Christopher Nolan still wearily weighing in on the ending of Inception
Christopher Nolan isn't that comfortable answering Inception ending questions, but he's still doing it 13 years later
Aux News Inception
Back in 2010, the conclusion of Inception was so divisive it was almost like no one had ever experienced an ambiguous ending before. Spoiler alert for those who missed out the first time: after traveling between dreams and reality for two and a half hours, Leonardo DiCaprio’s character finally reunites with his children in the final scene. He spins a top, the totem that’s supposed to identify whether or not he’s in a dream, but chooses to turn away before seeing if it falls. The film then cuts to black, leaving the audience just as uncertain as the character—which was obviously writer-director Christopher Nolan’s intention.
Unfortunately, audiences aren’t always content with ambiguity. “I haven’t been asked that in a while, thankfully. I went through a phase… where I was asked it a lot,” he said of the decade-plus-old feature in an interview with the Happy Sad Confused podcast. “Every now and again I would make the mistake of getting caught outside of a screening where everyone was coming out.” In an interview with Insider, he recalled the “tremendous sort of gasp, groans, frustrations” of viewers that would send him hightailing it out of early Inception screenings.
Forced once again to acknowledge an audience that demands everything be spelled out for them, Nolan credits the best answer to his wife and producer Emma Thomas. “I think it was Emma who pointed out the correct answer, really, is that the character, 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.” However, he concedes that “it’s fun to be a part of that great canon” of cinema mysteries (like the Pulp Fiction briefcase or Bill Murray’s whispered message in Lost In Translation).
Speaking recently with Wired, the filmmaker was asked about an overarching theme of anti-nihilism, or even optimism, in his work. “I mean, the end of Inception, it’s exactly that,” he said. “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.”
“It’s funny, I think there is an interesting relationship between the endings of Inception and Oppenheimer to be explored,” Nolan added, spinning things back to his 2023 hit. “Oppenheimer’s got a complicated ending. Complicated feelings.”
41 Comments
I think Inception was a high water mark for Nolan’s writing, though I have yet to see Oppenheimer. A recursive plot structure that rewards multiple viewings and multiple interpretations, that actually has something to say about what matters to us and how much of what is real is subjective. At some point, the desire to not be alone may drive us to spend more time in the past, particularly as we get older; and to really dwell on whether and why we might judge that desire. As a side note here, I think Jonathan Nolan wanted to do something similar with Westworld, and maybe was successful in the first and second seasons. But that work feels more sterile than Inception, somehow.
Yes, thunkingly obvious theme pushing and deadly stupid expository dialogue chunks are certainly hallmarks of what I dislike most about his filmmaking.I much prefer when he has a writer or *at least* a co-writer to curb his terrible, terrible writing habits.
I love how, on the one hand his themes are obvious and his dialogue is stupid and expository, and on the other hand, people struggle to articulate his themes and complain about the elements of his films that they don’t understand. Different perspectives from different people, mostly, but I find it entertaining. I love existing in the gap between people who are so blindingly brilliant that Chrstopher Nolan is a hack and those who think he’s overrated because he makes the movies that he wants to make in the way he wants to make them, and they struggle to understand his work and the acclaim it receives. If that shit was a dish, I’d be at that restaurant several times a week!
I don’t know what you’re going on about in the gap complaint but I will say that you don’t have any evidence of people struggling to articulate his themes (which doesn’t mean they don’t, I just haven’t seen that proven anywhere and you don’t offer any) and just because dialogue is expository doesn’t mean that it’s understood. A character can monologue for 20 minutes about a bunch of dumb nonsense and that doesn’t mean what they’re feebly trying to explain ACTUALLY makes sense. It’s just obvious that the writer is trying to explain something using badly explanatory dialogue that doesn’t sound like human speech. (To be clear, I think heightened dialogue can be great fun and I’m not inherently against it but for someone like Nolan who tries hard to feign reality it’s pretty funny to hear his characters puke exposition that sounds like no human being alive.)Personally I find the sweaty defensive nonsense of Nolan stans pretty entertaining. He’s got plenty of filmmaking chops. No need to worship at the altar. The only artist worthy of that is Jim Henson and he died before we could discover his bad art.(I wish I could say Clive Barker but The Scarlet Gospels exists. Or Tori Amos but The Beekeeper and Abnormally Attracted to Sin were pretty meh.)
