Christopher Nolan’s magnum opus, Inception, was a cerebral whirlwind when it released. Anyone who watched it also wondered what the final scene signified. In case your memory is foggy, here’s the scene.

It goes like this – Leonardo DiCaprio’s character Dom Cobb has a tether – a totem that will spin indefinitely in a dream. At the end of the film, he’s reunited with his children and father-in-law, played by Caine.

As Dom walks away, the film cuts as the top is still spinning, leaving us to wonder whether he was, in fact, still dreaming.

Introducing the film at a Film4 Summer Screen in London recently, Caine cleared things up –

“When I got the script of Inception, I was a bit puzzled by it, and I said to [Nolan], ‘I don’t understand where the dream is,'” Caine told the crowd. “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.”

Basically, if Michael Caine was in a scene, it was reality.

So from what Caine is saying, it goes to show that the totem probably toppled over after the scene was cut, and it wasn’t a dream. 

Now to go take a ‘nap’.