It is established early on that a totem can only determine if you are in SOMEONE ELSE'S DREAM. The next totem rule is that no one should know the purpose of your totem, or touch it, thus ruining your own perception of reality.
Cobb uses his totem every time he sees Mal in a dream. He uses it in Kyoto after seeing her, in Paris after she "kills" Ariadne, in Mombasa after he remembers their "suicide" from Limbo, and when he returns to his children. But what does it really mean?
Cobb tells Ariadne in dreams, Mal's top would just... spin and spin. He somehow knows this, perhaps she told him? But the top becomes his own after her suicide, perhaps in loving memory, but immediately making it a very contradictory item to him. REMEMBER: the totem = perceiving Mal as real. This is all Cobb uses it for!
When Cobb performs his first Inception, he finds the top, stowed away by Mal in attempt to protect herself from believing she is dreaming, so that she may stay in limbo forever with her husband. Cobb spins the top, planting the idea her world is not real. It is not apparent he should know what to do, how to touch it, or even where she hid it. He gives the top significance by using it against her. The fact he spun it makes no difference than him swallowing it.
Mal thus believes her world is not real, causing them to recite a layered poem about trains, receive a kick from a convenient freight train, and wake up in their living room, after a so called "50 years" in their minds.
So what has this all established? The totem's only purpose is to remind Cobb that Mal no longer exists, that his version of her is a simple projection.
A clearer "totem" is my next point. Cobb is unsure until the movie's climax that his projection of Mal is real or not. Thus, he still wears his wedding ring. Another totem? Maybe, maybe not. This item isn't significant enough to be shown alot in the movie, so you need to be quick to notice it. But after Cobb returns home, he no longer wears the ring, signifying he accepts Mal's tragic death, in both reality and in his mind.
The final, elusive totem in the movie is Cobb's children. They are perhaps his only true point of reference. In the end scene with Mal, Ariadne, and Cobb, Cobb desperately tells Mal he wants to see his children's faces "up above". He refuses to look at his "projection children". This makes it extremely clear that Cobb's only goal is to reach his children in reality. When he is escorting Fischer in the hotel, he also sees them, a memory to remind him of his goal to successfully perform Inception to reach them.
"Those kids, your grandchildren? They're waiting for their father to come home, that's their reality... I think I found away home, and this job, this LAST job? That's how I get there..."
No matter how you look at it, Cobb never wants to see his children in his dreams. Where as he is constantly seeking Mal out in his mind, his children in reality is his constant reminder of reality. When he finally sees their faces, his journey to reality is complete.
So? What DID happen at the end???
You can analyze the ending a hundred times. Cobb sees his children as he walks in the door. Convinced he is still seeing them as a memory, he spins the totem on the table. However, he is distracted when he sees his children's faces. He runs toward them, embracing them and asking what they have been doing. Miles (the grandfather) smiles and walks away, convinced his job of returning Cobb to reality is complete. We see the camera pan to the top, and the audience's faces fall as they see it is still spinning. The last shot shows it wobble.
What do you think? All a dream? All reality?
It didn't matter to Cobb. He was happy, free from Mal, with the children he loved, up above. The fact Cobb was not hunched over, as he was before, clenching a gun and staring at the totem, is all the proof we need that it didn't matter. A happy ending for the main character. And still not a clear answer.
Don't worry. I'll fix that for you.
i wonder if any one of us use physical or psychological totems ?????
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