I didn’t offer any; that’s not the same as me not having any. Hell, I could link to three conversations from the comments thread on this very website where people struggled to articulate his themes – while in the process of trying to suggest that his movies are all about the same themes. But I… take your point?
“…just because dialogue is expository doesn’t mean that it’s understood.”
If this had been a dig about the audio mix in his films, broadly, or about Tom Hardy, specifically, I probably genuinely would have laughed. Unfortunately, you followed it up with this:
“A character can monologue for 20 minutes about a bunch of dumb nonsense and that doesn’t mean what they’re feebly trying to explain ACTUALLY makes sense.”which doesn’t seem to describe anything in any of his films. And you didn’t offer any examples, so… Your man is made of straw, it seems.
“Personally I find the sweaty defensive nonsense of Nolan stans pretty entertaining. He’s got plenty of filmmaking chops. No need to worship at the altar. The only artist worthy of that is Jim Henson and he died before we could discover his bad art.”
We say a hit dog hollers. I’ll say that you’d be better off directing that to his “stans” when you encounter a “sweaty defense” of him. I defend him when I feel it is warranted, and it doesn’t require much effort. People either like what he does or they don’t, and their preferences don’t impact my ability to see and evaluate his work. They don’t impact professional critics’ ability to do the same. And the lengthy “nominations and awards” page speaks for itself.
YOU were the one claiming that complaints about his expository dialogue were somehow incongruous with complaints that the same dialogue isn’t easy to parse. I was simply pointing out that expository dialogue can ALSO be obtuse. I’m sorry that YOUR argument was faulty. You’ll note that I never said it was difficult to understand. YOU brought that particular bit of nothing to the table.Let me know when you’ve actually defended Nolan’s work. Cuz really all you’ve done is mock people who critique it and bask in some weird superiority complex.
Okay.
You ever heard of a little story called “The Emperor’s New Clothes”? Same deal.
Say more about that…
Droz : Sanskrit. You’re majoring in a 5000 year-old dead language?
Still my favorite Nolan movie by far.
Michael Caine already explained this.“If I’m in it, it’s reality. If I’m not in it, it’s a dream.”
Then why is Michael Caine always in my dreams?
Do people actually listen to what Michael Caine says outside of his film characters though?
The big twist would be that Caine himself was a projection from Mal (I think that was her name).
His suede shoes story is very important.
“…and not many people know that.”
I like the ambiguous interpretation of the ending, though it seemed clear to me on the first watch that Cobb was back in reality. I stick to that in part because I wanted something hopeful from the movie. If Cobb was still in a dream at the end and he no longer cares because he gets to spend it with his kids, then he falls into the same trap that Mal did, no longer able to separate dreams from reality. Which is doubly depressing considering his kids continue to be in the real world without him.
…but at some point, he’s inevitably going to go back to the top to find out whether or not it’s still spinning. The movie leaves it unanswered, but the character will still eventually find out.
The ending is just a misdirect. Mal’s token was the top. Cobb’s was a dice. The top would not have been his indication whether he was still in the dream or not.
I don’t get how this is still a question for people.He looks right at Ariadne, tells her totems don’t work if someone else knows how they do, and proceeds to tell her how his wife’s totem works.Arthur’s totem was the loaded dice, (he refuses to let Ariadne touch them because they wouldn’t work if she did).Cobb’s is his wedding ring – the top is the last connection he has to Mal in the dream world, it tethers him to it and her memory there, at the end of the film he simply doesn’t need it anymore.
This isn’t my theory, but I believe the only scene in the entire movie set in the present real world of the film was the final scene.
Why would anyone even want Nolan to permanently end the ambiguity? As soon as he says “Cobb is trapped in a dream” or “Cobb made it home” (which are kind of the only two answers), there’s nothing left to discuss anymore.
People on the Internet can be kinda stupid.
But what’s there to discuss if there isn’t an answer?
The internet has compiled numerous visual essays arguing either side of the ending, with stuff like the presence of Cobb’s wedding band and theories about other characters’ totems and things like that. They both make good points!If Nolan ever gives a definitive answer, one half of the discussion just gets shut down.
