Inception, Reality, and Gaslighting

There's been plenty of debate both on and offline about the film Inception, most of it having to do with the film's end. There's of course the "was he/wasn't he still dreaming" argument, but one that seems to grow substantially as the movie gets older is that it simply doesn't matter. Whether or not Cobb is still dreaming is a moot point because he's found happiness in whatever place he's in.

That's all well and good for the protagonist, but it brings up a question in my mind that seems lazy to leave unanswered. What of Mal?

Mal is a character that (supposedly) died before the beginning of the film. She was Cobb's wife and his partner in dream-sharing, and they spent many years together subconsciously. From what Cobb tells Ariadne, a member of his team, Mal refused to leave their dreamspace, forcing Cobb to set in motion the thoughts that eventually led to Mal's suicide. 

By using Mal's totem (the same spinning top from the end of the film) against her, Cobb made her come to terms with the fact that their dreamspace wasn't the real world. In doing this, he also implanted the idea in her mind that she must constantly question her reality, that things she feels to be real are not in fact real, that they're still dreaming. In an effort to escape what she felt was still dream, Mal jumped to her death, leaving Cobb behind.

All-in-all, it seems fairly straightforward. Cobb made a mistake, and his wife paid the price. But it doesn't feel so simple as that when you break it down.

Throughout the entirety of Inception, Cobb's reality is never really questioned. He's set up as the leader of his team and the main character of the story, so he seems to have the most authority over the distinction between the dreamworld and reality. The audience trusts Cobb to know which is which, at least until the end of the film, and he's just as confident in himself.

I can't help thinking of Descartes when I think of Cobb. Descartes could only rely on himself as his own gauge for reality. Not what he saw, touched, tasted, or heard, but his own sense of self. He determined that "if [he] convinced [him]self of something then [he] certainly existed." He was confident in that sense, at least. Cobb seems to take this to the next limit, and in fact seems over-confident with it. His reality based upon himself is the true reality, if not the only reality.

It seems an incredibly self-centered philosophy. Descartes proposed that he could be targeted by some malevolent faction, that some god picked him out to toy with. He was the only thing that he could determine to be real, which threw the entire rest of the world into question. How could he be sure anything was real except for himself? How could he trust anything but himself? Cobb seems to exist in this same type of isolation, rejecting the possibility that Mal could be right. By rejecting this possibility, he tries to ignore the ideas that he instilled in her himself, the idea that they can't just accept what they know as reality.