There’s a lot of theories that say yea, Cobb is in the real world such as his wedding ring being his totem or the top at the end starting to wobble.
However there are some theories that imply no he’s still in the dream world. The BigBadCorp chasing after Cobb magically goes away after Saito give Cobb the new job. That Cobb’s life is perfect at the end with the virtue of one phone call from Saito or that his US passport is stamped coming INTO the country. Normally this would be sloppy filmmaking but on a film like inception you can never be sure.
For me, the fact that Yusuf is explaining about sleepers that lose themselves in a dream and that is the only time (except at the end) that we don’t see what the top does (it gets knocked over) makes it seem like Cobb almost realizes he’s in a dream.
There’s no way of knowing. The ending is deliberately left ambiguous. It all boils down to one thing: it’s not clear whether the top is about to fall or not.
It wobbles for an instant but continues to spin. There’s no evidence the wobble is going to continue and the top will fall, or that it was a one-time thing and it will continue to spin. The film cuts before we can see anything definite.
Nolan did this deliberately. As Cracked pointed out, he didn’t just happen to run out of film at that point. He wanted the question to be unanswered, and thus it remains so.
The film intends it to be ambiguous. I voted that he’s still in the dream though, as I think that’s the more interesting and poignant version. It’s the movie I see when I watch it.
But both possibilities can be equally well supported in the film.
An aside, but it disturbs me that the way to escape a dream reality is to kill yourself. This has far too much “let’s play in the old refrigerator, kids” feel to it for me - film fans know that the time travel device in *Back to the Future *was supposed to be a refrigerator, not a Delorean.
Okay, *BTTF *was for kids and *Inception *ain’t, but… still. At least you can go bonkers Matrix-style with red and blue M&Ms.
I don’t understand these two theories. Saito says he will give Cobb the information he (Cobb) was paid to steal, thereby getting the BigBadCorp off his back, and I’ve had my passport stamped many times coming INTO the US, so not sure why that is relevant.
The key, to me, is that Cobb no longer cares whether he’s in a dream.
Sure, he started spinning that top in the final moments of the movie – but then in the final final moments of the movie, it’s as if he realizes, eh, maybe it falls, maybe it keeps spinning; the life of his dreams is ready to play out right over there, what difference does it make whether the top is still going over here?
I don’t know if people are going to be throwing themselves off of buildings or in front of busses in real life based on Inception, but I do want to point out that for people practicing lucid dreaming, offing yourself when you realize that you’re dreaming is a fairly solid and common interim stage while you’re working on finding the necessary balance to control the dreamscape as a whole without waking yourself up.
Apart from the hijack, given how dark the Batman series was, my official answer is that it’s ambiguous on purpose, but I see it as Cobb doesn’t give a shit anymore whether he’s lost in a dream or not, as long as he’s happy. I think he is very likely dreaming.
So? He could dream the noise as well as the wobble.
The top does not fall, nor is it clear it keeps spinning. The film gives no answer as to which is correct. If ambiguity (outside the box) bothers you, then you can pick whatever you wish, but what the movie itself says: it could be either.
Look, if Nolan wanted to show this was real, he would have shown the top actually fall. He did not. The movie stopped at a particular point because that was Nolan’s plan: to leave the question unanswered. Answering it is futile because there’s evidence for both.
I will say that the movie is far more interesting because it does not give an answer. This thread is proof.
I’m split between “in a dream” and “don’t know” but I went ahead and answered that he’s in a dream.
For me, the most convincing argument is that the totems are so unreliable. If someone else knows how your totem works, then they can dream it working in a way that makes you think you’re in reality. The spinning top totem itself is stupid on so many levels it seems designed to make it impossible to tell dream from reality. (After all, the default behavior of tops is to tip over; if you’re trapped inside a dream, this is the behavior the dreamer is going to assume about it. It’s not like the hollowed-out chess piece where the totem-like behavior is contrary to the dreamer’s assumptions. (But, even there, the chess piece is no longer a reliable totem for anyone who knows that she hollowed it out.)
In fact, I think the whole point of Cobb’s story and totem is that he WANTS to be fooled. He picked the totem of the dead wife that he feels terribly guilty about and the real-world behavior of the totem is the same as the default behavior that a dreamer would use. The totem only works when Cobb is fully in control of the dream. Once he loses control of it and can no longer tell the difference, he’d just as soon live in a fake world.