But if the discussion can never be resolved, because there explicitly isn’t an answer, then it’s just discourse for its own sake. It’s meaningless. It’s a mystery box that will never open because there’s nothing in it. And if finding out the answer “shuts down one half of the discussion”, surely learning there’s no answer negates both halves.My question to you is, why must a discussion never end? What’s wrong with getting absorbed in a stimulating mystery for a few days or years, finding out the answer and moving onto another? What’s so interesting about a discourse that stretches out forever without evolving or resolving, like endlessly painting the Golden Gate Bridge?Just, WHY?
I’d argue that you have this backwards: What’s there to discuss if there is an answer?
If we see the movie together, when we walk out, if you think the answer is “trapped in a dream” and I think the answer is “Cobb made it home,” then the answer to your question is: Why we each think what we think. And that’s what we discuss. Christopher Nolan may have an answer; the fact that he didn’t depict it on screen ALLOWS us to discuss it without either of us being definitively “wrong.”
I think you’re confusing “having the answer” with “there being an answer”. To me, the discussion comes from the mystery; but if we know there is no definitive answer that the creator is withholding – it’s simply ambiguous because it’s not important to the film’s themes or the characters’ arcs – then there is no mystery.You make a good point that in lieu of the answer itself the discussion becomes “why we think what we think”, but if we know it’s left deliberately ambiguous, then we’re not talking about “what we think it is”, but “what we think it should be”. Which I’ll concede can also be an interesting conversation, but we should at least recognise it for what it is.
I think you’re confusing “having the answer” with “there being an answer”.I agree with you – because you’re right. And I disagree with you – because I think this is ultimately a distinction that somewhat misses my point: The reason this is still something that Nolan is being asked about is because he’s the creator of the film and he got to decide where it ended. He decided not to reveal the answer, thus we don’t have Christopher Nolan’s definitive answer. That’s where I agree with you.
“To me, the discussion comes from the mystery; but if we know there is no definitive answer that the creator is withholding – it’s simply ambiguous because it’s not important to the film’s themes or the characters’ arcs – then there is no mystery.”That’s where I disagree with you. I didn’t see the film with Christopher Nolan. I haven’t discussed the film with him. And honestly, if I could, this is probably the one thing I wouldn’t want to ask him about. I’ve literally never had a conversation about the ending of Inception that hinged on Christopher Nolan’s definitive answer about the ending of Inception. To me, there’s no reason to ask him this question for the umpteenth time: It doesn’t matter – to me – if he ever had a definitive answer in mind precisely because he preserved the ambiguity. He gave us many things that he doesn’t get to take back.
He gave everyone who saw Inception the gift of being able to think about themes and character arcs, and temptation, and risk, and what Cobb or Mal or Ariadne or anyone could have done differently. He gave everyone the opportunity to think about how seductive it would be to spend infinite amounts of time in a non-reality. He gave us the opportunity to think about what it would be like to be able to bend reality (and or perception thereof) to suit our needs. He gave us the opportunity to think about what things in our life we’d like a chance to do over, and what we might do if we could infect others with our ideas while making them believe that they’re their own. I don’t lose my experience of the film or the questions it raised or the conversations it inspired because he didn’t reveal an answer the first umpteen times he was asked the question, and I didn’t lose them because there isn’t a definitive answer. Christopher Nolan’s experience of Christopher Nolan’s film is not my own. His ownership of it ended when the lights dimmed at the AMC.“…then we’re not talking about “what we think it is”, but “what we think it should be”.To be clear: I’m not saying you’re wrong about this. I’m just pointing out that my perspective begins and ends in a different place because Christopher Nolan providing an answer to this question doesn’t impact my experience of the movie or the conversations it has already prompted. If he’d chosen a definitive ending, some of those conversations wouldn’t have happened at all.
Y’all motherfuckers need Jesus death of the author.
oh don’t get me started
Actually, we need death of autotune, followed, naturally by a moment of silence.
Autotuned silence!
Discussion is not necessary for a narrative to work. Some people want the closure and satisfaction of a definitive conclusion. Given Cobb’s characterization I think the ambiguous ending still satisfies his story but it’s common for audiences to conflate personal satisfaction with narrative satisfaction. It’s a distinction that I try hard to instill in my screenwriting students.
