14 DAY TRIAL // Though the ending of the Chris Nolan-directed dream-within-a-dream drama “Inception” was what one may call an open one, actor Michael Caine has no doubt about what it means – and he doesn’t even make a secret of it.
Caine played Professor Miles in the film, who trains Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) in the technique required to break into people’s dreams to steal whatever secrets they may be hiding there.
Only days after the film opened in US theaters this summer, word got out that its opening more than allowed for a sequel – in fact, one was in order, several media outlets said at the time.
Michael Caine has the answer to that – and he’s more than happy to share it with the rest of the world, TechLand informs.
* Those who haven’t seen the film yet are advised not to read any further because major spoilers are included in the article. As the aforementioned e-zine points out, the only one who can answer the question of whether Cobb’s spinning top stops spinning at the end or not (meaning whether he’s in the real world or in a dream) is director Chris Nolan himself.
Since Nolan has no plans of doing so anytime soon, Michael Caine would have to do: asked by the BBC to shed some light on the matter, the star says there’s no doubt in his mind that Cobb is not dreaming.
“[The spinning top] drops at the end, that's when I come back on. If I'm there it's real, because I'm never in the dream. I'm the guy who invented the dream,” Caine says.
Aside from the fact that this could only be Caine’s interpretation of the film (as noted above, only Nolan can know for sure the answer to this question), it can also be re-interpreted.
“The top drops, and everyone is in the real world now,” TechLand writes. “Leo isn't real because he's just a figment of Caine's dream. So, yes it is real - real in Caine's dream world so nothing in the movie was intended to be real,” the e-zine says.
The third meaning to Caine’s explanation could be that, “Inception is real, and Caine just planted that idea in our head. He's sick of moviegoers asking him if the top dropped or not.”
In the end, though, whether Nolan meant the spinning top to drop or not is not even the real issue because part of the appeal of the film is not knowing for certain: this way, each moviegoer can choose what to believe.
Nevertheless, if a sequel is in the works – as reports would have it – and it comes out in a few years, said appeal will be completely gone because the question will be unequivocally answered.