Christopher Nolan explains the meaning and intent of the end of Inception

13 years after the release beginning (Read review here), Manager Christopher Nolan Now he finally made clear the true meaning and purpose of the film’s ambiguous ending. Many of Nolan’s films are mind blowing in what they offer viewers, but perhaps none are more powerful than her beginning, his film about a heist that occurs in different levels of dreams. The movie ends with Cobb famously Leonardo DiCaprio He is seemingly reunited with his family, but it is not clear if what he is seeing is actually happening or if everything is happening inside a dream, and thus he is forever trapped.

Now, Nolan has explained his approach to the ambiguous ending of beginning during an interview with Wired. While not actually revealing whether or not Cobb is dreaming, the director reveals that, to him, that may ultimately not matter for the character’s emotional journey. “I mean, the end of inception, it’s exactly that. There is a nihilistic view about that ending, right? But he also moved in with his kids. Mystery is not an emotional mystery. It is intellectual for the public.“

beginningWhat happens at the end of the movie

When audiences first meet DiCaprio in… beginningHe is a man separated from his children who cannot return to them because he is wanted for his involvement in the death of his wife. Not only is he wanted by outside forces, but his mind is also poisoned by guilt. to persuade his wife Mal (Marion Cotillard), to abandon the life they had built in limbo (essentially an endless subconscious dreamscape), Cobb instilled in his mind the idea that their world was not real.

While he manages to bring Mal out of oblivion, the idea he planted in her mind has taken root so strongly that she ends up killing herself in real life to escape an existence she believes is still a dream. Cobb carries this guilt throughout the film, compounded by the fact that when he dreams of his children, he can’t see their faces, a painful reminder of how he abandoned them. After executing an elaborate, layered dream heist, being “reborn” into limbo, and being released from his coveted situation, Cobb finally returns home to his children.

beginning Thus his emotional journey is now complete. He is free to live his life with his children not only free from his legal troubles but also from the thoughts and guilt that have haunted him for a long time. It could be a dream at the end beginning (Although there are hints that he isn’t), but Cobb, when he saw the children, looked away from his spinning totem pole because now he’s found peace and the rest doesn’t matter. So, for Nolan, there is no doubt that the protagonist has been reunited with his children and that is all there is to know. Whether or not this is true is precisely an intellectual problem for the individual viewer.