Leonardo DiCaprio Confesses He Has ‘No Idea’ About the Ending of ‘Inception’
Written by SOURCE on January 7, 2020
The Christopher Nolan-directed film Inception was released in theaters in 2010, and has since sparked debate over whether the totem—a spinning top—belonging to Dom Cobb, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, was beginning to wobble before the final scene cuts to credits. If you were hoping to get some clarity on this decade-long discourse from DiCaprio, he will not be any help.
During his appearance on the WTF with Marc Maron podcast, DiCaprio sympathized with his Once Upon a Time in Hollywood co-star Brad Pitt‘s confusion towards the plot of Ad Astra by admitting that he remains clueless about the ending of Inception. “I have no idea,” DiCaprio said. “You’re just focused on your character, man. When it came to Chris Nolan and his mind and how that was all pieced together, everyone was trying to constantly put that puzzle together.”
When asked the ending of Inception makes sense, DiCaprio conceded, “It depends on the eye of the beholder, I guess.” Leo’s willingness to leave the interpretation of the final sequence up to the audience is an approach that Nolan has long championed.
“We got a very, very excited reaction to it,” Nolan once told an audience member during a Q&A at the Tribeca Film Festival, per Business Insider. “Somebody had asked about my interpretation of the ending and I said ‘Well, it’s all up to the audience but this is what it means to me,’ and I gave them in great detail what exactly the ambiguities of the film meant to me.”
After finally getting what he wants and reuniting with his children at the end of the film, Cobb heads over to a table to spin his totem to determine if he’s in a dream or reality. If it keeps spinning, the former would be true. If it stops, then it’s the latter. We never get a definitive answer, but Leo’s Inception co-star Michael Caine may have already come forward with the truth.
“When I got the script of Inception, I was a bit puzzled by it and I said to him… ‘When is it the dream and when is it reality?’” Caine said. “[Nolan] said, ‘Well when you’re in the scene it’s reality.’ So get that: if I’m in it, it’s reality. If I’m not in it, it’s a dream.” Caine’s character, Professor Stephen Miles, who was Cobb’s father-in-law, was also in the scene.
