Inception cracked to the bones!

Below is the movie Inception spoiled. So, please stop reading if you haven't watched the movie yet!

So, is the whole movie a dream?

Is the last scene where Cobb meets his children real or is he dreaming?

Is the whole movie shot in Cobb's state of Limbo and everything around that is a mere construction of his mind?

I had to watch this movie three times to get my theory out!

Three times of pausing and rewinding and jotting down sentences said and clothes worn!

Three times of mind boggling challenge to KNOW what the director really meant!

And in the end, it was worth it!

I have read many complicated reviews and many complex theories that left no impression on my mind.. I knew the writer/director was sitting there somewhere with a sarcastic smile reading all these over engineered hypotheses and saying in his mind "it's much simpler than this, isn't it obvious?!"

So, in the coming paragraphs, I will try to lay down what I believe beyond doubt has happened in this movie, what was real and what was a dream, and in the course of doing so, I will unfold the reasons behind my beliefs. I'd be happy to discuss counter theories from Inception enthusiasts like myself.

So, without over complicating things and talking about dreams within dreams within dreams, let me put down some basic principles:

1- A minute in our life is equivalent to almost 10 minutes in the first level of dream which is equal to probably a 100 minute in the third level of the dream and so on. Bottom line: the more levels down of a dream one is in, time extends to hours and weeks and years. Remember, Cobb and Mal were sleeping in their house while doing the experiment for a couple of hours and in their dream, they lived over 50 years.
2- If someone dies in a dream, s/he wakes up immediately. However, if they were heavily sedated and are in several dreams within dreams, they are lost in Limbo. Limbo is an expanse of infinite raw subconscious. It is the deepest anyone can travel into the mind and the person will not know they are in Limbo nor that they are dreaming.

Now that the above is established, here is what happened:
1- Cobb is truly unable to go to his country because he is accused of murdering his wife. He believes that Saito's proposal is the only way for him to be with his children again.
2- Cobb accepts the job and the part in Mombasa and the aeroplane are all true.
3- Saito gets shot in the first level of the dream and they fear he will go into Limbo in which case he will not honour the agreement with Cobb simply because he would forget when he wakes up everything that happened prior to him getting on the plane.
4- The team continues in the dream travelling till we see Saito dead in the ice stage.
5- Ariadne and Cobb decide to go to Limbo to get Fisher and Saito.
6- Ariadne brings Fisher back and Cobb goes to look for Saito.

Now, the part where the movie starts, Cobb on a deserted shore and some security people taking him to an old man is actually Cobb dreaming in Limbo. Cobb knows that Saito is dead and is now in Limbo. He wants to go bring him back but remind him to honour his promise. If Saito forgets everything else, he should not forget to make the phone call that he promised to make. Otherwise, Cobb lands in the airport and will be forever prisoned for murdering his wife.
Cobb meets Saito, the old man and reminds him of their agreement. The question is: why is Saito so old and Cobb is still young? Cobb knew that Saito died and hence dropped in Limbo. The long minutes that passed from Saito dying after throwing the bomb at the projections in the ice field and Cobb and the others discussed what is to be done, these few minutes are years and years in Limbo. Remember what I mentioned above about the experiment Cobb and Mal did. They only stayed dreaming for possibly an hour or two, but they lived over 50 years in Limbo. This explains why Saito has aged so much while Cobb is still a young man.

Everyone wakes up in the plane and starting this point in the movie everything is real again. It is clear that Saito doesn't quite know what's happening. Possibly he lost a big part of his mind while in Limbo but we know one thing when he picks up the plane phone: he remembers he has to make this phone call. The phone call is made and Cobb passes through immigration with no trouble. His father meets him and takes him back home.

A lot of controversy that revolved around this last scene is because of the totem spinning. People say, the totem didn't stop spinning, therefore, Cobb is still dreaming. They also say that the children didn't age and they were wearing the same clothes as they wore in his dreams.

In fact, if you see the movie three times like me, you will know that the children clothes did change. The girl was wearing a pink dress and black shoes in his dreams. In the end of the movie, she was wearing a pink dress with brown shoes. The boy was wearing a brown shirt and shorts and in the end he is wearing a different shade of brown and a different shirt and short! I am sure the director intended to do that in order to confuse us, which I think is awesome. About the totem, despite the fact that Cobb was in the real world, I believe the director was just trying to tell us that it didn't matter to Cobb whether he was dreaming or was in the real world. What mattered to him was that he was with his children, in his home in his country. This opens the door for a widely debated subject that is discussed in the movie: what is real and what is illusion? If one is living in a happy beautiful illusion, does it really matter? Should our experiences only count if they were experienced in the real world as we know it? And for that matter, how can one know that this whole big world is not another dream and that we are not sleeping somewhere waiting to wake up?

Hope that was a helpful illustration for the amazingly condense and brilliant movie that made me change my mind completely about Leonardo Di Caprio and actually put him in the list of the greatest actors there is!