While we have an Inception review where you can leave comments, we’ve set up this page as a place where you can discuss the Inception ending and other spoilers without worrying about ruining the movie for folks who haven’t seen it yet.
To help steer discussion we’ve added a lengthy analysis of Inception (especially the ending) and explained why our analysis of the film fits with the story Christopher Nolan intended to tell.
Does our Inception explanation match your theory? Find out!
Many people walked away from Inception impressed. Some were confused, some were even feeling like they had their brains woken by the most exciting and thought-provoking movie experience to come along all year.
I realize that most people who saw Inception have already made up their minds about what they perceived the film to be (and Nolan will undoubtedly be proud of that). However, for those of you still looking for an Inception explanation, we like to offer a few thoughts.
We’ve organized things by category for you, in case you’re more interested in one facet of the film than another. If you want to read about specific points you can follow the links below:
- The Rules of the Dream World (this page)
- The characters and their functions
- Inception Ending Explained
-
The Rules
So, the first thing to talk about are the rules of the dream world Nolan created for the film. With all the action that happened onscreen, it was easy to forget some of the finer details – but once the lights came up, and people had time to think, I know the question of who was dreaming which dreams certainly came up (among others questions as well).
Remember the basic premise: Cobb (the extractor) and his team are con artists, and like any con artists their job is to construct a false reality and manipulate it in order to confuse and/or fool a mark (in this case industrialist Robert Fischer, played by Cillian Murphy). Nolan takes the classic concept of a con man a step further by making Cobb and his team dream thieves, but in the end, the basic concept is still your classic con/heist movie.
Dream Levels and Dream Time
Nolan throws a lot of fancy math at you but it’s all really inconsequential. All you need to really know are the basic concepts:
The dream within a dream process puts you into a deeper state of dreaming. The deeper you go, the further removed your mind is from reality. We all know what that’s like: the deeper you sleep, the harder it is to be woken up and the more vivid and real-feeling a dream becomes. If you’re in a deep enough sleep, not even the usual physical ques to wake up effect you, such as the sensation of falling (“the kick”) or even, say, having to go to the bathroom.
By the time you reach the Limbo state it can be so difficult to wake, and the dream can feel so vividly real, that the mind stops trying to wake at all – the mind accepts the dream as its reality, like slipping into a coma.
When you wake up in Limbo you don’t remember that there is such a thing as a “real world” – as in any dream, you wake up in the middle of a scene and simply accept it for what it is. Breaking yourself out of this cycle is extremely difficult, which is why Cobb and his wife Mal were trapped in Limbo for what seemed like decades.
Time is the other factor. The deeper you go into a dream state, the faster your mind is able to imagine and perceive things within that dream state. We’re told the increase is exponential, so going deeper into dreams turns minutes into hours, into days, into years. This is why Cobb and his team are able to pull off the Fischer job while the van is still falling through the air, before the soldiers break into the snow fortress, before Arthur rigs the elevator, and all within the span of a flight from Sydney Australia to LA.
In Limbo, the mind works so fast that actual minutes can be interpreted as years gone by. When Saito “dies” from the gunshot wound he received on level 1 of the dream, his mind falls into Limbo, and Saito remains there for the minutes it takes Cobb and Ariadne (Ellen Page) to follow him into Limbo – those minutes in one dream state feel like decades to Saito in his Limbo state. By the time Cobb deals with expelling Mal’s “shadow” from his subconscious, Saito has begun to perceive himself as an old man.
Mal’s shadow stabs Cobb during the film’s climax, which throws Cobb back out into Limbo and onto the shores of Saito’s limbo house. When Cobb has to “wake” again in Limbo, his mind is muddled just like old man Saito’s brain. Through Saito’s memory of Cobb’s totem and some shared dialogue that included key trigger phrases – “Leap of faith,” “Old man full of regret, waiting to die alone,” etc. – Cobb and Saito are able to remember the meaningful conversations they had and that there is a reality they existed in before Limbo, where both of them had deep desires still waiting to be fulfilled (Cobb and his kids, Saito and his business). Once they remember that limbo is limbo, they are able to wake themselves up (likely with a gunshot to the head).
Continue to the characters and their functions…
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The end reality is Cobbs in a dream and always has been.
Proof: How did Cobbs wake up on the plane at the end? If Saito shot Cobbs then he would be in a deeper limbo and if Saito shot himself after he would just follow suit.
