It’s one of the great mysteries of cinema: does the top stop spinning at the beginning at the end?

Spoilers – Warning, the article below contains potential spoilers. If you do not want to know its contents, please do not read the following…

Unlike most movies that try to answer every question their audience asks themselves, some feature films sometimes end with an insatiable question mark. An unknown mystery that only our imagination can solve.

What was Bill Murray whispering into Scarlett Johansson’s ear at the end of Lost in Translation? What does Tom Hanks’ latest package of Alone in the World contain? Is Rick Deckard a replicant in Blade Runner? And of course, what happens to Dom Cobb’s spinning top at the end of Inception?

If this sci-fi feature film, especially directed by Leonardo DiCaprio, is often regarded by audiences as one of Christopher Nolan’s best films, it is partly due to its unforgettable final shot.

To recall, Inception follows the adventures of Dom Cobb, a dream stealer who infiltrates the dreams of his targets to extract information from them or implant them (a much more delicate operation called Inception). Exiled from the United States for several years, Dom takes on a final mission that will allow him, if successful, to see his two children again.

In order to clearly distinguish between the dreams in which he travels and reality, each thief uses a totem, a small object that he can keep at all times and that reacts specifically within the dream. In his case, Dom uses a top that never stops spinning in a dream.

Is Dom Cobb still in his dream at the end of the movie?

At the end of the film, after completing the mission, the character returns home. Before rushing towards her children to hold them, she makes sure to let go of the top to check that it’s real. On a final haunting note by Hans Zimmer, the camera then zooms in on the totem, which continues to rotate, sway slightly, and then… nothing. Black screen and end credits.

Given that Nolan’s film stops short of a shot, it’s up to the viewer to decide whether Dom Cobb is in the dream or not. A conclusion that the public has yet to come out of, and which has apparently spawned hundreds of theories on the internet since the release of Inception in 2010.

One of the most famous of these suggests that the spinning top is not Dom’s totem, as it later belonged to his late wife, and that these small objects are strictly reserved for their original owner. Instead, internet theorists have imagined that Dom’s totem was the wedding ring he wore on his left ring finger. Since the ring is not seen on her finger in the last sequence, it would not be in the dream.

Did Nolan make us?

However, according to the most likely and most logical hypothesis, Christopher Nolan did not plan an exact answer for the end of his film, his goal was simply to keep the audience asking themselves the question indefinitely.

A lover of mise en abyme, mysteries and labyrinths (as evidenced by the logo of his production house Syncopy), the British filmmaker would use the spinning top to create a little suspense in the audience, as in the case of Dom Cobb. A wife who has finally lost her sense of reality: what if what she just witnessed was a dream?

After giving us a real magic trick with The Prestige, and after giving us a flashback while being the main character of Memento, Nolan was about to perform on us… a real “beginning”.

(Re)discover our theories about ‘beginning’…