Considering that Inception has been on DVD for months now, I’m a little surprised that my “Inception in 30 seconds” video generated the brief but lively discussion it did, but I guess that’s partly a tribute to the staying power of the film and the questions it raises.
One reader asked what I meant by citing “a riddle in the final scene that no one has yet explained to my satisfaction.” I’ve read lots of interpretations of the film and the meaning of the final scene, but none of them explains all the data in a way that satisfies me. I don’t insist on a definitive or final answer—it’s okay with me that the movie should be ambiguous—but at least I’d like a possible explanation that actually squares with what we know, or even the most important bits of what we know.
Note: Climactic spoilers ahoy! Only read this post if you’ve seen the film or don’t mind knowing exactly how it ends!
On an initial, obvious level, of course, the first question that occurs to everyone about the climactic shot is “Does the top fall or not?” That is, is Cobb really home with his children? Or has he been somehow trapped in a dreamworld?
Obviously, we’d all like to believe that the top falls and that Cobb has found his way home to reality. However, the movie itself warns us that “positive emotion trumps negative emotion … we all yearn for reconciliation, for catharsis”—and that this principle can be used to trick us, as Cobb tricked Fischer with an illusory catharsis, an unreal reconciliation with his father. Is Nolan playing the same trick on us that Cobb played on Fischer? Are we, the audience, willing to accept Cobb’s final catharsis just because we want it to be real? (Nolan is certainly ruthless enough to twist the knife like this. See Memento and The Prestige.)
Analyzing the final scene, a number of observers have noted that after setting the top spinning, Cobb turns away from it to embrace his children. In other words, what the top ultimately does isn’t paramount in Cobb’s mind—he isn’t looking at it. Writer-director Christopher Nolan has confirmed this insight as a key to the scene:
The real point of the scene—and this is what I tell people—is that Cobb isn’t looking at the top. He’s looking at his kids. He’s left it behind. That’s the emotional significance of the thing.”
So, is the point of the last scene that Cobb has given up on the question of reality or illusion? That he’s just happy to be with his kids in whatever reality or unreality he may find himself? This interpretation has been advanced and defended by a number of astute observers—but one key problem prevents me from embracing it.
Throughout the movie, we’ve watched Cobb struggle with the mental phantom of his late wife Mal—a struggle that has crippled him psychologically. It’s prevented him from designing dreamworlds. It’s endangered gigs and even lives, including his own. Within the dreamworld, Cobb is seen wearing a wedding ring—a token of the extent to which Mal still lives in his mind and he can’t let her go. At a crucial moment in the third act, Cobb is actually unable to shoot the phantom-Mal to prevent her from shooting the real Fischer.
But then, in a climactic emotional breakthrough, Cobb finally, definitively breaks with shadow-Mal. Here is his rationale, speaking first to Ariadne and then to Mal:
I can’t stay with her anymore because she doesn’t exist … I wish, more than anything. But I can’t imagine you, with all your complexity, all you perfection, all your imperfection. Look at you. You are just a shade of my real wife. You’re the best I can do ... but I’m sorry, you’re just not good enough.
This ringing affirmation of reality, this decisive rejection of even the most attractive and longed-for illusion, is the definitive resolution of Cobb’s central inner conflict. Can it really be that Cobb immediately turns from this to abandon the question of reality in order to embrace whatever version of his children may be available to him wherever he finds himself in the end?
Is the reality of his children less important to Cobb than the reality of his wife? Can he imagine them in all their complexity, all their perfection and imperfection? Will they be “good enough”? Does he no longer care whether his real children will continue to grow up without their daddy? If not, why not? What has happened in between rejecting the shadow-Mal and embracing the ambiguous children?
I guess the climactic riddle for me could be put this way: Where is Cobb in his own mind? Specifically, (a) where does he think he is, (b) why, and (c) why is he satisfied with this? What exactly has he “left behind”? Concern with reality vs. illusion? Or doubts about what is real and what isn’t? Is the point that he’s made a leap of faith and accepts his world as reality because he loves his children, just as he asked Mal to do?
Going beyond that, I’d like a satisfying theory about where he actually is, what exactly happened, and how much of the rest of the movie—if any—is reality. Not a definitive answer—just a satisfying theory. These are questions that I think any convincing interpretation of the film must address.
Other parameters of the question worth noting:
- Some viewers have claimed that Cobb’s children seem not to have aged and are dressed the same way that they are in his memories. This is apparently untrue; It seems the filmmakers actually used different, slightly older children for the final scene, and that they are slightly differently dressed. The differences, though minor, are deliberate—though what if anything they prove is open to debate.