Firstly, if you could just kill yourself to wake up then all that unnecessary “kicking” was a waste of time. Especially the length they go to, to get the sequence of it in order from Saitos home to Mals apartment, to the arctic, to the hotel, to the car, into the plane. They all could have just killed themselves to come back to the plane. They would just kill themselves in a specific order to cancel each previous dream. But no you can’t, because you would go into a deeper level which proves that Cobbs only got into the plane by dying after being shot by Saito.
In addition, all the kicks have already been used and no longer applies to Cobbs. He would need somebody in each level to rekick him which wouldn`t happen.
Hence, the ending perceived as “reality” is just Cobbs in a dream. If they wanted it to be reality they would have had a shot of the top down and not spinning. It’s not about reading too much into the details. Its about understanding nothing is an accident and in a movie everything happens for a reason. The movie is meant to end with the top spinning to prove my point exactly. And if it was so easy for Cobbs to come back to reality from saitos dream which btw is 6 levels deep then again the kick would have been unnecesary.
BTW if you guys understand movies with foreshadowing then you would tie in the scene where they go on the never ending staircase to talk about paradox to the end of the movie. Perception is reality. Therefore the end is reality but it is also a dream. Your mind cannot distinguish between what is vividly imagined and what is real. Real to Cobbs but reality is that it is still a dream. It depends on whose point of view you take it CAN be reality. Fact is it`s not. Just like in the beginning before he goes into SAitos house as well as near the end, he sees his kids making sand castles near rocks or cliffs. Thats why at the end his child says to him look I built a HOUSE (not horse) on a cliff. Dream!
Exactly! There are 3 possible interpretations as far as I can tell.
1) Totem drops after the cut to black, Cobb is free!
2) It’s all a dream. But whose?
3) Plane is reality but Cobb does not return to it.
I find 3 by far the most compelling. After the van sinks, Cobb does not succeed in getting out and goes into limbo. He tries to get out by dying, but would that get him back out to reality? It would surely put him one level deeper into limbo. This is what he experiences at the end of the film.
@Victor
You wonder how he made it back to the plane? If Saito shoots Cobb AFTER the sedatives have worn off, then, Cobb WILL wind up back in the real world on the plane…which is precisely what happens.
As for why kicks are needed, the time periods in the various dream levels seem so much longer that a kick is the one way to insure that the person returns to reality before having to experience a week, six months, or ten years of dream time. The kicks also allow for a pass-through of sorts to avoid being trapped by the deepening effects of sedatives.
If they just kill themselves while still under the effects of the sedatives, THAT’S one way to end up in Limbo. Cobb and Saito are able to do it to escape Limbo because, once Cobb remembers he’s there to recover Saito, the two of them know they are free to shoot without consequence, since Cobb already knew the sedative assist was past and that everyone else would either be awake or be waking up.
There are only three levels to the dream, and then there is Limbo (and, of course, reality) WHERE did you get six levels???
The top wobbles at the end, which it does NOT do in any dream sequence. Cobb ends up in reality.
ALL OF THIS WAS EXPLAINED AND/OR SHOWN IN THE FILM. I don’t understand why this is so confusing…
@Archaeon
I don’t believe it’s that clear cut (I think the ending is meant to be open to interpretation) but on a simpler point, there are a lot of posts here about dying to get out of Limbo. I’ve only (so far!) seen the film once, and I don’t remember any evidence that Limbo is easier to escape from than a dream (assuming you know you are dreaming/in Limbo). In other words, if you are sedated but in a dream, dying gets you into Limbo. But if you are sedated but in Limbo, you can die and go two levels up?? But not to “reality”? And then dying again gets you back into Limbo? I’m not really buying this, but if it actually is in the film I’ll have to go along with it
Can anyone tell me about what happens to Saito’s rival? Does he disband the company?
@Lee
No one knows for certain, but the implication from Fischer’s joyous, contented expression, the smiles of the team members back in reality, and the inspiriational music playing onscreen afterward is that Fischer probably will do what his subconscious is now suggesting to him…
*inspirational* that is…
Hi all-
Can anyone explain one thing that annoyed me about totems? Arthur’s explanation of totems is that you are the only person who knows exactly what the totem is like, so you can tell if you are in reality (OR your own dream) versus being in someone else’s dream because no-one else would be able to make a convincing totem (hence Cobb’s insistence that Ariadne should never work from memory; the real/invented world tells you whether you are in your own dream or reality). Ariadne’s chess piece, Arthur’s dice and Eame’s gambling chip all work this way. But Cobb’s top? Anyone can dream a top that topples. Sure a top that never topples must be dreamed, but a toppling top tells you nothing. And surely only Cobb would dream a never-toppling top; but Cobb already has a way to tell his own dreams from reality (by never working from memory). Either:
1) The top is just more cinematic than the dice or chip or bishop. I should just forget it.
