Thirteen years later, Christopher Nolan’s “Inception” is still a film that comes up in discussion every now and then with one of the most talked about elements still being the film’s infamous ending.
That film, about a group of criminals who enter people’s dreams to extract or place information, ends with Leonardo DiCaprio’s Dom Cobb seemingly returning home to his children.
The final shot sees him spinning his ‘totem’, in his case a spinning top, and then walking out to see his kids. The audience knows if the totem keeps spinning, then he is still dreaming. The top spins consistently and then has only a slight wobble before it cuts to black. It’s a deliberately ambiguous finale with at least two possible interpretations.
Out promoting his new film “Oppenheimer,” the filmmaker spoke with Happy Sad Confused and has offered his own take when asked what the correct ending is:
“I went through a phase where I was asked that a lot. I think it was [producer] Emma Thomas who pointed out the correct answer, which is Leo’s character… the point of the shot is the character doesn’t care at that point. It’s not a question I comfortably answer.”
This follows on from comments to Wired the other week which adds to that new answer:
“There is a nihilistic view of that ending, right? But also, he’s moved on and is with his kids. The ambiguity is not an emotional ambiguity. It’s an intellectual one for the audience.”
Nolan also says he visited screenings of the movie on opening weekends and realised how the ending played with people:
“In terms of sitting with a crowd and experiencing the end of the film, ‘Inception’ was a very unique type of ending. If I would sneak into the back of the theater when it was playing, and we would get to the end, there would be a tremendous sort of gasp, groans, frustrations — it was an incredible mixture and I would feel very much like I need to get out of here before anybody notices I’m there.”
“Oppenheimer” is currently playing in cinemas.