- The more salient point that sticks in my craw was first articulated for me by Suz after we watched the movie on DVD. It is this: In the last scene, Cobb walks into the house and sees the kids through the slider in the back yard, just as he did all that time ago, exactly where and how he left them—the same view of them we’ve seen him revisit countless times ever since.
- Cobb makes a big deal about nobody ever being allowed to touch one’s totem, to know its weight or feel. Yet in the opening scene—the flash-forward to Cobb and aged Saito in limbo—we see Saito handle Cobb’s totem, the top. That can’t be a coincidence. Can it? Is the point that Saito is now in a position to double-cross Cobb, to leave him stranded in a dream-world with a phantom totem just like his real one?
- What about the wedding ring? It would be comforting to read the absence of the ring in the final scene would indicate the reality of that scene. Yet it could also be that the ring is gone in his mind because he’s finally let Mal go.
That’s not reality. In any verisimilitudinous depiction of reality, the kids would have met him, say, at the airport, or in the front yard, or in the kitchen—anywhere but where and how he’s dreamed of seeing them for all this time. This conspicuous repetition of Cobb’s pervasive dream-imagery stands out to me way more than how big the kids are or what they’re wearing.
Now, it could be that this is simply a conceit in Nolan’s art. It could be that diegetic reality is artificial or contrived in this way without therefore ceasing to represent reality. (We don’t really have dream-sharing technology either.)
Yet we see the dreamworld image of those hunched-over kids so many times that it’s hard to ignore the obvious recurrence here. What’s more, Mal herself—the shadow-Mal of Cobb’s own devising—has previously tempted Cobb with just this scenario: “Our children are here—and you’d like to see their faces again, wouldn’t you, Dom?” Nolan explicitly establishes that seeing those hunched-over children in the back yard turn their faces to Cobb is exactly what his own subconscious most wants. When the denouement actually gives him exactly this experience, I don’t see how I can accept that as reality.
Or is the top misdirection? Is it Cobb’s totem at all? It was Mal’s totem, right? When did it become Cobb’s? Could Cobb’s totem be something else?
My gut feeling is that the final scene, at least, doesn’t take place in the real world. Still, I want to know where Cobb thinks he is, and why, and why this satisfies him.
It could be, of course, that there is no satisfying interpretation—that Nolan deliberately or accidentally created a conundrum for which no interpretation, even whatever Nolan himself thinks is really going on (assuming he has such a thought), really avails. I hope not, but I don’t really know.
Your thoughts?
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I disagree about bringing the kids to the airport because he really didnt know till he walked through customs what would happen.
It leaves enough where you can think either way OR is he in his father in law’s world? That is plausible.
Hm, what if his children are his totem? He is always adamant never to look at their faces until he seems them in reality.
Another fact to be taken into account is that his father-in-law never appears in the dream world. Personally, I like to think that Dom no longer needs the totem at the end of the movie because he knows reality (i.e. his children) when he experiences it. This would also explain why he is able to break himself free from Mal’s siren-call toward the end. The only weapon truth has is truth itself, no totem is necessary.
@ Mrs o: The airport was just an example. The salient point is, he wouldn’t find the kids exactly where and how he left them, how he has dreamed of seeing them ever since, how his own subconscious (in the form of Mal) reminds him he wants to see them again.
In his father-in-law’s world? Hm, how would that work?
@ David: A totem has to be something you can test, not something you choose to do or not do. That he has so far refused to look his dream-children in the face doesn’t enable him to know that he isn’t dreaming in the end. And what about my #2 point above?
@ Canonically Speaking: Couldn’t the father-in-law be forged, though? Or couldn’t Cobb dream him this time now that he thinks he’s going home? Or what if the whole story is in a dream? Then Cobb would have dreamed his father-in-law before.
From the example of Saito in his love-nest in the opening act we do know that the subject of a dream deception may be able to see through the deception. I could believe that just as Cobb eventually pronounces Mal not good enough, so he would be able to see through dream-children—in time. Not necessarily at a mere glance, though. And what about my #2 point above?
I’m actually going to agree with David and here’s why:
I don’t think it’s that Cobb is refusing to look his dream children in the face. In every dream sequence, the children turn away from Cobb.
The way I see it, the top was Mal’s. The repetitive action of Cobb spinning the top is mirrored by the repetitive act of the children turning away. And when they turn away in dream sequences, he follows them, which is the action he wanted to perform in the reality he last saw them in. The way I see it, it’s not so much the object itself as the action it is associated with. Cobb turning away from the top is a rejection of his dependence on Mal in favor of the reality of seeing his children turn *toward* him instead of away from him. It is their action that confirms his reality.