2) This has something to do with the fact that the top was Mal’s idea (apparently) and also seemed to be the way that Cobb incepted the “we’re in a dream” idea into Mal.
Any ideas?
@bassman3000
The top, like any other totem, has a certain weight and feel to it, which somebody who has not touched it would not know precisely. THAT’S why Cobb can use it. Yes, the spin and fall are important but only because of the particular physical properties it possesses.
Thanks Archaeon. I do see that now.
But it is specifically mentioned (by Cobb? I can’t remember which character says it) that the top will spin forever in a dream, and that’s what we’re supposed to be thinking in the final shot (will it fall? will it spin forever?).
Is that just wrong? Or does it mean something?
I suppose I should therefore add possibility 3:
3) The top is a valid totem, but the spinning/falling dichotomy is more cinematic than having Cobb fiddle with it and mutter “yep, reality” or “nope, dream”.
I am intrigued by the fact that the top is Mal’s totem as well, but I’m worried about focussing on something that may just be a compromise for cinematic effect.
…rather like Nolan incepting the top into our own minds? Whoa, that’s meta.
@bassman3000
if you stay until after the credits you’ll hear the totem fall.
@jake- dammit! And I almost always stay ’til after the credits!
Did some Googling. See the comments here (thread started by Lars):
http://popwatch.ew.com/2010/07/17/%E2%80%98inception-ending/
It seems in some theatres it falls, and in others it doesn’t! That is a sneaky ruse to add fuel to the fire. But also it proves that the ending is supposed to be open to interpretation; which I like.
A few theories:
Adriadne was incepting Cobb. Just like Fisher Jr was told something different in every dream level, Adriadne and Cobb talked about Mal more in depth every dream level.
At the end, Cobb wakes up on a beach. This is real limbo. The “limbo” that adriadne was in with him wasnt limbo. In fake limbo the buildings were coming apart. This is the dream collapsing. Cobb was killed here and dropped into real limbo, where he rescued saito. Adriadne gave herself and Fisher Jr a kick, while Cobb used a gun.
This fake limbo was a deeper dream state that only her and cobb were supposed to drop into. it is cobbs dream, Fisher Jr and Mal are probably both his projections here.
Mal may not have been a projection in the “snow base.” She may have planned to go that far with to mess up Cobb’s plan.
The complexity of the plan added to Cobb’s perception that it was real.
Also, the totem tells him that he’s not in someone elses dream. He could be in his own dream or reality.
When they went to go visit the chemist and Cobb wakes up, he tries to spin the top but he was interrupted. This may have been done on purpose to distract him from the fact that hes in someone elses dream. He probably never fully woke up.
Sometime during the middle of the movie, Cobb says something about dreaming/reality/dont remember, and the scene cuts to 1 second of his top spinning. i feel like this signifies that he is dreaming / in someone elses dream.
The weirdest thing is that i entered here to find an answer. And i did, but had nothing to do with what u wrote.
I guess that u were, as i was, going into all this thinking cus u felt sorry for the fate of Cobb and his children. Then is when i got it.
Cobb is in a dream cus 1. Saito nevr shots the gun. 2. The totem doesnt stop spinning.
Simply. But relax cus as a bohemian i am i couldnt leave it like that.
In the movie they say that in limbo u wait for death with regret, we all saw the aged Saito, so it means that someday Cobb do will die and then hell meet his kids, dad and mal if she aint death. And he wont wait in regret. Hell live two great lifes.
And to conclude u wake from limbo as if nothing never happend! So if mal is alive she wouldnt have waited for him a single second.
The weirdest thing is that i entered here to find an answer. And i did, but had nothing to do with what u wrote.
I guess that u were, as i was, going into all this thinking cus u felt sorry for the fate of Cobb and his children. Then is when i got it.
Cobb is in a dream cus 1. Saito nevr shots the gun. 2. The totem doesnt stop spinning.
Simply. But relax cus as a bohemian i am i couldnt leave it like that.
In the movie they say that in limbo u wait for death with regret, we all saw the aged Saito, so it means that someday Cobb do will die and then hell meet his kids, dad and mal if she aint death. And he wont wait in regret. Hell live two great lifes.
And to conclude u wake from limbo as if nothing never happend! So if mal is alive she wouldnt have waited for him a single second.
sorry for posting it twice.
I did from a celphone and forgot to refresh.
