INCEPTION: THE END COMES

On the weekend that Inception fell out of the top ten for the first time since it opened on July 16 (it ranked twelfth with $870,000 from 625 theaters, bringing its domestic gross to $288.37 million), Michael Caine, one of its stars, has seemingly revealed what the movie’s enigmatic ending really means. “Eventually I understood it,” he told Chris Moyles on BBC Radio. The spinning talisman in the final scene is a clue to whether Leonardo DiCaprio’s character is still dreaming. In the movie, the talisman wobbles, but does not drop. But, said Caine, “It drops.” The real clue, he pointed out, is that his own character appears in the scene. “If I’m there, it’s real, because I’m never in the dream. I’m the guy that invented the dream.” But when Caine was asked why the children in the scene are wearing the same clothes that they were in the dream, Caine responded bewilderingly, “Because that’s the dream. See how difficult it gets?”