This article was taken from the January issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online



Christopher Nolan, director of Memento and The Dark Knight, has never been one for a straightforward yarn. Wired abhors a lack of answers (we're looking at you, Lost) so with Inception fresh out on DVD, we asked Nolan if it was all just a dream...

How hard was writing Inception?

The real problem was that I started with a heist-film structure. That seemed the best way of getting all the exposition in. What I eventually realised, however, is that heist films are usually unemotional. But I wanted to deal with the world of dreams, and I realised that I really had to offer the audience amore emotional narrative.


Explain the importance of architecture in the movie.

The only job that was ever of interest to me other than filmmaking was architecture. And I'm very interested in the similarities between the way we experience a three-dimensional space that an architect has created and the way an audience experiences a cinematic narrative that constructs a three-dimensional reality from a two-dimensional medium.

Have you read the online discussions of the film?

I've seen some of them, yeah.



Do people get it?

People seem to be noticing the things they're meant to notice, the things that are meant to either create ambiguities or push you in one direction or another. But I've also read plenty of very off-the-wall interpretations.

And was it really all just a dream?

It's very important to me that by the end of the film you understand what Mal (Marion Cotillard) means when she says to Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), "You don't believe in one reality anymore," and that we see the potential for getting lost.

What's your take on the ending?

I choose to believe that Cobb gets back to his kids, because I have young kids. People who have kids definitely read it differently than those who don't. Clearly the audience brings a lot to it. The most important emotional thing about the top spinning at the end is that Cobb is not looking at it. He doesn't care.

So, there's no one right answer.

Oh no, I've got an answer.



You do?!

Yeah. I've always believed that if you make a film with ambiguity, it needs to be based on a true interpretation. If it's not, then it will contradict itself, or it will be somehow insubstantial and end up making the audience feel cheated. Ambiguity has to come from the inability of the character to know -- and the alignment of the audience with that character.