Fantastic how Nolen plants an idea in everybodies heads, by simply not telling us if the totem falls or not. The answer is clear, we simply don´t know. We don´t know if he made it back to reality and this gives room for hundreds of interpretations, as we have seen in this thread. Some are very intelligent and thought out, but the truth lies in simplicity: We simply don´t know and the only way to find out, is to watch the sequel.
Yes, there will be a sequel. This is Nolan´s chance to push over the greatest Science-Fiction trilogy after Star Wars: The Matrix. Inception alone cannot do it, but a trilogy would surpass The Matrix and make Nolan a legend.
@ Archeon
Level one cobbs dream (what you perceive as reality)
Level two Yusefs dream
level three arthurs dream
level four eames dream
level five the apartment which isn’t clear whose dream since where since the girl and cobbs just fell asleep to get there I’m assuming mals
Six a deeper limbo on the beach where saito is
even if I was wrong there are still 4 levels so clearly you are wrong.
Also How long do the sedatives last? I don’t remember it being mentioned in the movie but if it was please let me know. 1 plane ride I’m assuming. And if time is exponential each level of dream and limbo then cobbs and saito would have had NO idea how long they would have to wait before they could shoot the gun. Probably decades!
The top wobbling near the end is not as significant as the fact that they cut to black as the top is spinning in the first place. If they really wanted to show it was reality when the camera zoomed from coobs and his kids to the top it would have been laying sideways on the counter.
You aren´t entirely right, because there wasn´t a dream after the snow force, it has to be limbo, because dead Fisher Jr. was waiting there, so for me there wasn´t a level 5
Don’t worry…I’m not wrong. The time they spend in the collapsing seascape (where they go to find Fischer) is time spent in Limbo, not another dream level, as indicated by the explanation Cobb gives to Ariadne about the architecture and the partcular nature of the buildings in the place…buildings built by Cobb and Mal during their previous stay in Limbo.
Mal is dead and has been. She doesn’t dream.
The sedatives last for approximately 10 hours (clearly discussed in the planning stages of the inception). Cobb and Saito DO know they can wake up using the gun as the escape, because Cobb’s presence indicates the sedative’s effects are about to vanish–Cobb is the one who warned about the premature awakening, so he will not want Saito to wake up until they ARE sure it can be done without consequence.
The top wobbling is EXTREMELY significant because that indicates the probability of reality. The cutting to black simply leaves some ambiguity so as to encourage discussion and curiousity…and to show that happiness is more important in the end than obsession.
You gave gave it a shot, but you’ll have to try harder. :p
@Victor
The above response is obviously for you, and there should be only one “gave”…butterfingers!
@Victor
Oh, and I almost forgot: The plane IS reality, NOT what I THINK OF as reality. There are only three dream levels.
i think that the endding was reality ,because the pice was starting to stop spining and in all the other sences the spinning object keep going
It’s really very simple to me, I think you guys are over-thinking it or just enjoy debating ideas.
He’s created an open-ended finish. He’s planted enough there for you to make a decision, but you’re never going to prove it over the opposite possibility. The movie is set up so that both endings are perfectly plausible. And in a movie this complicated, don’t expect there to be no possible plot-holes. Either way, we’ve seen movies like this before and accepted the fact that there wasn’t a definite answer in the end for us, ON PURPOSE. But feel free to tear through the 2.2 hour movie 100 times with a magnifying glass until you’re satisfied. however, I’m pretty convinced that he meant for either ending to be possible, so I won’t waste too much time arguing and pondering it.
It was a continuous loop of cobbs mind in limbo, playing his own idea of inception. The movie was based on one of the billion scenarios cobbs mind wonderfully composed in his head. Hes probably in a coma, trying to get out. If he really wanted to have his kids with him, his grandfather obviously has a visa or something, where he could adopt his kids and live wherever he was working. plenty of places other then the U.S. to live, where no one could find you.
I think we are still in a dream. Nolans dream. So we have to wake to know the truth.
Evidence that it wasn’t reality at the end:
1) We see Cobb remembering him growing old with his wife (Mel) in limbo. But then, we see him do inception on his wife Mel to get them both out of limbo (he convinces her it’s not reality): they lay down on the rail road tracks, die, and wake up – BUT they are YOUNG while doing this (getting out of limbo). How could they have grown old in limbo if they got out while they were young?