There’s nothing wrong with an ambiguous ending.There’s ALSO nothing wrong with an audience wanting closure.So how about we not cop the attitude about the audience.
“There’s ALSO nothing wrong with an audience wanting closure.”
A couple of issues with the framing here:
1) I can’t go so far as to say that there’s literally nothing wrong with an audience wanting closure. Closure isn’t inherent to the human experience as a thing that we always get, so wanting it is somewhat unimaginative. And the inability to get to the end of a film and use one’s own brain to paint more of the picture than what is reflected in the frame is unambiguously unimaginative. The inability to recognize that the lack of closure actually allows for further contemplation and/or further discussion, engagement, exchange of ideas, says a lot. If someone wants to pay their $30, eat their popcorn, drink their Coke, and then leave and go to Applebees without a moment’s thought about what they just witnessed, that’s… an orientation. I can’t agree that there’s nothing wrong with it.
2) The audience can WANT whatever it wants. That doesn’t mean they GET whatever they want. The audience can critique whatever others create. They are also free to use the tools available to create whatever they want. But when we decide that “what the audience wants” is more important than what the creator chose to create and release, it’s also worth remembering that “the audience” cuts off heads in photos at Disneyland every goddamned year.
Taken as they came:1) Film, especially narrative film, owes no fealty to “the human experience”. Stories are inherently manipulated reality. It is not “unimaginative” (You make some interesting points here and you make them very cogently so I’m struggling to not be an antagonistic asshole here but this shit makes it hard – what a bunch of elitist bullshit) to want closure from a form of expression – narrative film – that not only encourages said closure but often works best BECAUSE life doesn’t offer said closure. This is such nonsense artistic superiority in this paragraph. A story that encourages engagement *past the point of consumption* might be APPEALING to you but it is not, at all, required. And it is not, at all, a mark against artists who don’t encourage that post-consumption engagement nor a mark against consumers of said art. If a narrative artist tells an interesting story well IN THE MOMENT and you as the audience don’t carry that story past the medium in question, that’s totally fucking FINE. Yes, some of the best stories “stick with you”. I ENJOY that kind of storytelling and generally prefer it. But to posit that it’s the “superior” kind of art? No. Bullshit.2) I didn’t say anything about weighing the audience’s expectation against the artist’s intention. I think that IF you’re going to be an artist in a mass medium you do OWE it to yourself and your work to ATTEMPT to meet the audience’s expectation, but if you don’t you don’t. I’m very much a believer in art as a form of communication, particularly good ol’ SMCR communication, which necessitates that the artist, or Sender, figure out the best way for their Message to be Received. This article very clearly cops a bullshit attitude that audiences who were dissatisfied with the ambiguity of the ending of Inception are somehow intellectually inferior and/or worthy of scorn. And that’s, again, to repeat myself, BULLSHIT. Those people are just Receivers who find that ambiguity clouds the Message. I support Nolan wanting to leave the ending ambiguous, especially since the Message is clear regardless of the ending. But I think it’s really fucking shitty (to be very eloquent about it) to use a superior tone to discuss anyone who didn’t get it. (I also think it’s a badly written movie generally, but that’s just my $0.02)And I don’t really get the point of your little Disneyland diatribe at the end. People are bad photographers so fuck their artistic standards? Okay?
“I’m struggling to not be an antagonistic asshole”
I suspect that’s a battle you lose regularly. And I type that with praise and self-awareness.
“A story that encourages engagement *past the point of consumption* might be APPEALING to you but it is not, at all, required.”
I wonder… If someone put a quarter in your back, would your brain automatically generate logical fallacies? Do you have to turn a crank too?
