The movie begins with the opening of a box. We're watching as the box is being filled. But with what? And why? What is this box? We are introduced to the point of such a box later on in the film after the loner follower (read quiet stalker) encounters a man who has caught the loner in his act of following. But then the question becomes "Whose box is being filled?"
Christopher Nolan has a penchant for studying the mind, its intricacies, its desires, its thought, its progressions and regressions. We follow this loner character, whose name may or may not be Bill (in the credits he is simply referred to as 'The Young Man'), through the streets. We see people through his eyes, and possibly even through his ears. For the most part the people he encounters are harmless victims. We learn that he is a writer looking for inspiration, and is hoping to find the inspiration through his observances of other people. Where are they going? Who are they seeing? Why might they be acting strange? These are the questions he wants to ask. And we believe him....
But then Bill is caught by a man known as Cobb, a probably too handsome burglar whose motive is not to rob a person but to enlighten them. By robbing their houses he is opening their eyes to the things they are missing. Only when they are missing do they come to realise that they actually owned it. It is during Bill's introduction to Cobb's theory that we are introduced to the box. Everyone has a box, we are told, one that includes all the important things a person can own. A note, a picture, a piece of memorabilia...anything that we hold close to our own heart. Cobb believes that through these personal items you can identify a person, psychologically and socially. It's not long before we are given the treatment to Bill as he makes Cobb believe his apartment is just another job.
The movie is told in spurts by voiceover narration by Bill in a scene we realise is actually taking place at the end. So while the film begins, there is already a bridging between what is officially the start and what is actually the end. As the film progresses, there are leaps and bounds between the time gap, almost like a story being told and retold, stopping and pausing for where the gaps need to be filled. It's not long before Bill's life is being complicated by Cobb's and a conspiracy theory develops involving a seductive blonde. Bill begins to reinvent himself, looking more like Cobb, the suave burglar, the one no one would suspect of robbing houses. Soon Bill is talking with more ease and eloquence with a hint of weakness and vulnerability. It's a big step from the Bill we met at the beginning in the coffee shop experiencing his first apartment robbery.
But then it all comes down to the box. Throughout the film we see boxes being filled, unfilled, carried, examined. We see these boxes, but not for what they are. We are given glimpses into the lives of several victims and their lifestyle described to us by the items, we are told, should technically mean the least to them. But then there are the boxes, which are said to be important but which are given nothing more than a passing glance, and traces that they've been tampered with. And so it comes down to the box at the beginning, the one that was being filled with hands we can only assume would be Bill's own.
Bill is never revealed to own such a box. It wouldn't be too hard to assume that Bill could have no such box. At least not in his apartment. As Cobb and Bill wander through his things, they are discarded with near disgust by Cobb as he is clearly having his time wasted. But as the final images of the film come to an end, we watch as Cobb walks into a shadowed crowd, only to disappear once a shadowed figure moves past the camera. Perhaps Bill could never own a box because he never had anything he could cling passionately to. The box we see being filled at the beginning with money, a toy sea horse, photographs that are never revealed, might not be a box we can hold. Nolan might be giving us a box, but it is the box that Bill is so desperately trying to fill inside his mind. As the final lines of the film are uttered by Bill to an investigator, we can't help but wonder if it was never the investigator Bill was trying to convince, but The Young Man.
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