2) Cobb’s children are outside playing when he arrives home at the end, and they seem to be in the exact same position he has imagined them in over and over again during the movie. What is the likelihood his kids would be 1) playing outside in sunshine 2) bending down 3) facing away from him – at the EXACT moment he walks in through the door? We have seen his kids doing 1)2)3) before, through his memories shown throughout the movie. Why are they doing exactly what he has imagined they would do? (Do these kids do nothing else but play outside in sunshine, in similar clothes, never getting haircuts, bending away from the front door, and so on? – very little likelihood)
CAN ANYONE EXPLAIN THIS?
1)
5 min in reality == 1 hour in the dream
do the math if they are in Limbo
They would spend years in the dream and it would be a couple hours in the real life.
In the end of the movie it is shown that mal and dom are wrinkled and old in limbo. their faces are neer shown, but you can se their skin and hands are withered with age. As they lay down on the train tracks they are holding their wrinkled hands. In the first vision of that was his interpretation of it because they woke up still young, so in the vision/retelling he imagined him and mal young even though they lived an entire lifetime in limbo.
here’s evidence it wasn’t real at the end:
1) Cobb remembers him growing old in limbo with his wife. But then, when he does inception on his wife and convinces her to get out of limbo, they are both YOUNG when they lie on the rail road tracks and eventually die and wake up out of limbo. How could they grow old in limbo if they are young when they get out?
2) When Cobb comes home to his kids at the end of the movie, they are both in the exact same position we has imagined them in over and over throughout the movie: outside in sunny weather, playing, bending, facing away from him. What’s the likelihood his children are outside playing in that exact same position he imagines them in, exactly when he walks through the door. Do his kids never get a haircut, do they always wear the same style of clothes, do they do nothing else but play outside in sunny weather, bending down and facing away from the front-door of the house? Very unlikely.
Can anyone explain that?
In his retelling of what happened in limbo, him and mal were young. But in the ACTUAL happenings in limbo, they lived decades together and grew old. They returned to their young bodies because years and decades could pass in limbo while its only minutes in the real world. so that has no evidence whatsoever. and as for the kids, that was what it was that left us wondering. maybe it was proof it WAS real because unlike in his memories where he never saw them, they turned around and saw their faces. who knows. the movie was made to leave you wondering. the top spinning, but it teeters questionably before cutting to black (which i actually predicted before it happened because I knew they wouldn’t leave it as a true happily ever after.
The reason that they became young again is inception. Once she was completely convinced that it was not real, that they had only been there a few minutes she realized that they weren’t old. There bodies began to reflect that idea as well.
Here’s the evidence it wasn’t real at the end:
1) Cobb remembers him growing old in limbo with his wife. But then, when he does inception on his wife and convinces her to get out of limbo, they are both YOUNG when they lie on the rail road tracks and eventually die and wake up out of limbo. How could they grow old in limbo if they are young when they get out?
2) When Cobb comes home to his kids at the end of the movie, they are both in the exact same position we has imagined them in over and over throughout the movie: outside in sunny weather, playing, bending, facing away from him. What’s the likelihood his children are outside playing in that exact same position he imagines them in, exactly when he walks through the door. Do his kids never get a haircut, do they always wear the same style of clothes, do they do nothing else but play outside in sunny weather, bending down and facing away from the front-door of the house? Very unlikely.
Can anyone explain that??
Also, when Cobb ‘sees’ the children out in the garden over again during his dream state, the sequence always finishes with the children responding to a woman’s voice. Assume Mal’s. Therefore his dream.
At the end the children turn in response to him. The similarities between that and the previous dream sequences must purely be put down to cinematic drama – ie, allow the audience to decide for themselves?
The scene with the children turning and running out of view is from Cobb’s memory of the last time he saw them – after Mal had died, and the children were living with her parents. The voice belongs to Cobb’s Mother-in-law.
Sorry about duplicate posts
I am not quite convinced. There are some holes if the ending is real:
(1) How did Mal and Cobb get into Limbo state? Don’t they need a lot of dreamers if many levels were required?
(2) Saito never witnessed the mission was accomplished. What makes him believe that he should make the phone call?
(3) Based on the chart that was drawn, if you were in limbo state, you need to fall back to the lowest level before waking up. In the movie we only saw Mal and Cobb (killed by train) / Cobb and Saito (presumably killed by gun shot) jumped back right into reality.
@wynn
1. At no point in the film does it ever say you MUST have multiple dreamers OR die to reach Limbo. It is chaotic dreamstuff (except for what previous visitors have already built), NOT another dream level. It can be reached at virtually any point in the dreaming process.
2. Cobb came down to Limbo to rescue him, a dangerous and somewhat heroic act. Also, Cobb chose not kill the previous architect, even after being betrayed. Saito saw Cobb as an honorable man and “took a leap of faith”.
