Inception (2010) raises philosophical questions throughout the film, but especially at the end. The protagonist, Cobb, returns home after completing his mission. Seeing his kids playing in the yard, he places a top on the table and spins it. The camera pulls in to focus on the top. The top wobbles slightly, cut to black, the credits roll, leaving the viewer to question: Did Cobb make it back to reality?
While Christopher Nolan, the director, remains cagey when pressed for an answer, you do not need to take his word for it. The philosophical clues run throughout the film. I will show how the end is necessarily real, and in the process what this film teaches us, the audience, about guilt and authenticity.
The Story
We can get lost in the science (or lack thereof) of dream machines, the groundbreaking effects, or the story of time eloquently woven together by the director. This is what draws audiences and holds our attention for over three hours. Instead, I want to move all of it to the side and focus on the story.
One way to get to the core story is to look at the main character and how this character changes. In Inception, the core story revolves around the main character, Cobb, played by Leonardo DiCaprio. Cobb arguably faces two problems at the start of the film: (1) the death of his wife and (2) getting back to his children. These plot points drive the narrative of the film. The film can only reach a resolution when Cobb comes to terms with these problems. Everything else is decorative, simply tools to help tell this story.
The arc of the story follows Cobb coming to terms with his guilt. Guilt is a reactive indicator calling us to take responsibility for a transgression against the other. In Cobb’s case, guilt reminds him of his responsibility for what he did to his wife, and guilt reminds him of how his actions led to his abandonment of his children. A train keeps appearing at inopportune times and he has visions of his child in his dreams.
The Question of Guilt
To understand Inception, we must make sense of this guilt. In his work The Question of German Guilt (1947), Karl Jasper tells us there are four kinds of guilt: criminal, moral, political, and existential. Each functions differently, calling us to take responsibility in distinct ways. It is not as simple as saying he is guilty. We must also ask how is he guilty. For this story, we need to look at moral and existential guilt, the two forms of guilt experienced internally.
At the beginning of the film, Cobb believes his guilt is moral. Moral guilt emerges when we transgress against another, violating their moral rights or obligations. So, when I steal from a friend I should feel guilty because I violated two moral boundaries: their trust and their right to their property. Moral guilt is something we feel inside of us and it calls us to show penance or renewal. I will try to make it up to my friend or swear it will never happen again. If that is not possible, argues Gabriele Taylor in Pride, Shame, and Guilt Emotions of Self-assessment (1985), we can transfigure or scar ourselves in an attempt to atone.
Cobb’s moral assessment of his guilt is laid out when Ariadne follows Cobb into his dream late one night after everyone else has gone home. In it, she sees his saved memories stored away connected by an elevator.
Ariadne: Why do you do this to yourself?
Cobb: It’s the only way I can still dream.
Ariadne: Why is it so important to still dream?
Cobb: Because in my dreams we are still together.
Ariadne: These aren’t just dreams. These are memories. And you said never to use memories.
Cobb: I know I did.
Ariadne: You’re trying to keep her alive. You can’t let her go.
Cobb: You don’t understand. These are moments I regret. They are memories I have to change.
Inception (56:06)
Cobb is trying, through reliving these moments over and over, to atone, to change what happened, to right the wrong he has done. This is what we do when we believe we are morally guilty. When I break a promise, I make it up to that person, and we try to fix it. Cobb believes his guilt represents a wrong for which he needs to atone and change. He echoes this sentiment when he shares his memory of leaving his children, saying,
I start to panic. I realize I am going to regret this moment. That I need to see their faces one last time. … And the moments passed. And whatever I do I can’t change this moment. I’m about to call out to them. They run away. If I am ever going to see their faces again I’ve got to get back home.
Inception (57:48)
Cobb believes he can still fix what he has done. As a result, he is unable to accept the death of his wife. He believes that in some way he can still be with her. However, as we know and Ariadne knows, this is not possible. Nothing he does can bring back his wife.
The kind of guilt he experiences is also existential guilt, or as Martin Heidegger calls it, being-guilty. Existential guilt is rooted in how we live our lives. At our core, we take on roles in the world. I am a chef, I am a brother, I am a wife, I am a citizen, and so on. Each of us has a multitude of these ways of being. However, none of us are perfect. We are all lacking without exception. I am not the perfect chef; I overcook the food. I am not the perfect brother; I don’t stick up for him when he is being bullied.
One of the fundamental qualities of being human is not being who we say we are. In this way, we transgress against those we trust and love, including ourselves. Cobb failed as a father in one of the most egregious ways, by abandoning his children. He failed as a husband by abusing Mal’s trust to convince her reality is not real. In these ways, he is guilty of not being a good husband and father, and nothing can change that. He can’t go back.
How do we come to see and take responsibility for our existential guilt? According to Heidegger, this happens once we confront death, not physically, but existentially. In Being and Time (1927), Heidegger defines death “as the possibility of the impossibility of any existence at all.” We live our lives moving from one possibility to another, always trying to adjust. If it doesn’t work to be a citizen one way, I try another.
Cobb believes that overcoming his failure as a husband and father is just a matter of changing possibilities. However, we all have one possibility which looms over us, the possibility of the end of possibilities—that at some unknown time, we will run out of possibilities, and die. Once we see this, we can no longer run from possibility to possibility. We can no longer keep playing games and pushing responsibility down the road. We are forced to see our options as limited. Ultimately, we have to accept our lives for what they are, not just what we want them to be. Cobb has to accept his failure as a father, not simply imagine the father he wants to be.
