Was the Finale of the Inception Movie a Dream or a Reality?

The master director, who deals with confusing, thought-provoking and complex stories, managed to divide the audience into two with the final scene of the movie Inception.

Even though Inception was released 13 years ago, the discussions about the finale of the movie did not completely end. Dozens of theories were produced, studies and readings were made. But at the end of the day, the “dream or reality” debate has come a long way.

Does the top fall or does it keep spinning?

As you may remember, in the final sequence of the movie, the character of Dom Cobb, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, is reunited with his children by getting permission to enter the United States. To see if he is in a dream, he takes out the top with a totem from his pocket and starts to spin it on the table. As the top starts to spin, Cobb encounters his children and sees his children running towards him, leaving the totem and hugging his children. As the top continues to spin, the camera approaches the top and the screen is black!

One side believed this finale was a dream, while the other believed it was real. In fact, a serious audience argued that after the movie was over, they heard a sound that Cobb’s totem spinner had fallen.

Director Christopher Nolan had this to say in his speech at Princeton University in 2015:

“Cobb is now in his own subjective reality. He doesn’t care if he’s in a dream or not, that’s where he feels he belongs. The real point of that scene is to show that Cobb’s focus is no longer on the spinning top, but on his children. Cobb has left that stuff behind.”

It’s obvious that Christopher Nolan ended the Inception story with an open end. He wants the audience to make sense of the movie with their own ideas.

But master actor Michael Caine may have spoiled the secret a little.

A story told by the star actor, who gave life to the character of Professor Stephen Miles in the movie Inception, in 2018, puts an end to the “dream or reality” debate.

Caine: “When I read the Inception script, I was a little confused. I asked Nolan, ‘Which is a dream and which is real?’ I asked Nolan. said.”

Michael Caine appears in the finale of the movie!

Leonardo DiCaprio is one of those who don’t understand what happened in the finale.

DiCaprio joined the WTF With Marc Maron podcast in 2020, admitting that he had no idea what happened in the finale: I have no idea. You are only focused on your own character. Everyone was always trying to solve this puzzle when it came to Chris Nolan, his mind, and how these pieces of the movie were put together. The finale of the movie is a situation that changes according to one’s point of view, I guess.

Nolan does this all the time.

Christopher Nolan and his brother, Jonathan Nolan, particularly prefer the audience to ponder the film in their scripts. When we look at Nolan’s filmography, almost every movie has its own mystery and complexity. But this complexity is not empty. Every decision in the script has a basis. That’s why you can’t find major logic errors in Nolan’s films because every detail is elaborated. His films such as Memento, The Prestige, Interstellar and Tenet are among the best examples of this.

All this “dream or reality” debate aside; The fact that a movie has been talked about and discussed for years, giving the same taste in every viewing and containing messages about life is a definition of the power and influence of the art of cinema.