3. Fischer and Ariadne returned to the snow level because they had a kick (the long fall), NOT a death like Cobb/Mal and Cobb/Saito. Death woke them up ALL the way.
Hope this helps
@Archaeon
I guess I don’t understand when Forger pointed the gun at Saito in level 2 and conversation between Cobb and Ariadne moments before they went into limbo in level 4. When you die in limbo, you come back to reality. Does it just apply at limbo state? Fischer and Saito die but they went to limbo state instead (aren’t they supposed to wake up? I understand Saito’s part because he was injured but as for Fischer, he died right away just like when Cobb shot Arther in the head at beginning and then Arther woke up)…..or was it because they died not caused by the team members and were due to wound caused by Cobb’s projection [shot by terriost (for Saito) and Mal (for Fischer)] so they went into limbo state.
@wynn
Remember that the sedative was still in full effect when Saito and Fischer died, so they went to Limbo. When Cobb and Ariadne entered Limbo to find Fischer, they were there with intent (thus aware of their surroundings and situation) AND had Eames to help their return to the snow level (Level 3). When Cobb and Saito escaped Limbo, it was because the sedative was no longer an issue.
As for the Eames/Saito scene, I admit I’m not sure what you mean…?
@ Archeon
Why Fischer was in sedative state? Only Saito, wasn’t it?
@wynn
Fischer was also under the influence of the sedative, because he definitely needed to stay under long enough for the inception to be performed and to take. When Ariadne gave Fischer the kick (throwing him from the Limbo balcony), he returned to the snow level. The reason Fischer died (in the snow level) had little to do with WHO shot him…anyone who shot and killed him would have caused the same result as Mal did. The effect of the sedative sent him to Limbo; the kick in Limbo simply sent him back to the point of his death (because that’s how kicks work). Death operates differently in dreams than it does in reality.
Hopefully, that’s a bit clearer…
@ ARCHAEON
Good stuff mate
as u Know My only confusion was how to get to Limbo state. u have cleared that here and also in response to my post
reason i guess I assumed only death in a dream can take u to limbo bcos it was expressly stated in the movie. howver they also never state at anytime that it is the ONLY way. now THANKS TO YOU, i have the full understanding of LIMBO. it can basically happen at anytime and it is the deepest and most REAL FEELING of all dreams and can make u believe its reality
This is my basic theory and there is lot to be explained besides this: very important thing in the movie is Cobbs wedding ring (thats why director shows his hands all the time except at the end of the movie). When he’s in reality (in fact he’s never in reality, the whole movie is in 1st step of dreaming – I’ll explain why) he doesn’t have the ring on his finger, and when he’s dreaming, he allways has the ring. But there is a small problem: in the scene in hotel room when Cobb tryes to stop his wife jumping out the window he is wearing ring so that means that he was sleeping and his wife returned to reality by jumping.
But if the movie continues in this state of dream (he thinks his wife died and he is in reality), why wasn’t he wearing the ring anymore? Maybe it’s simple: his wife is dead and he took of the ring cause it’s too painfull to wear it in his reality cause it reminds him to her. But when he goes to sleep (although he’s in sleep already – so he goes to deeper state or something)), he knows he will meet her in the dream and the ring is allways there. So maybe the ring is not that crucial as i thought… or it is… i don’t know anymore
When she jumped, he was probably wearing the ring in reality just because she was still alive and they were still married. He would have taken it off after she killed herself, and then had it on in his subconscious.
1. IF in fact, he was in the first level of the dream world, think about how much time has went by. Days and days go by in the proposed 1st level or reality, whichever it may be. Regardless, if that much time has went by in the first level he would have woke up, UNLESS he was in a coma or limbo, which how would he get there from the first level of his dream world.
2. Not all movies follow their own proposed rules, whether it be purposeful, or accidental plot holes. Movie-makers miss things all the time that the audience will catch. To debate whether the director put every little tiny, minuscule detail in there to give you enough to make a clear decision is trivial.
3. MOST IMPORTANT THING OF ALL
I have come to the conclusion that he doesn’t want you to know for sure, perhaps the director didn’t even make a clear decision. So he created a scenario, with minor details, that would imply that either of the two possibilities are perfectly plausible. Not everything is as perfectly planned as some of you seem to think. You’re looking for clues, but if he wanted you to know for sure, you wouldn’t need to put the film under a microscope. Just accept that it was meant to place an idea in YOUR mind. It’s either reality or dream, and guess what…by not telling anyone and making it possible to be either, he just pleased everyone because you will all perceive what you want(or think) the ending should mean.
has anyone noticed he is not wearing his ring when him and adriane drinking coffee or tea(?) outside of the cafe where he is teaching her the aspects of how to architect the dream? so he is in a dream, but not wearing his ring, but why?
