Christopher Nolan's film “The Beginning” impressed many with its atypical plot, which does not allow you to relax and makes you think until the very end. The most controversial ending is the question. The last few seconds cast doubt on everything that happened before.
The main idea of the film
A surrealistic picture that can confuse and make you think. What is reality? The main storylines are pretty commonplace, they send the viewer to the usual adventure thriller. However, a simple scenario is played in a much more complex and confusing world where you can penetrate the consciousness of people through sleep.
The main goal of the main characters is to penetrate the consciousness of Robert Fisher. The task is to go into a strange dream without causing suspicion in the object. The world is created through the construction of virtual projections that simulate reality.
Brief retelling of the plot
The main character is called Cobb, he is professionally engaged in immersions in someone else's reality, like the people working with him. In the past, his wife died, taking reality for a dream from which to get out. He blames himself for her death. Cobb was charged with murder, which is why he cannot see his children. Since this is his only desire, he agrees to the task as he is promised a return home.
The heroes had a difficult task: they had to recreate a three-stage dream inside a dream, penetrating as deep as possible into the subconscious. The original plan changed dramatically, since Fisher was trained to withstand implantation in the brain, moreover, the chosen way of implanting the idea is not entirely correct. Complicated by the fact that due to the powerful sleeping pills, the heroes will not return back after death in a dream. They will fall into the Limb (not fully constructed projection). The catch is that it’s hard to get out on your own and you can live there for many decades without waking up.
The actions in the end of the movie "Beginning" unfold pretty quickly. When the heroes almost completed the task, Fisher dies, falling into Limb, and the only thing left is to go after him. There are only two of them: Cobb meets his dead wife there, his partner and Fisher go back. At this time, the person who guaranteed freedom to the protagonist dies and enters the same world. He has no choice but to go after him. Cobb finds him, the characters are already found in the real world.
End of film explanation
The mission is completed, everything is in order, everyone is returning home. Including the main character, for whom this was the only desire. He meets his family, sees the faces of children - he is happy. But the last frame shows that the top does not fall. The top is a symbol of reality, a small object with which you can always go back. If it falls, then the world is real, and if not, reality is distorted, everything around was just a dream. Consequently, the world in which Cobb is located is unreal. It is precisely this moment in the end of the film “Beginning” that an explanation is necessary, it makes the viewer perplex.
It seems that Cobb really came back, but it turns out that in fact he stayed in Limba. And all that is happening is only its realistic projection, recreated from memory in the new world. However, there may be several explanations for the ending of the movie "Beginning". A huge number of people argue about what the final shots meant, moreover, there are a lot of different options.
The second most probable version - the spinning top is only a reference to the idea, inspired by Mol. For many years in Limb, Cobb could take a dream for reality, while Maul was right. Having jumped, she came out of sleep, and he stayed there, and everything that happens is just a projection of reality inside his head, and the spinning top falls because it is just a projection.
Author's idea
Reviews about the ending of the movie "Beginning" are different and rather ambiguous. But the idea of the director of the film was not that, and the point was not to guess which version was correct. The main thing is that Cobb at the end did not pay attention to the spinning top, he did not care if he was in the real world or in Limba. He returned to the family, to the children, he got rid of the burden of conscience for the death of his wife. In this, Nolan shows the difference between Cobb and his wife. She died because she thought the world was unreal, and Cobb just stopped thinking about it. However, you may have your own version ...