If you have watched Inception, it is likely you have had plenty of conversations about what the ending actually meant. Was it a dream? Was it reality? Was the entire film real or all simply a dream?
Well, if you happen to be sitting at a dinner table with Leonardo DiCaprio, don't try to spark up the decade-old debate, because he simply does not know.
Despite portraying Dom Cobb, the character central to the spinning top-centric ending, the actor says he cannot explain the ending of Christopher Nolan's mind-bending, sci-fi epic.
DiCaprio was asked about the film's final scene on podcast WTF With Marc Maron, after Brad Pitt was unable to explain the end of his 2019 hit, Ad Astra.
“I have no idea. You’re just focused on your character, man," DiCaprio said. "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 ... it depends on the eye of the beholder, I guess."
Unlike the Once Upon A Time ... in Hollywood star, Michael Caine has answers.
The British actor, who played DiCaprio's father-in-law in Inception, did his part to explain the ending at a screening of the movie in London last year.
"When I got the script of Inception, I was a bit puzzled by it. I said [to Nolan]: 'I don't understand where the dream is.' I said: 'When is it the dream and when is it reality?' He 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."
By that logic, given that Caine’s character is in the final scene, it is not a dream.
That wasn't the first time Caine has explained the ending of the film for fans. In 2010, he told entertainment website Screen Rant: “If I’m there it’s real, because I’m never in the dream. I’m the guy who invented the dream.”