As has already been established a bunch of times now, whether the top falls or not doesn’t matter, because the top is useless as a totem. Well. that is, if it keeps spinning, Cobb can be pretty sure that he’s in a dream. If it falls over, though, it proves nothing. And in any case, we don’t know whether it falls or not.
You’re all entitled to believe one thing or the other based on emotions and pure faith, but going by what actually happens in the movie, the answer is that that there is no way of knowing.
In re the “wedding ring was his totem” theory: How could a wedding ring work as a totem?
Recall Arthur’s explanation of how a totem works:
I underlined the bit that explains how a totem tells the dreamer that he or she hasn’t been hijacked into someone else’s dream: only the dreamer would know how the totem feels—as opposed to how it looks, which anyone else sharing the dream could tell with a glance.
Of course Nolan has Arthur say “that way when you LOOK at your totem,” which I see as one of thousands of clues Nolan left us as to what he was up to in this movie. But for now, just concentrate on the theory that only the dreamer knows how the totem feels–something that another person wouldn’t be able to guess.
Note, too, that Arthur describes the totem’s purpose as helping you know that you’re in a dream you yourself are in charge of, as opposed to having been sucked into a dream that some OTHER person is in charge of. If that other person tries to duplicate your totem by its appearance, they might get the look right–but the feel wrong. That way you know who’s in charge of the dream.
Arthur does NOT say that the totem tells you whether you’re asleep or awake. Later, both Ariadne and Cobb have dialogue that implies the totem does tell you this…but how could it? If you have an oddly-balanced coin in your pocket while you’re awake-----------what would stop you from dreaming that you have an oddly-balanced coin in your pocket? How could you possibly tell the difference between waking and sleep from the fact that you have that coin in your pocket?
That’s an important question. The “totem tells you who’s in charge of the dream” theory is more logically-consistent than is the “totem tells you if you’re awake” theory.
If the “wedding ring is his totem” theory is that he has it on when asleep and doesn’t have it on when awake…how could that possibly work? In other words, what would stop sleeping-Cobb from dreaming that he doesn’t have the ring on?
What could the ring’s presence or absence possibly tell Cobb, given that he can just as easily dream the ring off as on?
(In re the thread poll: I voted ‘reality at the end’.)
That was my take when I watched it. I never even suspected that it was supposed to be ambiguous or open-ended until I started reading stuff on the interest with people getting upset that others didn’t see it as ambiguous. I didn’t need Nolan to show it falling because he already showed it wobbling and, in my experience, once a top wobbles it’s going to get more unstable until it falls because it’s losing speed and going off its axis. It’s like showing a film ending with a guy pointing a gun at another guy and cocking it before it goes to black – sure, maybe ninjas busted in a second later and stopped him but the impression I’m left with is that someone is about to get shot.
I also assume that the top falls for all the reasons you do.
Do you at least see the point that the top can wobble and fall whether it’s a dream or not? The top falling only proves that Cobb is not in his own dream. It doesn’t determine between real life and dream.
And for those who like to stay with the position that it’s ambiguous and we can’t know: I don’t have any problem with that position. In fact, I agree that we can’t know for sure. However, I think the evidence favors him being stuck in a dream.
I don’t remember the film well enough to argue the point. My take on the closing scene was that it established it being reality but I only saw it the once and that would have been a couple years ago now, I guess.
Edit: Re-reading your previous post, I guess you’re saying someone could have made him dream he spun it and it fell. But I thought the whole point of the totems was that no one would be able to trick you in a dream by misrepresenting your totem due to your intimate knowledge of it. So, within the framework as presented, I had no reason to assume the wobble represented anything but reality.
I think the whole totem (top wobbling) = reality fails if we assume that it’s Mal’s totem. Arthur says that the totem works only if the dreamer doesn’t know the secret of it. Well that gets thrown out the window if Mal is the dreamer/architect one level up from Dom’s reality. In that case, the top is an unreliable narrator because the basic assumption fails.
What makes it self consistent is if Mal is doing the dreaming. See since Mal is in reality and dreaming, she is making the top fall subconciously. Remember the architect brings their subconcious into their dream like when Yusuf had to pee and made it rain in his dream.