What's your Totem?

 

 Cobb's spinning top reels him back to reality when he's confused. What has that effect on you?

Many cinephiles are captivated by the notion that the world we now perceive as living in, is in fact not what we're living in. 

In the movie The Matrix, the human race were actually leading computer-programmed lives, but we were in liquid-filled pod, our bodies are connected by wires and tubes to a vast mechanical tower covered with identical pods. The world which Neo has inhabited since birth is the Matrix, an illusory simulated reality construct of the world as it was developed by sentinent machines to keep the human population docile in their captivity.

Inception introduces a similar cinematic idea, in which Cobb and his crew were able to invasion dreams and plant ideas into their target's mind. It's  film where reality and dream collide. The movie comes to an an open ending. Cobb’s spinning top faltering but not falling as the screen goes black sets up a dichotomy. So did Cobb make it into the States and was reunited with his children? Was this happy ending all a dream or perhaps a reality?

It doesn't matter!!

Online author of Movie Muse, Steven C puts it in a nutshell:

"Director Nolan wants us to see is that even if we are all dreaming right now — each and every one of us actually dreaming this very second — that our happiness is not ultimately contingent on our knowledge of our world being fake or real. The only way we can truly live is to discover what it is we want or need most and strive to achieve it. The imaginary isn’t necessarily any more fulfilling than reality. Our desire to be in one or the other is only a reflection of where we perceive our happiness being."