Kinda hard to ruin it, but don't read if you haven't seen it- you'll be happier

I'm not going to say too much about the movie in terms of review- it was exactly what I expected in terms of enjoyment. I like everything Nolan has done thus far, so I had pretty high expectations and they were met. I wasn't really blown away by it, but I thought it was very good. I will mention that after watching it, my wife passed over the usual chick flicks as we were looking for a rental the next day saying she wanted a movie "like 'Inception'- something with some 'grit'". We ended up watching "Fight Club"- a movie I never thought she'd want to watch and she enjoyed it a lot. So there you go.

At any rate, the only thing I wanted to ask about Inception was your interpretation of the top falling/not falling at the end. Based on reading stuff on the web and talking with people who've seen the movie, a lot of people interpreted this as "the whole thing could've just been a dream", which I didn't think the movie even hinted at. I figured the question at the end was whether Cobb got out of the last dream or if he ended up stuck, not whether he'd been dreaming the whole time. The only possible hint (other than the whole issue of 'you can't tell the difference between reality and dreams' which will always raise the question of whether anything is real) that Cobb is dreaming the whole time is when Michael Caine tells him to "Come back to reality", which I thought as a thematic reference, not a literal one.

I think trying to ask the viewer to consider if the whole movie was simply a dream would be a pretty gimmicky way to finish the film, way more suited to an action movie like like "Total Recall" that doesn't think too hard and is mostly about blowing stuff up rather than a thinker like "Inception" which tries very hard (and I think succeeds) to set up a working complex rule set around dream experiences. At the end of "Total Recall", if it's all just a dream you can say "Oh, fun!", but at the end of "Inception" you are like "well why did you spend all this time trying to educate me to rules about dreams that might not even matter?" Because if the whole thing was just a dream, then we don't know how many of the "rules" Cobb invented as part of his dream state or. On top of that, the emotional impact of his losses (his wife and children) becomes severely dampened because they might not even be gone- and if they are, how responsible is he really? In the end, the care-meter drops to the floor if this is all some dream state he's stuck in because you can't even gauge what is important if you don't know what's real.

I can contrast that with the question of "did he make it out and has he created a new reality in which he gets to be with his children as a coping mechanism?", which is a pretty powerful and interesting option to leave open in the minds of the viewers (although I want to see it again, because I think there are some pretty strong hints he did in fact make it back to his children and the ending scene is not a dream).

Anyway, as I said, I don't think questioning everything at the end was Nolan's intent, and I'm curious if I'm the only one who felt that way. The first person who mentioned "So do you think it was all a dream?" caught me off guard and I said "Not at all, the only question was whether he got out of the last one". Now I've head enough reactions to see this is a common interpretation, albeit (imo) a lame one. So maybe I'm the one who's incorrect and either a) the "it's all just a dream" isn't as lame as I think or b) I'm too much of a Nolan fan-boy and therefore I overlook when he makes poor story telling decisions.


On another note, I read one reviewer who said the best part of the movie was listening to all the ditzes in the theater after the movie trying to "figure it out". I have to say, it was a LOT of fun eavesdropping in the lobby after the movie while my wife was in the restroom. "It's so, like, you don't KNOW, you know? I mean, did it fall or didn't it?"

I'm on the same page with you. I saw it opening weekend, so it's not too fresh in my mind, but I was a big fan of it (and, like you, all of Nolan's work).

I would have preferred if he hadn't ended the movie with the top gimmick, because I don't think it was necessary. I get what he was going for, but I don't think he needed to do it.

Personally, I don't think the top falls. It already spins for too long by the time the camera goes to black, IMO. I don't, however, think that the whole movie was a dream. I just think he ended in limbo.

For a discussion on the meanings of the top, I like this review on Aint it Cool.

There's also an interesting analysis of the spinning top from a scoring standpoint.

And I think my favorite - and the most straightforward - summation of the spinning top was a one sentence quote I read on Boing Boing:

"It shouldn't matter to you whether the top stops spinning, because it doesn't matter to Cobb."

Someone at work told me this- "Summation of Inception: If you run a VM within a VM within a VM within a VM, it gets really slow!"

Bumping and old thread here- because I finally picked this up on Blu Ray for a second viewing and I have to say, this might be my favorite movie ever (then again, it's probably just the recent rush of seeing it and after time I'll figure out where it really belongs in my list of favorites). It was even better the second time than the first, and I honestly can't wait to watch it again. It's like Nolan took three of my favorite films (Memento, The Matrix, and Ocean's 11- yes, really any heist film, but that one is such good fun!) and combined them all into one movie, adding a dash of Bond to make it that much sweeter.

With the Batman movies, this movie, and Memento, Nolan is quickly becoming the "Rush" of movies for me. It's like he's on a whole different level from everyone else doing it.

Anyway, reading back through your post from months ago, Dignan, I wanted to respond:


After a second viewing, it's clear to me that the top was going to fall and he'd made it back to reality. I didn't catch the strength of the theme the first time around that Cobb was constantly questioning himself and reality due to his guilt- this is the reason for his manic obsession with spinning the top every chance he got. But by the last scene, he'd realized he couldn't hold on to his wife or the guilt, and he was released from his constant fear of living in a dreamworld.

We DO see the top wobble at the end, which it never did in the dream state- but Cobb doesn't see this because he doesn't need to. He knows where he is and that he's finally released from his guilt.

Of course, it's all up for interpretation, but a lot of the dialog in the movie supports this, imo.

Anyway, awesome movie.

Exactly, well said. I just saw this part again the other night while flying back home from vacation and it was clear as day to me, even without audio.