The dream they share at the cafe is simply a lesson…like a textbook or the teaching and loading programs in “The Matrix”. Cobb would not have expected any trouble from Mal, AND the particular dream seems to be one that Cobb is familiar with as a teaching aid for dream-sharing. He did not, you’ll recall, see a glimmer, shadow, or memory of his children either in that dreamscaped Paris, and Mal only showed up when Ariadne so drastically altered the environment that all hell started to break loose. His ring was just like the other common elements of his psyche in the dream world: not yet corrupted (until, of course, Ariadne got too bold).
i thought on the last mission they said if you die you would go to limbo? So when in the limbo and cobb and saito allegedly “killed” themselves with the gun wouldnt that send them in another deeper limbo? Or would it start the cycle all over again thus sending them back to reality?
if u die in limbo u come back to reality
What I thought would have been the perfect ending to the film: as the top is spinning and the camera slowly zooms in, Moll’s index finger sets down on top of it and stops it; she picks it up-we see her wedding ring- and then it fades to black.
Why would this be better? – Because it would enable the twist I was expecting the whole time: that Moll was the one who actually implanted the idea into Cobb’s mind that he had implanted it into hers (a twist large enough to match the stuff from the Prestige).
Having Moll stop the top would enable the following scenarios:
1)the final scene is limbo; constructed by Moll and Cobb, complete with kids, grandparents, and everything we’ve just seen
3) this is still Cobb’s dream world and he is still asleep (the major twist that Nolan wanted us to get anyway…)
2) this is a truer reality than anything we’ve seen: everything we have just seen is the dream levels by which Moll convinces Cobb to join her in the ‘real world.
4) anything in between
With this ending, 90% of the audience would leave scratching their heads and the discussion surrounding the ending would have blown the roof off, I think. As the ending stands now, it only can go so deep and all fits together too nicely; why not follow through with the true Cartesian ideal and leave the audience with nothing except their doubts and confusion? I think it would have been absolutely poetic.
Any Comments?
There is no such thing as a right explanation for the ending, it’s up to each people to make their own conclusions. It’s an awesome movie, but it’s just a movie, guys! Come on!
@P – this ending wouldn’t be so good because it would preclude all the other options for what was “really” going on. The ending as it stands still allows your interpretation in a way.
[Also, being English I thought she was called "Moll" too. But had I realized she was "Mal" (and French, and mal is French for sickness) I wouldn't have been able to think of Mal as anything other than an inception and so not real at all.]
Anyway, I think all the loose ends are intentional. This is because the “real meaning” of the film, as I see it, is that Cobb can NEVER know for sure that he is in reality. Because his totem was manufactured in the “reality” that she later came to believe was a dream, we can’t be sure that it really tests for reality. If Cobb and Mal had made it in a reality they were certain of, before being too experimental with dreaming, it would have been different (and they should have had one each, not a shared one).
So just before the end, in Limbo with Fisher Jr, Cobb ends his obsession with fictional Mal. At the very end of the film, Cobb at least temporarily shelves his obsession with testing the reality he finds himself in, and focusses on his children (which have been his overriding obsession throughout the film).
The tragedy is that he knows his children may be just as fictional as the Mal he has left in Limbo, and he will never be sure that he is in reality.
The ending that leaves us unsure as to whether it is reality is a reflection of this tragedy.
P, I was just thinking that!
Right on! I bet the idea was considered in the process of it all and Nolan though, “nah; they’ll have enough to discuss for months as it is…”
– Here’s to imagining the possibilities on top of imagining possibilities…
Sounds like the ending of many other movies that have plots within plots – not very original.
After all said and done, I think that Chris Nolan should be applauded for holding millions of people around the globe spellbound. “Inception” is the first movie I have seen that has truly caused me to think this deep, and I am so impressed. Also, great acting from the cast, it couldn’t have been this “tight” without them. I admired every single aspect of the plot, script, infact, every little detail. Its a job well done.
Well said!! I agree!!
What if Mal was right when she tells Cobb (in Limbo) that his reality was not real so he has to kill himself on order to turn to real reality just like Mal did before??? Maybe it’s Cobb who is in constant Limbo and Mal is alive in real world trying to interfere his dreams and tell him to kill himself so he can come back to real life!!!
