in life and the idea of reality. In the movie Cobb, and his wife enter a far removed state, Limbo as it is called in the movie, and live there for around 50 years. Him and his wife grow old together and experience the vastness of life. This world understandably became Mal's reality but luckily for Cobb he was able to cling to the sliver of the truth. Imagine 50 years ago in your own life and think about how different things are from then. Imagine how things that happened maybe two years ago seem so much more "real" than things over 50 years ago. This is what happened to Mal. Limbo became her reality because it was her reality for longer than it wasn't. So when Cobb implanted the idea of it not being real it became an obsession for her to find reality which is why she ended up killing herself.
Now, imagine someone you love that you have just spent all your time with for 50 years and have grown old with. Now imagine you are directly, 100% responsible for their death because you didn't accept their version of reality. This becomes the fate of Cobb, a man who's primary motivation in life is to see his children once again because without them his "murder" of his wife, the one he loves most, is for nothing. This is the Cobb whose life we enter into.
This whole movie is simply an extended view into the battle of Cobb's psyche to come to grips with what he has done. The final scene with Mal in limbo is him coming to the realization that he can't simply stay with her (both physically and metaphorically) because the real Mal is dead and this memory is simply a projection of what he remembers but what he remembers can never be what she truly means to him. He must move on with his life and forget and see his children once again. As he says a couple times in the film, he can't be "an old man filled with regret, waiting to die alone."
So finally, I think what's greatest about this movie is that it provides us with a moral. Forget about the past and look to the future because its not worth struggling with something that you can't ever change.
On a side note, for everyone who is so obsessed with analyzing whether or not the top falls at the end or not, it really doesn't matter. Maybe he's in a dream or maybe he isn't but for Cobb, he is back in reality because he has accepted what happened with Mal and he finally gets to see what his kids. This is reality for him not for us.
If that viewpoint still leaves you uneasy think about this: Everyone is discussing whether the top fell or not but maybe that was just Christopher Nolan incepting us?