How did they bring Fischer back to life within the 3rd layer of the dream?

Question

Near the end of the film, Mal shoots Fischer, killing him (or at least mortally wounding him) within the 3rd layer of the dream. Dom and Ariadne go down a level to find him and bring him back.

How does this actually work?

When they find him there and Ariadne brings Fisher back up a level in the dream, in that 3rd dream layer he suddenly seems healed. He doesn't appear to be suffering any physical effects of being shot during the scene with his dying father. Shouldn't he still have a gaping wound in his chest? And if this technique can effectively resurrect the dead (or perhaps heal the mortally wounded) within a given layer of the dream, why didn't they use this earlier on Mr. Saito?

Answer 1

Fischer is shot in the 3rd layer of the dream and enters the limbo.

In limbo, you are actually in your own mind, you don't follow the rules of others. What is more, you are so "sedated"(so deep in your subconscious) that you forget reality. This means, you don't have contact to anything else. You are numb(like in a coma). If you pay attention to what the limbo looks like, you'll see that being in the collapsing building(level 3) or in the water(level 1) doesn't seem to affect Cobb.

Probably that is why Fischer is fine. This is also the case of Saito. When Fischer is rescued, he gets very fast from limbo to dream level 1(because of the sychronized kicks) and, as we remember, he was fine there. So you might say that at resurrection he "jumps over" two layers and returns to where he was just fine.

So what happened to Saito? Well, he and Cobb are in limbo and miss those synchronized kicks. The others get the kicks and wake up, destroying the levels 2 and 3. That means we have now only level 1 and limbo. So there are 2 possibilities:

1) Saito wakes from limbo directly to reality because they stay longer in limbo. He is not affected psychically because Cobb is there to remind him of the reality and to make him realize where he actually was(this was the danger: not to know what's real anymore).

2) They wake up in level 1 and manage to heal Saito(Fischer finds peace and has something to meditate, so his projections will not be a threat anymore). In the real world, Saito was shot in the stomach, giving him about 45 minutes before he died(so I have read). So after 15 minutes of driving, he still has 30 minutes, enough to create a hospital or an impossible structure to get fast to a doctor. I think he could be saved.

Now, you also asked why they didn't let Saito get into limbo from the beginning. Well, that was not a great plan, since going there is a great risk(you might forget who and where you are) so going after him would not be such a great idea, unless they had no other choice(which happens in the 3rd level).

Answer 2

Unfortunately I cannot answer this like the other questions on Inception in a positive manner.

This appears to be a gaping hole in the plot. Ariadne, the second least experienced of the team proposes to follow Fisher down into Limbo, in order to rescue/retrieve Fisher. She and Cobb do this and both Ariadne and Fisher are brought back to the 3rd dream layer by falling off a collapsing building, a combination of the falling / dying mechanism for going up a dream layer. Since if Ariadne was wrong, she could end up in Limbo for years - she seems strangely confident and unafraid to try this.

As you say, if that was possible why did they not let Saito die and do the same thing to him - follow him down there, give him a kick or kill him to push him back up to Dream Level 1 magically healed.

I can only surmise that Ariadne and Cobb were desperate and willing to try anything. This is surprising from Ariadne as she had little to loose from giving up at this point, but not surprising from Cobb. Then it would appear that whilst they are sedated too heavily in the real world for waking up when dying in the dream, the dying/kick mechanism for moving up dream layers is not disabled by the sedative even in Limbo. This may have been a calculated gamble on their part.

Answer 3

It could have something to do with Mr. Saito getting injured in the first layer. Maybe the effects of going in and out of limbo depend on the layer of the dream that the person is in.

I'm just speculating here, but I'm guessing that Fischer was "revived" because he re-entered the dream. Limbo doesn't seem to be a layer, but an overall "area" that people can get to in several ways: dying in a dream, going through enough dream layers, etc., so it's possible he just came back in to the third dream layer when he got killed in limbo.

They probably couldn't help Mr. Saito because he was dying in another dream layer. He wasn't necessarily affected physically in the following dream layers except for his body's reactions to the shot from the first layer, so they couldn't really heal something that happened in "reality" (the first dream layer)

It's dreaming. We don't know much about it, so there aren't a lot of rules to it in Movie Land.

Answer 4

Layer 3 is Eames' dream from level 2, and he can dream what he wants. If a dreamer can create buildings, and defy physics, why not also being able of resurrecting one of the co-dreamers. His needing of the use of a defibrillator could indicate that he is not a thát almighty and conscious dreamer, but I think it is better movie than when he would have revived Fisher by clapping his fingers.

Saito staying as wounded from level 1 just suggests Yusuf has some more dreaming experience to acquire.