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
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.”