Anna Daniels
The ending of 2010’s Inception is the kind which is likely to be debated for years, maybe even decades, to come. Directed by Christopher Nolan, the film boasts a heavyweight cast including Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy, and Ellen Page, among others. Leonardo DiCaprio plays its lead, Cobb, who’s the head of a crew of thieves specializing in corporate espionage. Cobb and his team enter their victims’ dreams, steal information, and plant ideas into their subconscious.
One of the dangers of their work is the risk of being stuck in a dream that never ends without knowing it. So Cobb and his colleagues each carry what they call totems (items that let them know whether or not they’re in a dream). Cobb carries a spinning top. Whenever he doubts whether or not he’s in a dream, he spins it, and if the top doesn’t stop spinning, he knows he’s still asleep.
Inception ends with Cobb testing his totem after being reunited with his children, but we never learn whether or not the top stops spinning. Cobb spins the top on a table, then stands up and walks away. The screen fades to black with the top still spinning. Nolan later explained he ended the film this way to demonstrate that, to Cobb, it didn’t matter whether or not he was dreaming. During his 2015 Princeton commencement speech, Nolan said, “[Cobb] didn’t really care anymore, and that makes a statement: Perhaps, all levels of reality are valid.”
Written by: Looper
