lazarus
Blue Crack Supplier
Some further thoughts I've had based on conversations in other places:
If Leo was weak enough at the end of the film to still be deluded about whether or not he's still in Limbo/a dream/whatever, then he probably wouldn't have been able to purge Mal from his psyche earlier. And going from that, if the scene at the end was not reality, then it's likely Mal would be showing up at that house at some point, and then Cobb would be back where he started and just kill himself to get out.
Why? Because he was already presented with a choice before where he easily could have stayed with Dream-Mal and his Dream-Kids for eternity. But that wasn't enough. As someone I know pointed out, it's not that Cobb walks away from the top at the end because he doesn't care if he's in Limbo or not anymore, but because he finally believes he is in reality, and that this decision is always something that requires a leap of faith because reality and consciousness will always be subjective. That's the purpose of cutting the final shot to black before we fully see the top fall over, not to imply that things could equally go either way in terms of it's reality! vs. it's a dream!, but because one can never REALLY know for sure about the state of one's existence, whether you're religious or not. Reality is, as Timothy Leary famously said, "the only word in the English language that should always be used in quotes".
If Leo was weak enough at the end of the film to still be deluded about whether or not he's still in Limbo/a dream/whatever, then he probably wouldn't have been able to purge Mal from his psyche earlier. And going from that, if the scene at the end was not reality, then it's likely Mal would be showing up at that house at some point, and then Cobb would be back where he started and just kill himself to get out.
Why? Because he was already presented with a choice before where he easily could have stayed with Dream-Mal and his Dream-Kids for eternity. But that wasn't enough. As someone I know pointed out, it's not that Cobb walks away from the top at the end because he doesn't care if he's in Limbo or not anymore, but because he finally believes he is in reality, and that this decision is always something that requires a leap of faith because reality and consciousness will always be subjective. That's the purpose of cutting the final shot to black before we fully see the top fall over, not to imply that things could equally go either way in terms of it's reality! vs. it's a dream!, but because one can never REALLY know for sure about the state of one's existence, whether you're religious or not. Reality is, as Timothy Leary famously said, "the only word in the English language that should always be used in quotes".