Totem

Two days, after watching the movie am still thinking about it subconsciously.I need to move on, hence jotting down my final thoughts about the movie "Inception".

If u haven't seen the movie yet, please don't read further.

So, this is a movie which drops sufficient clues to the audience and leaves the climax to them. The typical high school " Lady and the tiger story" where u can't tell which door was opened, lady or the tiger.

According to me,these are the possibilities.We don't know whether the totem toppled or not.

So assuming equally probable independent events this is what might have happened.:

1) Cobb and Saito wake up in the real world and Cobb goes home to his kids.

2) Cobb was inside a dream. He was wrong all the time and his wife was right. When she killed herself , she went back to the real world and he was still stuck in the limbo.

3) The third one to me is the most likely possibility, the entire movie was real, except the climax which was a dream, they never show Cobb and Saito getting the kick, they just get up in their seats after Cobb's realization and after all this time his kids are still wearing the same clothes.

The biggest problem with the script(deliberate problem) is the concept of the goddamn TOTEM, it can only tell you that you are not in someone else's dream. But what if you were in your dream, all this time?

But as a story teller the message Nolan was trying to send us was that, once Cobb leaves the totem to spin, he doesn't turn back to check itz state,he has reached his reality, he has gone back home to his kids, awake or asleep doesn't matter.

Hats off, if u can think of better explanations, please post.