Christopher Nolan on Inception's mind-boggling real ending

After five years, those who have been wondering about what really happens at the end of sci-fi thriller Inception may have been provided with an answer.

Speaking at Princeton University's graduation ceremony on Monday morning, director Christopher Nolan explained what happened to Leonardo DiCaprio's character after the credits rolled.

By the end of Inception, Cobb, an espionage agent who is able to extract information from his targets through "shared dreaming", finally gets what he desires: a reunion with his children. But the spinning top which topples in reality, but stays upright in fantasy, is left spinning. The audience are left hanging: is it for real, or is it merely yet another shared dream?

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Nolan used the scene to illustrate his message to Princeton graduates, that they should "chase their reality."

He said: "I feel that over time, we started to view reality as the poor cousin to our dreams, in a sense. I want to make the case to you that our dreams, our virtual realities, these abstractions that we enjoy and surround ourselves with — they are subsets of reality."

Nolan added: "The way the end of that film worked, Cobb, he was off with his kids, he was in his own subjective reality.

"He didn't really care anymore, and that makes a statement: perhaps, all levels of reality are valid. The camera moves over the spinning top just before it appears to be wobbling, it was cut to black." 

The director accepted that audiences weren't quite satisifed with such vagueness: "I skip out of the back of the theatre before people catch me, and there's a very, very strong reaction from the audience: usually a bit of a groan".

"The point is, objectively, it matters to the audience in absolute terms: even though when I'm watching, it's fiction, a sort of virtual reality.

"But the question of whether that's a  dream or whether it's real is the question I've been asked most about any of the films I've made. It matters to people because that's the point about reality. Reality matters."

In short: it doesn't matter if Cobb is dreaming or not, because either way he's chosen to accept it as his reality – and presumably the audience should too.