You know that ending. You remember that ending. You remember the infuriating rage at not being provided with a clear-cut answer. Is it a dream? Or is it a reality? Why can\u2019t you just show us if the totem fell or not, dammit? Christopher Nolan won\u2019t let you know conclusively, so you\u2019ll just have to come up with a load of wild theories and post them on the internet. These are readily available to analyse, of course. Maybe it\u2019s Mal\u2019s dream that Cobb is inhabiting. Maybe Ariadne\u2019s manipulating the dream. We don\u2019t know for sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Rewinding back to the beginning of this scene, we begin with Hans Zimmer\u2019s masterful composition \u2018Time\u2019, as Dom Cobb awakes from the dream and dumbfoundedly stares at all of his satisfied comrades, slowly realising that the job was successful. He walks through the immigration checkpoint successfully, smiling as he sees father-in law Stephen waving and waiting to greet him. He returns home and spins Mal\u2019s totem to double check he\u2019s not in a dream, but sees his children and walks away to embrace them. However, the teasing camera cuts back to the spinning totem, panning to the object and slowly zooming in, but we\u2019re never allowed to see the final result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While the scene is already bolstered by a brilliant narrative progression in its use of imagery and editing techniques, \u2018Time\u2019 nonetheless plays a major part in cultivating the audience\u2019s emotional response. After experiencing the loud brahms as the final parts of the dream world fall into place (Zimmer has subsequently voiced his regret in making the noise such a popular fallback in contemporary cinema soundtracks), the song initially represents the comparative calm of the atmosphere as Cobb wakes from the chaos, with quite sounds as the simple piano tune plays and the violins emerge into a louder soundscape. The composition recedes for a moment as Cobb is checked at the checkpoint, signifying both Cobb\u2019s and our own anticipation \u2013 and subsequent relief \u2013 as the score rises once he\u2019s safely through, with the addition of electric guitars (many of the film\u2019s compositions with this instrument were played by Smiths guitarist Jonny Marr) after this point adding an extra level of euphoria. The work generally continues with the same level of gratification as Cobb carries on his victory walk, getting slightly grander as he saunters over to Stephen. It begins to relent, however, as Cobb sees his children, becoming toned down as that sneaky camera begins to focus on the totem, ending on a jarring notes as it teasingly cuts away. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Speaking to graduates at Princeton University five years later, Nolan refused to give any categorical answer on whether that totem falls or carries on spinning, observing that \u2018our ideas of what is real and what is fake should not be so definitive\u2019. He also described Zimmer as \u2018a minimalist composer with a maximalist production sense\u2019, a description that is perfectly articulated during Inception<\/em>\u2019s final scene. Zimmer himself spoke about writing all of his compositions before witnessing the images, observing that his score, unlike \u2018bigger\u2019 productions such as John Williams\u2019 work on Star Wars, his job became \u2018more interesting [now] that all of [the music] was inside it\u2019. Sound literally took precent over imagery in creating mood and atmosphere in Zimmer\u2019s thought process. Your mind is the scene of the crime, after all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n (That last sentence doesn\u2019t quite make sense, but it\u2019s going to stay there because of the tagline reference)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" You know that ending. You remember that ending. You remember the infuriating rage at not being provided with a clear-cut answer. Is it a dream? Or is it a reality? Why can\u2019t you just show us if the totem fell or not, dammit? Christopher Nolan won\u2019t let you know conclusively, so you\u2019ll just have to … <\/p>\n