Christopher Nolan’s Inception is a film about ideas. Not an idea, simply ideas. It states this case early when Joseph Gordon Levitt’s character, Arthur, tells a multinational conglomorate’s president “Don’t think about elephants. What are you thinking about?” To which “Elephants.” is replied.

The Piaf tune, “Non, Je’ne regrette rien” which essentially translates to “No, I regret nothing”, a happy coincidence considering Marion Cotillard’s casting, seems to imply Dom feels no shame towards his first patient of Inception.

The ending shows his children’s face, though we the audience are left unsure as to whether or not he’s deeper into his subconscious or in what is established as reality.

The film is not perfect, nothing is, but as far as cinema is concerned it is a textbook case of unflawed plot mappings. Nolan’s inner struggle over years to master a screenplay can be seen in hints laid by Dom. He tells Page’s character she is not to show him anything regarding her constructs, as any knowledge of this could allow a deviation from the original storyline. In addition, the percision with which the main cast is required to participate, while Dom breaks the rules is another allegorical instance of Nolan and the audience. We are tested, as Page was, by Nolan. We are constantly required to layer the plot to comprehend what is essentially a character study of loss, dreams, and fantasy. We constantly lose ourselves and must wake up as to where the story happens to be in time.

It seems the ensemble cast all represent “projections” of Dom’s subconscious. Arthur is the voice of experience, Page of reason and logic, Cotilard of guilt, Watanabe of freedom. Everything is almost dreamlike. We are taken into a world that seems to be from out own vantage. For some reason, in retrospet, I seem to be recalling vague notions of scenes. But they seem like my ideas. Given the fantastical element of the film, I feel as if I’m taking the Page viewpoint of creating a world from memories, but as Dom alludes to, memories are dangerous. So in some sense we all take place in the here and now, but lose details here and there. This furthers my explanation of the end, to which I feel Dom is entirely in limbo. The entire situation, the heist, all of it is a projection of his subconscious in a means of admitting guilt, or saying that Yes, he does regret! In a sense, Dom is pure emotion: guilt, sorrow, anguish, fury, etc, while his “team” represent reason and intellect.

The final conversation between Dom and Mal, in which Mal explains that everything he knows is not reality and that he must simply give in. The ideas of a heist, of Fischer, of the energy corporations...all of it is non-sensical fabrications of Dom’s mind.

When Dom is explaining to Page to never fill the world with memories, and that the dreamer fills in the blanks, he alludes to the later sequences. He fills in the children’s faces, he fills in the passport (which you’ll notice had the same paradoxical arrows mentioned early in the film).

If you note, the children never age.
There has been no mind-fuck intellgent science fiction like Inception since Children of Men, Dark City, Blade Runner, The Matrix, et al.

Nolan’s rules perfectly clear up any ambiguities one’s mind could deviate to through the progression of the multi-faceted film. Without these rules, the film would confuse the audience thorougly. However, Nolan masterfully executes the rationale behind the film, and though at times we do lose ourselves, entrust in the rules and you always revert to a sensical vantage point. Without these rules, the climax fails. The ending fails.

Perhaps I missed it, but I cnanot recally Dom ever fully explaining how he escaped Limbo. He tells Cotilard he wants to be above. This never says escapes dreams, but just thathe wants to climb higher. If anyone is a fan of Dante’s Inferno, Limbo isn’t the end, it’s simply another layer of hell with which more are to come if one is going deeper or higher.