As far as I’ve read, I’m the only one that sees it that way, and, to be honest, I only saw the movie once. I’d love to see your take on this.
Also, to re-enforce my theory that it is the action that the totem performs as opposed to the totem itself, we only ever see Cobb’s totem in motion, as it is his version of reality we are viewing, which is why we see the other realities operating in slow motion when Cobb is on a different dream level. So, we know *how* Cobb uses his totem to determine reality, but not how Ellen Page uses her chess piece to identify reality. So, whether or not my entire theory is correct, I would say that the motion of the totem certainly carries some significance.
You know how they can share dreams? What would you have done with an unconscious person? Out of mercy and to contact him, who better than his f - i - l. All you so is hook up. Well, it wouldn’t surprise me because it would leave an open to a second. He would need help either way that is IF he didn’t come out.
Your second point is the most salient one, of course, but I don’t think it conclusively points in the direction that you’re taking it for. It’s hard to articulate quite what I mean, but what came to mind immediately upon reading what you wrote is this passage from the Chesterton novel “the Ball and the Cross,” near the denoument of the novel, where the protagonists find themselves suddenly coming upon all the people they have met throughout the novel…
“MacIan did not answer, and he continued with asperity: ‘You are still thinking about that girl, but I tell you the whole thing is incredible. She’s not the only person here. I’ve met the fellow Wilkinson, whose yacht we lost. I’ve met the very magistrate you were hauled up to when you broke my window. What can it mean—meeting all these old people again? One never meets such old friends again except in a dream.’
Then after a silence he cried with a rending sincerity: ‘Are you really there, Evan? Have you ever been really there? Am I simply dreaming?’
MacIan had been listening with a living silence to every word, and now his face flamed with one of his rare revelations of life.
‘No, you good atheist,’ he cried; ‘no, you clean, courteous, reverent, pious old blasphemer. No, you are not dreaming—you are waking up.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘There are two states where one meets so many old friends,’ said MacIan; ‘one is a dream, the other is the end of the world.’
‘And you say——’
‘I say this is not a dream,’ said Evan in a ringing voice.
‘You really mean to suggest——’ began Turnbull.
‘Be silent! or I shall say it all wrong,’ said MacIan, breathing hard. ‘It’s hard to explain, anyhow. An apocalypse is the opposite of a dream. A dream is falser than the outer life. But the end of the world is more actual than the world it ends. I don’t say this is really the end of the world, but it’s something like that—it’s the end of something. All the people are crowding into one corner. Everything is coming to a point.’
‘What is the point?’ asked Turnbull.
‘I can’t see it,’ said Evan; ‘it is too large and plain.’
This puts in words my thoughts of the final scene, and its seeming artifice. Because the final scene is above all things a fulfillment; a fulfillment of Cobb’s goal, his journey throughout the film, the fulfillment and ending of the film itself and Cobb’s story. Throughout the film, we have encountered again and again illusory fulfillments, fulfillments that are falser than the real world, created through artifice rather than nature or supernature; thus, we have been schooled to suspect such fulfillments almost by nature. But at the same time true fulfillments do exist, true endings and apocalypses; and true, supernatural fulfillments resemble illusory ones in a way they do not resemble mere happenstance and many ‘real-world’ events. Both present fulfillments of the natures and the deepest natures of the things involved in them, perfecting them and bringing them together in a definitive and harmonious way. The dream fulfillment is ultimately illusory, and is falser than the world outside it; it does not contain, and does no justice to, the nature of the things it attempts to fulfill—its fulfillment contradicts their essences, as the catharsis Fisher experiences contradicts the true nature of his father and himself even as it pretends to bring them to fulfillment.
But the supernatural fulfillment does truly what the dream fulfillment attempts to do. The dream-fulfillment emulates by artifice what the real one does by nature.
This is my view of the last scene of the film; it is a ‘supernatural’ fulfillment, a fulfillment of the entire story; an apocalypse, an “end of the world” for the film Inception—and saying this does not necessarily make some kind of post-modern point about the artificiality of the film, for the point is that it flows out of the nature of the film itself, just as the real end of the world flows out of the nature of creation and existence. In doing so, though, it does bypasses the mere ‘real-world,’ accidental level that people live much of their lives in for the supernatural level of fulfillment; but this by itself does not mean that it is necessarily false, as I’ve said; and I think it rings truer otherwise.