At no point did I suggest that “further engagement” with content was required. Yes, a story that makes me think is appealing to me. That’s a choice I get to make for myself. Other people are welcome to make other choices in what they consume. “Horses for courses,” as the saying goes. People are absolutely welcome to watch what they watch, like what they like, and never think about it on any level when they walk out of the theater or leave their couch. Never discuss it with anyone else. Never post about it on social media. Never talk about it or think about it. I’m sure there are plenty of consumers who DON’T want to engage with others about what they consume, and plenty of content creators who are happy to oblige. There is plenty of media that fits this category. Plenty of it is lucrative and has broad appeal. This may shock you: I’ve consumed some of it! I own the deluxe edition of Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream.” I’m pretty sure I bought it at Target.I’ve never seen a Fast/Furious movie, so perhaps this is unfair, but I’d assume that all or most of them are in this exact category. Fast cars. Pretty girls. Corona. CGI fuckfest chase scene. Mumbled speech about “Family.” Repeat. If that’s what they are, and that’s what lots of people want, that explains the box office success and the fact that they’re on installment number 14 or whatever. You focused on my supposed superiority complex without engaging with my actual point: Christopher Nolan does not make that type of entertainment. If you walk into Applebees expecting dry-aged filet mignon, that’s on you. If you walk out of Ruth’s Chris complaining that you had to ask for A1, that’s on you!“I didn’t say anything about weighing the audience’s expectation against the artist’s intention.”
You didn’t. I did. Your original fanfare for the common man was limited to “There’s ALSO nothing wrong with an audience wanting closure.” And I was pointing out that what one wants isn’t always what one gets. Once we get past your fervid advocacy for SMCR, we end up back where we started: Opinions aren’t inherently wrong, but they’re broadly revealing. Sometimes in unflattering ways.
Plenty of people saw No Country for Old Men and were confused when the lights went up. How do we know? Because they discussed the ending after they saw the film. Does their confusion inherently mean they’re stupid? No more so than it inherently means that the ending of that film was dissatisfying or unclear. Confusion is a reaction. Dissatisfaction is an opinion (or a perspective, or a reaction).
Plenty of people saw Inception, grasped the ambiguity of that ending, and came to their own conclusions. Not all of those conclusions aligned with other people’s conclusions. How do we know? Because they discussed the ending after they saw the film. Some of those discussions revealed perspectives that people found valuable, even if they weren’t necessarily shared. But, for them, the value of the film itself extended beyond the end credits. That was only possible because of the ambiguity itself. On the other hand: Some of those people discussed that ambiguity with dissatisfaction; fine as far as it goes. But some of them were unwilling to engage with the possibility that the creator quite intentionally ended the film, exactly when he did, precisely so that people could think about what Cobb wanted, what they would have wanted, and what they think actually happened… without making any of those answers explicitly “wrong.” Some people think that’s a feature, not a bug. I’m one of those people. That is also an opinion, or a perspective, or a reaction.
The gap between what you wrote and my response is largely down to my perspective that Christopher Nolan gets payment, up front, and recognition and acclaim, after the fact, for making the art he wants to make – and sharing the perspective he wants to share, and that he gets to do that independent of whether the general consumer wants every single thought presented to them on the screen, to be washed away by the opening swells of the exit music. If he ever decides he wants to make Fa5teen Furious: Revenge of Calvin & Shaw, I’m sure he’ll get paid handsomely, I’m sure the box office returns will be robust, and it will be a violent CGI fuckfest of hot Coronas and fast girls where Vin Diesel, Jason Statham, and Tom Hardy mumble inaudibly over the roar of family cars.
“And I don’t really get the point of your little Disneyland diatribe at the end. People are bad photographers so fuck their artistic standards? Okay?”Obtuse, too…
the point of the shot is the character doesn’t care at that pointThis was the obvious interpretation. Cobb walks away before he sees what is going to happen because he wants to be with his family and he isn’t going to let some stupid detail like whether or not they are real prevent that.
I very much agree. Where I will side with audiences who wanted a definitive conclusion is that Nolan lingers on the top as though THAT, itself, is important. If Cobb’s happiness is really the point, why linger on the top? It’s baiting the audience. I don’t know that the article is correct about Nolan’s attitude about answering this question but IF it is, then I think it’s fucking hilarious. Oh, are you tired of people asking that question? Well maybe you shouldn’t have ended your movie on that ambiguity, dingus. Maybe since the point was Cobb’s happiness you should have ended on HIM. Reap what you sow, ya know?
He spins a top, the totem that’s supposed to identify whether or not he’s in a dream, but chooses to turn away before seeing if it falls.It’s not his totem, it was Mal’s, he flat out tells the Ariadne that totems don’t work if someone else knows how they do (after telling her how it works), his totem is his wedding ring.The top represents his inability to move on from Mal, keeping him in the world he was stuck in – he lets go of it at the end.