As interesting a read as The Invention of Morel was, it being this week’s film gives me an opportunity to talk about Christopher Nolan’s 2010 film, Inception. The movie rather famously ends with Cobb, the main character, having supposedly returned home to his family having completed one last job, and spinning his totem, a top that will only stop spinning in reality, but the film ending before we the audience find out one way or another whether DiCapprio’s character is actually awake, or if his happy ending is a false one. It’s by far one of the most talked about aspects of the film, and while Christopher Nolan himself as stated he has his own opinion on the matter, he also has said that ultimately “the truth” is whatever the viewer chooses it to be. Now, I’m a proponent of the theory that Cobb is indeed still dreaming, but in a more unconventional manner. The vast majority of the events in the film are a dream, not just Cobb’s happy ending. Now, I’m not simply offering the theory that because this is a film about dreams and the nature of reality that you can argue that the entire work is a dream. To be frank, I find such a claim narratively lazy, and is hardly the kind of theory that actually requires any real inspection of the story itself. It’s the theory equivalent of the ending of St. Elsewhere, where the entire show turns out to have been in the imagination of a child looking at a snow globe, unsatisfying, and with little to no foreshadowing, delusions of deepness. However, although claiming ALL of Inception is a dream has little basis, as there’s no narrative hints at such, the theory that MOST of it is a dream, while not something I would argue to the death as the truth, as the film was written and directed with a high emphasis on ambiguity, is something that I believe to be arguable. Early in the film, Hobb explains the concept of a totem, an item that you can use to tell that you’re awake. Shortly after they go to meet Yusuf, the chemist for their team tasked with drugging them all into a sleep-like state so they can perform their job in the dream world. Cobb samples the potential team member’s wares in order to know they’re the real thing. It cuts to Cobb splashing water on his face, and spinning his top, shorthand for the audience to know that he did fall asleep, and that he does approve. However, we as the audience never actually see the top stop, he’s called away before that fact can be determined, and this is exactly the same as what happens at the end of the film, the only difference being that the camera doesn’t linger, so it’s far less notable. This is a case where the same logic that lets you argue that he’s still dreaming at the end of the film applies, and it opens up so many different theories and layers of ambiguity with real support, and I adore that fact, even if I’d never claim my interpretation is a hundred percent true, we can all still debate it with actual points for each side.