And this feeds into the nature of the top and its spinning and reality, etc. Because the thing is, the top is ultimately a crutch; most people can tell the difference between dreams and reality quite well without such a device to provide it for them. Cobb needs it, because Cobb is sick. Cobb lives his life in two realms; the dream-world, and the ‘real world.’ But the real-world for him is presented in a very strange way; it is all tall buildings, tight passages, heists, trains, and apartments. The real-world for him is as constructed as the dream-world, and as artificial; thus, he is unable to tell the difference between them without the aide of another artificial thing to tell the difference: and this difference rests in the imperfection of the top—the top presents an illusory perfection which is obvious in its artifice. Thus, the utility of the top rests in the inability of human artifice to fill in all the gaps and totally recreate the real world, precisely in its attempt to create an artificial perfection which goes against nature. This is the only way for Cobb to determine the truth or reality of anything, because the world he lives in, with little or no meaningful human interaction, is one that easily could have been constructed by human artifice; the top is the only way for him to be sure that it wasn’t.
But the ultimate realness of the real world rests not in its imperfection, but in its perfection; it is more perfect, more real, and more natural than the dream-world, not just more imperfect. Thus, when fulfillment is reached and Cobb encounters the true, supernatural fulfillment of the movie and the real world, it is too perfect, too natural, too real to deny; and he has no need for a device to tell him this. Thus, when we stand before the face of God, it will be ultimately too real, too GOOD for us to deny, rather than too imperfect or too false. If Cobb really had to look at the top, then it really wouldn’t be the fulfillment of the film; it would be something which could have been recreated by human artifice, but perhaps hadn’t really. But his children, and the real perfection of the culmination and fulfillment of his journey were something that could never be recreated by human artifice; and so he has no need for something else to tell him that. His real world is finally real enough for him to know for sure that it could not have been constructed; because the fulfillment is supernatural rather than merely natural—because it is the ending and culmination of the film Inception.
I don’t know if that makes sense, but I don’t have time to go over it right now. Hopefully you can see what I’m getting at.
Steven, with #2 you bring up a great point, but remember that not only is Nolan trying to express a certain idea about reality and illusion in the film, but he’s also creating an effective narrative as a storyteller. I think he is an artist first before he is a philosopher. As a writer myself, this technique, of having the children be in the same spot as they were throughout the film, works as a crescendo to the satisfaction that the audience yearns for. It works better, in my opinion, to have Cobb always looking at his kids in the same spot and yearning for them to look back at him, and then at the end, have them in the same spot and then “actually” looking back. I say this because, as a father, I related to his feeling of emptiness whenever he would look to his kids and have the kids not look back. I yearned, just like Cobb did, to have those kids look back. And they finally did, and I was satisfied how this part of the narrative was answered. If only for the empathy of the audience, I would say Nolan put on his author’s hat and discarded his philosopher’s cap for this particular scene. If I would have seen the kids meet him at the airport, it would have felt flat to me, and I probably would not have identified them as his “real” kids, those two that were always hunched down playing and acting as if their father was dead or a ghost. So in conclusion, it was more of a narrative device rather than a clue to the film’s philosophy. My two cents.
Sadly enough, I think most of the conundrum can be explained away by some sloppy storytelling to be perfectly honest. For Nolan, the movie was uncharacteristically sloppy. Consider the editing during the third act: what the heck was going on during the James Bond snow assault? People running around, now they’re on snowmobiles, and why is all of this taking place in an abandoned ski resort anyway? We’re at the third level of dreamland (or fourth)—isn’t there something a little more visually inventive that could’ve been used instead (cf. Doublefine’s “Psychonauts”). And the image of the Econoline van hanging suspended in the air was repeated so often that it actually became comical: “The all-new 1990 Ford Econoline Van: Defy gravity in one.”
It did seem a little too pat, though, that Michael Caine would somehow be magically present at the homecoming (wasn’t he supposed to be in Paris?). Ultimately, though, Cobb is reunited with his kids in a way he wasn’t before, and this is demonstrated by the fact that he can actually see their faces now. He couldn’t remember their faces before, so there’s no way he could see their faces and still be at the same level of dreaming he was at for the film.
@Victor:
What are you talking about? Have you ever heard of slow motion?
Thanks for this article, Steve!
Inception reminds me a lot of the famous short story “The Lady or the Tiger”, which I highly recommend, though I forget who wrote it. The whole story is a setup for the ending, and then the ending is left open. I think this is not an invitation for the viewers to rationally discover what actually happened. I think there is not enough evidence for either side to be proven the definitive one. I don’t think that’s the point.
I think it’s an invitation to the audience to know ourselves better, asking ourselves WHY we opt for one option or the other. It’s analogous to the unforgettable “What about Bob.” Who do you identify yourself with: Bob or the psychologist?
