This is not a review. I saw Inception, but I am not clear on what exactly happened. I’m asking the MDP community for a little help… This unlike the excellent review by Jon is spoiler heavy!
I want to start this post by saying “Not since The Matrix have I viewed a film so unique, engaging, and thought provoking”. 
Unfortunately, that type of statement is so iterative that I feel I would be doing the movie a huge disservice. Therefore I will simply open with, Inception what a concept!
It is at this point in my thought process where I usually say something like, “spoilers to follow” but in all honesty I am not entirely sure that what I got out of that movie will be what you might. As I left the theater I was already arguing with my wife about how the movie ended, what was real, and what was not. This is most certainly a movie that demands repeated viewing.
However, before I get a second look at this film I would like to lay out what I believe to be the three possible explanations for the course of events in this movie.
The first and most simple explanation would seem to be that Mal was right and the world Cobb “lived” in was in fact a construct of his own mind. Therefore when Cobb went four layers deep at the end of the movie he was in reality at least five dreams in. This would be supported by the fact that the top was not pictured falling at the end of the movie. Additionally, Cobb seemed to float between locales in the “real” world as easily as he did in the dream. Finally, how could Cobb’s father be a professor in Paris and raise his children in L.A.?
The second way events may have played out would have simply been that the real world was real but Cobb got stuck in the limbo state when he went back to save Saito. We saw Cobb spin the top many times during the course of the movie and the only time it was not depicted falling was in the last scene. Cobb’s children were wearing the same clothing he had visualized them in throughout the course of the movie and they appeared to not have aged a day.
Finally, it is possible that Cobb succeeded and his wife was wrong. Saito woke from his 50 year limbo state and immediately dialed his contact at the US State department to clear Cobb of his crimes. While the top did not fall as the credits cut onto the screen it was wobbling and could have fallen over.
I certainly have my favorite explanation, but I would love to hear what other people have to say about this movie! Which path do you believe is the one that accurately describes the course of events? I would like to end on three words which alone would have made this movie worth the price of admission (steep as it was), “floating fight sequence”!
I think because the top is spun and falls several times during the movie, the first theory is definitely not true. I believe that Nolan wrote in evidence for both the second and third theories, an wants people to decde for themselves which ending they want it to be. Personally I saw it as a successful mission, but there are things such as the kids wearing the same clothes, that make the final scene seem like a dream sequence.
You see, Rosebud was the name of this Sled as a child. His childhood represented a time before he was rich, and was the only time he was really happy.
The one that gives my mind the most closure is the ending interpretation I choose. I just saw it last night, and it gave my subconscious way too much to ponder while I was trying to sleep. There is evidence for every interpretation, but I choose to focus on where many years have gone by in a scene repeated at the beginning and end of the movie and the guy who was shot in dream level one was stuck in limbo and LDC’s character went in to find him and bring him back so he could make the call to erase his warrant. The top at the end is a pretty juvenile cliffhanger, and though it was shown spinning longer than in other scenes, is like a red herring. That the children are wearing the same clothes (if they are, I didn’t check) and had none of the same hesitation with their father they did earlier in the movie on the phone suggests he was still in a dream. That he saw their faces suggests that the dream is over, because he said he couldn’t remember their faces.
What if the end was a dream…but the actual end of the film, the cut to black was Cobb waking up? That’s what I like to think.