Explaining why the totem in ‘Inception’ is irrelevant
In the early 2000s, Christopher Nolan was still an up-and-coming filmmaker looking to open people’s eyes. Although he might have been far from his epics like Dunkirk, his 2000 film Memento sent the director on his path, giving audiences a unique taste of traditional tales. After making some of the biggest movies of the 21st century with his take on Batman, Nolan was finally ready to mess with the audience’s brains on Inception.
Throughout the movie, we follow Leonardo DiCaprio’s Dave Cobb as he makes his way through different dream states. When first coming up with the idea, Nolan had talked about looking at dreams as something more nuanced than what real life has to offer, telling the graduates at Princeton University, “I want to make the case to you that our dreams, our virtual realities, these abstractions that we enjoy and surround ourselves with, they are subsets of reality”.
As such, much of the movie follows Cobb as he tries to connect different parts of his life, all tied around different totems. According to the rules of these dream states, the totem represents the stability of life, where the participant will finally be grounded if the totem changes.
While most people had been dwelling on Cobb getting back home, the movie ends on a jarring cliffhanger when he puts the spinning top on a table. As most fans thought, if the top stopped spinning, it would then mean that he’s finally returned back to his body before the camera cuts to black before the top can stop.
Except…not really. When combing through the rest of Cobb’s scene, the one fluctuation is his wedding ring, which pops up sporadically during the film. Since Cobb can be seen only wearing his ring in real sequences, the longstanding theory is that his ring is his real totem. Given that he’s wearing it towards the end of the film, Cobb should be free from the constant dream state and finally leave the movie on a high note.
Although the theory might have some valid reasoning, the music in the scene would say otherwise, as the classic Hans Zimmer score builds in tension only to cut off as soon as the credits roll. Even the actors have walked away with different theories, with Michael Caine thinking that Cobb finally escapes the dreams as he walks off with his children.
For all of the discourse surrounding the theory, none of it even matters to Nolan. Despite his almost-mathematical approach to making films, Nolan says that whether Cobb is in a dream or back home is beside the point, continuing, “The way the end of that film worked, Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, Cobb – he was off with his kids, he was in his own subjective reality. He didn’t really care any more, and that makes a statement: perhaps, all levels of reality are valid”.
These endless theories didn’t stop Nolan from messing with people’s minds, creating even more ambitious stories like Dunkirk, Interstellar and Tenet, each with their warped versions of reality to keep audiences on their toes. Whereas most directors would be fine telling cut-and-dry stories akin to classic cinema, Nolan is more interested in making puzzle boxes that audiences happen to watch in a theatre.