Do I want Cobb to have “failed” in his struggle to get back to his kids, condemned after so much suffering to nothing more than a “happy” dream? Or do I want him to have achieved his dream in reality, overcoming and leaving behind the mind-games of his past? I opt for the second, but who can tell for sure?
This leads to another consideration. Perhaps the end is itself a triumphal cry of the Dictatorship of Relativism: “What is real, anyway? Who really cares? What’s important is to follow what YOU believe is real…”
Whether that is in fact the case or not, the genius of Inception is that it raises all these questions, and challenges us to search for answers. And that in itself is quite an achievement.
I’m not a great brain so please don’t ask me to defend my position if you see holes in it :D :D :D lol
What about his wedding ring? Could that be his totem?
And besides, if the totem was never to be touched by other people, as soon as Cobb took/touched it from Mal, shouldn’t it be proved useless??
(And I totally get your point about the kids ‘sameness’. It’s just too cliched.)
I’ve never seen this comment on the movie, so here goes…
Near the end of the final credits, the “wake up” song [ the one played to let the dreamer know the clock is almost over] can be heard. At this point I turned to family and friends and said, “OK, time to wake up. Let’s go”.
Fascinating discussion.
You noticed several clues that I overlooked, but I think you’ve missed a few clues too.
Why should we assume that Cobb is real? Every real person has a totem right? What is Cobb’s totem? The spinning top? No, that was Mol’s totem.
Who committed the “inception” on whom?
I won’t elaborate much more… let you have fun guessing at it :)
@Pachydermotologist: Of course I’ve heard of slow-motion (and time-dilation fields, something “Stargate” did much better than “Inception”, which by the way, didn’t seem to stick to its own rules about how the passage of time in one dream would effect the other dreams—the hotel hallway spinning spun far too fast, for example) but that was ridiculous:
Van.
Hanging.
In.
Space.
Oh.
Look.
Still.
Hanging.
If you’re going to do something like that you, really need to pull a John Landis and make the van itself a character, so that the audience forms an emotional attachment towards it and whatever happens to the van, the audience feels too (cf. the Bluesmobile disintegrating at the end of “The Blues Brothers”). Otherwise it becomes comic and destroys the mood. At least for me.
Oh, and @Jose Acosta:
If Cobb isn’t real, then “Inception” is more pointless and nihilistic than anything the Cohen Bros. or Lars von Trier have ever produced.
Hey VL
Please don’t say that. With Landis, DiCaprio and the two little children could end up decapitated or crushed under a helicopter…
hey guys i just finished watching inception for the second time and it was still the same mind-boggling experience.pure creation!!, to hard to resist. certainly there is ambiguity in regard to the end scene but i think that it happened for real, primarily for the reason that if thats not the case then whole movie would be lacking in spirit and intellect. nolan surely likes to surprise audience but his movies do have a logical and congruent ending. Further Cobbs totem does fall when he spins it in after sharing dream with Ariadne at the warehouse. so to think that whole movie is a dream is not right.
after this watch i am having more fundamental questions. what if projections of each other start conflicting.that is Ariadne projection of Cobb would be different from that of Arthur’s projection of Cobb in dream. In our subconscious we do have some twisted projection of those whom we met in reality and those are best safeguarded in subconscious but when we are sharing this subconscious with others that bring that concern of mine to the forefront.someone please elaborate on this…
further i really could not understand the so called Limboo. concerns regarding saito getting old but Cobb remaining younger is baffling enough. in addition to that it is not clear how they come out of limbo in the absence of “synchronized Kick” and if death in limbo would bring them into reality then why the hell Cobb didnt shoot Saito at the very first sight. What if Saito had refused to come to reality , what would have happened in that case, and had his natural death in limbo. The whole sequence of Fischer being brought from limbo and being defilibirated could not be fathomed. one hell of question that pestered me is that why the hell one can’t be The mighty , invincible, superman in dream space where one can not get hurt by bullets and other things after all its better to dream BIG.
Dom’s totem was his wedding ring. He doesn’t wear it in the real world but wears it in the dream world. It was hidden from sight in the last seen. They never show where he keeps it in real life. The top was his wife’s totem.
Rule: You cannot let someone else touch your totem (i.e. Scene with Ariadne and Arthur showing her his die totem).
In the final Limbo scene, Old Saito spins Dom’s totem. The totem becomes useless now that someone else knows its properties. Therefore, I think Dom is trapped in Limbo with Saito. But as Nolan said, he doesn’t care anymore.
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