Confrontation with Death
Cobb confronts death clearly in the final fortress scene. He perches with the sniper rifle, about to watch their plan come to fruition, only to see Mal drop into the room. He freezes because killing Mal would make it impossible to ever atone. But once she shoots Fischer, he is confronted with the end of all possibilities, the end of the possibility of ever being a father, his existential death.
We confront death to see ourselves for who we are. At the moment Cobb shoots Mal he becomes his authentic self, no longer running from himself. No longer able to accept the fantasy of saving Mal, he sees she is a dream and kills her. He authentically takes existential responsibility for being a father. Heidegger identifies several features of authenticity which we see in Cobb after this point.
The first is resoluteness. In Being and Time (1927), Heidegger defines the concept: “By ‘resoluteness’ we mean ‘letting oneself be called forth to one’s own most Being-guilty.’” When we confront death and the call towards authenticity we are disabused of our false beliefs and fantasies. We can no longer buy into the myth we told ourselves about who we are.
In Being and Nothingness (1943), Jean-Paul Sartre called this bad faith. We can no longer lie to ourselves, saying that we are going to make it big when we are waiting tables in the middle of nowhere. Cobb can no longer lie to himself by saying he will save his wife. As a result, we become resolute, accepting this, and still moving forward. We clear out the noise and work with what we have.
The second quality of authenticity is improvisation. When things don’t go as they should, we then need to work with what we have. When descending the elevator into Mal’s layer in limbo, Ariadne asks, “How do we bring Fisher back?” to which Cobb replies “I’m gonna improvise” (Inception 1:59:20). In achieving authenticity, we are no longer looking for some other authority to tell us what we are supposed to do. We are freed to react to the possibilities that are given to us, to what is in front of us.
This brings us to the culminating scene in the film, where Cobb chooses to confront Mal in Limbo. Mal attempts to appeal to his moral construction of his guilt, to offer him renewal, but that no longer works for Cobb:
Mal: … So certain of your world, of what’s real. Do you think he is? Or do you think he is as lost as I was?
Cobb: I know what’s real, Mal.
Mal: No creeping doubts? Not feeling persecuted, Dom? Chased around the globe by anonymous corporations and police forces? The way the projections persecute the dreamer? Admit it. You don’t believe in one reality anymore. So choose, choose to be here, choose me….
Cobb: You know what I have to do. I have to get back to our children because you left them because you left us.
Mal: You’re wrong. … You are confused …
Cobb: No, I know it.
Mal: And what if you’re wrong? What if I’m what’s real? You keep telling yourself what you know, but what do you believe, what do you feel?
Cobb: Guilt. I feel guilt, Mal. And no matter what I do, no matter how hopeless I am, no matter how confused, that guilt is always there, reminding me of the truth.
Inception (2:00:14)
As resoluteness recedes and the possibilities for improvisation emerge, we are presented with a primordial truth. We see things as they are and people for who they are. Heidegger describes this state in Being and Time (1927): “’[We] are in the truth’ we have called attention to the primordial disclosedness of this entity as the truth of existence.” In his confrontation with Mal, Cobb presents this primordial truth: she is dead and she can’t bring back his children. This is a lie that can never substitute for reality.
Mal: You infected my mind.
Cobb: I was trying to save you.
Mal: You betrayed me. You can make amends, you can keep your promise we can still be together. Right here, in the world, we built together. …
Cobb: I wish. I wish more than anything but I can’t imagine you with all your complexity, all your perfect, all your imperfect. … look at you. You’re just a shade. You’re just a shade of my real wife. You are the best that I could do but I’m sorry you’re just not good enough.
Inception (2:05:24)
Cobb’s existential guilt functions like a compass to guide him home. He can no longer be tricked by fake realities. He becomes confident he can rescue Saito from limbo and return to the real world. With his existential guilt in hand, he knows how to get back because he can no longer be deceived by dreams.
Upon returning home to his real children, he puts the top down one more time and spins it. Rather than watching the top, we should be watching Cobb. He walks away from the top toward his children. He no longer cares whether it falls or not because he no longer needs it. This is also symbolic because this was never his totem. The top was Mal’s totem. We know this because he spins it in the safe to convince her limbo wasn’t real. He was always holding on to it and now he can let go.
By looking at the journey of Cobb, his struggle, and his growth, we can see that Inception is a film about guilt. The science fiction of dreams is a tool for telling the story of a person’s mind grappling with loss, regret, and acceptance. As Cobb moves from an understanding of his guilt as moral to understanding it as existential, he confronts death to find his authentic self, being-guilty, which can lead him home. This is how we know the end is necessarily real.
A well-reasoned, well-argued piece. But setting aside the psychopathological argument for whether the end is real, there is a “technical” indicator that it is. If you watch the movie carefully, any scene in which Michael Caine appears is “reality.” Given that he is the one who welcomes Cobb at the airport (welcoming him back to reality?), we can safely assume that anything that follows is real. The “crossover” indicator (between the psychopathological and the technical) is, of course, the top itself, and your reminder that it is not Cobb’s totem, but Mal’s, so we can also safely assume that is does, in fact, topple.