The problem with the last part of your idea (that the alive Mal is trying to interfere with Cobb’s dreams) can’t be correct. The reason he stopped being the architect, and the reason he did not allow himself to know the layout is to prevent Mal from also knowing the layout – which means that she is simply a projection.
Someone also suggested that perhaps Mal had implanted the idea into Cobb’s head – this also cannot be correct. Cobb is very obviously paranoid that he is not in reality and in one scene is ready to kill himself if the top doesn’t stop spinning. But when he perceives the top stop spinning and he “confirms” reality, the paranoia goes away. If Mal had planted an idea in his head that this wasn’t reality then that idea would consume him even in his perceived “real” world.
Regarding the idea that “Cobb goes from being a guy who is obsessed with “knowing what’s real” to ultimately being a person who stops questioning and accepts what makes him truly happy as what’s real”. How exactly does this mesh with the fact that only a few minutes before we saw Cobb reject the chance of a happily ever after in limbo with his wife and kids? He’s adamant that he *only* wants to see his children in the real world and we see him tell his wife that he must finally let her go even though he would have loved nothing better than to be with her. If the idea is that Cobb then inexplicably jumps to, ‘oh stuff this I’ll take whatever makes me happy as real’, then it’s either extremely shoddy storytelling or there’s no weight to this idea at all. Furthermore, if he supposedly stopped questioning reality at the end of the film, why did he spin the totem at all?
Cobb has a choice between 3 alternatives: Live with his projection of Mal in Limbo, try to get back to his children in the film’s level 1, kill himself in an attempt to get back to a presumed level 0 with a real Mal and real children.
Towards the end, after Ariadne’s intervention, he rejects the first option.
But the choice between the other two is extremely painful. If he is wrong about the children being real, he wastes years with children that are only his projections. If he decides to kill himself and is wrong that there is a higher reality, he leaves behind his real children and his and their happiness. It is no surprise that he chooses to live with his children for now. He is still concerned that his life with his children may not be real, however.
To me, he walk away from the top at the end is him saying “dammit, I’m not going on the run again just now, I’m going to spend some time with my children, and maybe find out if they are real later.” He doesn’t drop the top down a well, he just leaves it aside for the moment.
Remember that one of his (many!) obsessions is attempting to change his last memory of his children. Even if the ending is a dream, he will have succeeded in gaining a new memory of them in which they are looking at him and smiling.
I haven’t read through the comments to see if this was mentioned (sue me, there are +3000 of them) but there’s one thing about the ending I haven’t seen mentioned: when Cobb and Mal were in limbo before, they had no idea that they were dreaming until Cobb discovered it and implanted the idea into Mal. However, when Cobb returned “home” at the end of the movie, he immediately spun the top to check if he was awake. He went outside to see his kids and left the spinning top on the table where it may or may not have fallen. If he was awake, then the top would have fallen over, but if not, then it would still be spinning when he came back in. If Cobb was still dreaming, then he would immediately know it when he came back in and saw it. While Cobb may or may not have been awake (I’m assuming he was, because why the heck not), he would know and be able to either go on with his life or wake up. Just my two cents.
Personally I think the entire thing was Cobb still stuck in Limbo from the initial experimentation with Mal. I believe this for all the reasons mentioned such as the children and house looking exactly the same after all the time spent away and how Mal suggests all these agesnts after him could be projections. I also have a couple of other reasons I don’t think have been mentioned before.
1. It goes on about how one can’t dream naturally after entering dreams so many times. Personally I think it’s that one can’t dream within a dream without using the dream entering apparatus and we know Cobb can’t dream naturally any longer.
2. The ending cuts straight from the airport to the house without any explanation on how they got to that exact scene. One of the rules about determining if it’s a dream or not.
As for the spin top, what I believe is still limbo Cobb believes is reality. If he believes it to be reality then surely the spin top, a manifestation of his dream, would topple as Cobb would expect that to happen in reality.
Forgot to add in the end of my post there that that could account for the wobble seen at the end before cutting to the credits.
Great movie, but “real” dreams are like 10 000 times more crazy
I’ve heard from some other people that there is the sound of the totem stopping and falling at the end of the credits but many people couldn’t hear it because we were all going out or were already out. If it’s so, the end must be real ?))
What I don’t understand is what in the first place bring Mal and Cobb to Limbo, where they are growing old and at last committing suicide (in his imaginable reconstruction of it as young people what so ever).
Soph – Cobb explained to Ariadne that he and Mal were experimenting with the ideas of dreams within dreams within dreams, and got so far down into a shared dream that they couldn’t get themselves back – there was no one to “kick” them back into higher dream levels, because there was no one outside controlling that dream.