Article analysing Inception:
http://popupchinese.com/Inception.pdf
Highlights include commentary on:
(1) Biblical Allusions and Analysis:
http://popupchinese.com/Inception.pdf
Highlights include commentary on:
(1) Biblical Allusions and Analysis:
(2) The Perceval Myth:For what is Cobb's dive into the river but a
baptismal inundation symbolizing the death of the body and rebirth of the soul? Passing
downward through the waters of death, Cobb awakens in the metaphorical heavens
restored to youth as in the Christian tradition. The rush of images which follow continue
this Christian theme, presenting Cobb's judgment and forgiveness of sins (at
immigration), his reunion with his father, and his restoration to the heavenly garden
where his children James and Philippa (both aptly named after Christian apostles) fulfill
the significance of their names by building a “house on the cliff” in the film's final line
of dialogue. The ending thus brings us full-circle to the opening parable of the wise and
foolish builders, except now in the reversed and positive form of the faithful who
construct their house on the “rock of God.”
(3) On the questions of consciousness and faith:In the scenes of Robert Fischer and his hospitalized father, for instance, what do
we have but the “Fisher King” of the Christian Grail Legend? A spiritually wounded
prince with a bedridden father, Fischer depends for his healing on the successful
completion of the main knight's task, with Cobb replacing Perceval in this modern
reworking of the Arthurian romance. The central themes in the original story (the limits
of rationality when applied to questions of faith) are then layered over Inception's philosophical framework, with Cobb's major character weakness – his thematic lack of
faith – now linked to his tendency to over-rationalize.
When Ariadne
proves her worthiness by drawing a circular maze (a thematic recognition of the
paradoxical nature of life itself), her circle should draw to our minds not only the
circular image of the Penrose staircase or the circular nature of purgatory (limbo) as
manifest in the rings of Dante's Inferno, but even the circular nature of consciousness
itself, expressed in Plato's vision of the soul as a circle or in the loop Cobb draws to
explain how consciousness must simultaneously perceive and create the world of its
own existence.