Christopher Nolan finally reveals meaning behind spinning top in 'Inception'

Film director Christopher Nolan has finally explained the strange, puzzling ending in his 2010 film Inception starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

The plot of the film is about a thief with an ability to enter people's dreams and steal their secrets from their subconscious, which costs him everything he loves. At the end of the film, viewers watched a spinning top rotating, then wobble a little before cutting to black. 

During a speech Nolan made to a graduating Princeton University class, he explained the what the intention of the spinning top was meant to symbolise.

Nolan wanted his speech to inspire the graduates to chase their reality and not their dreams. In his speech he stated, "I feel that over time, we started to view reality as the poor cousin to our dreams, in a sense….I want to make the case to you that our dreams, our virtual realities, these abstractions that we enjoy and surround ourselves with - they are subsets of reality," according to the Independent.

Nolan then went on to associate this notion with the ending of Inception. Nolan reveals, "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." 

Adding, "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."

It may not be a satisfactory explanation to many, but, after five years, fans can appreciate the deep meaning a simple symbol can summon.

Watch: Inception - Ending