Leonardo DiCaprio Has 'No Idea' What Happened In Inception

Do you remember what you did at the end of sci-fi movie Inception? Did you turn and gawp blankly at the person next to you? Or did you stand and clap, as though it was a masterpiece that you fully and immediately comprehended?

It's been more than a decade since Christopher Nolan's mind-bending and highly ambiguous film was released, and over the years since, there have been all sorts of theories about what went down - particularly at the end.

But you shouldn't beat yourself up if you haven't got a Scooby-Doo what happened, because even Leonardo DiCaprio has admitted that he hasn't, and he's in the damn thing.

PA

The 46-year-old made the admission on podcast WTF with Marc Maron last year, appearing alongside Once Upon a Time in Hollywood co-star Brad Pitt.

After Pitt admitted that he couldn't explain some of his 2019 film Ad Astra, DiCaprio chimed in: "That sounds like Inception for me. What happened? I have no idea."

He added: "Sometimes you're just focused on your character, man... 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."

Asked if it ultimately made sense, he replied: "It depends on the eye of the beholder, I guess."

If you recall, the film ends with Cobb's (DiCaprio) totem still spinning - if it continued to spin then he was dreaming, and if it toppled over he was in reality. But Nolan left us hanging.

The director himself offered an explanation in 2015 during a lecture on 'reality and dreams' at Princeton University in New Jersey - but it was a little more vague than you'd probably like it to be.

He said: "The way the end of that film worked, Leonardo DiCaprio's character 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.

"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."

Exactly, reality matters, SO TELL US WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED.

Michael Caine, who played Cobb's mentor and father-in-law Professor Stephen Miles, offered a more concrete indication of what happened in 2018.

Warner Bros. Pictures

He said: "When I got the script of Inception, I was a bit puzzled by it, and I said to him [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."

Given that Caine appears in the final scene with DiCaprio, this would mean the end was real and that Cobb did indeed make it home to his family.

Nothing like a happy ending, is there? Even if it takes a decade to figure out and is still shrouded in mystery.

If you've got any mental capacity left, you can read a theory about the movie being a prequel to The Matrix here.

Topics: TV and Film, Celebrity, Leonardo DiCaprio

Jake Massey

Jake Massey is a journalist at LADbible. He graduated from Newcastle University, where he learnt a bit about media and a lot about living without heating. After spending a few years in Australia and New Zealand, Jake secured a role at an obscure radio station in Norwich, inadvertently becoming a real-life Alan Partridge in the process. From there, Jake became a reporter at the Eastern Daily Press. Jake enjoys playing football, listening to music and writing about himself in the third person.

@jakesmassey