SPOILERS

SPOILERS

So I'm pretty sure that Cobb is still in a dream, judging by the top still spinning at the end. I think he'll ignore it, though, possibly having one of his projections pick it up subconsciously so he never has to see that it was spinning, then he'll just never spin it again.

So the question is, where did the dream begin? I'm really, really loath to assume that everything that happened in the movie was in a dream from the very start—mainly because it means that all the characters we met were never real, and that kind of invalidates what we spent two (three?) hours getting invested in.

Here's my pet theory, and feel more than free to point out how wrong I am: Saito was never able to magically get Cobb pardoned. His plan from the start was to have Cobb pull the job, and then pay off someone on his team to keep him under after the job is up. So everything that happens to Cobb after he wakes up—notice how the film stays with him entirely until the final shot—is inside of a dream that was created for him by Saito after the job was completed.

This means that Mal is still dead, and Cobb doesn't reunite with his children, but it does mean that the movie wasn't all a fantasy.

Yeah, the thing does wobble a bit, and then it cuts. That ending was one of the reasons I loved the flick so much. Nolan obviously knew that it would drive people nuts and start a conversation.

I think it's pretty obvious that he's still in a dream, tho, considering the fact that his kids are still identical to the kids in his dreams, despite the fact that it's supposed to be several years later. I think the fact that the thing starts to wobble is less a clue to the ending and more a clue to the whole movie. It's his totem and his dream. If he wants it to topple, he can make it do so, right? The entire movie could have been a dream.

If you think about it, the world he and his wife were in for "years" was supposedly at least a few levels in, right? And they were obviously still using their own familiar places at that time to construct their dream worlds. That's why he stopped doing that after his wife freaked out about it not feeling real. The problem with them experiencing years inside the dream is that when they 'died', they weren't shown waking up through several levels. Just one. Maybe it was meant to be implied, but if they spent years down there, what are the chances that they actually got all the way out? Maybe his wife actually did wake herself up.

What if…not only the whole movie was inside of Cobb's dream, but what if Cobb's dream was, itself, inside of a movie, which was viewed by us in the movie theater?! That would mean that everything that happened, from the moment we sat down in our seats, never actually happened, but was actually part of an architected dreamscape forced on us by a film director!

Just got home, before I crash for the night, in anticipation of having to get up and get to work in a few hours, I wanted to just shout out and say it was great catching the showing with everyone tonight.

Was a blast, and hope to get out more and cross paths with all you guys.

Likewise, sir, nice to meet you.

And Mike made all of my favorite points, and came to similar conclusions. His whole post reflects my feelings.

Go Nolan.