I saw the movie about three times and loved it, and then i saw this forum. everyone was discussing the spiritual meaning of the film but not the logical meaning and that kind of bugged me, so this is my opinion about what the riddle meant:

1. "you are waiting for a train." -the train that is going to take them out of limbo, by killing themselves with it.

2. "a train that will take you far away" -take them back to real life.

3. "you know where you hope this train will take you" -they hope they can go home, to their kids.

4. "but you can't know for sure" -no one really knows anything about limbo, so Cobb and Mall were making a guess based on normal dream death.

5. "but it doesn't matter" -but whether you get there or not doesn't matter.

6. "now tell me why?" -Cobb asking his wife to answer why.

7. "because you'll be together" -their love can bear any new limbo, life, or space, even death.

thank you for reading to the end

My interpretation, as a member of the audience:

You're waiting for an ending.
And ending that will take you far away.
You know where you hope this ending will take you.
But you don't know for sure.
But it doesn't matter.
How can it not matter where the ending will take you?
Cause they'll be together.

Thanks for bringing this thread back to reality matsuyama321 Brilliant first post.
And interesting idea tykjen

LomDodge wrote:Thanks for bringing this thread back to reality matsuyama321 Brilliant first post.
And interesting idea tykjen

Yeah. It always happens in movies, songs, poems, etc. People read their own meanings into things. That's not to say that such meanings cannot be seen their, but its just individual interpretation. Maysuyama's analysis of how it fits into the movie logic is perfect.

I like this statement by Stanley Kubrick in a 1968 issue of Playboy, about 2001, another film with an ambiguous message and finale,

You're free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film—and such speculation is one indication that it has succeeded in gripping the audience at a deep level—but I don't want to spell out a verbal road map for 2001 that every viewer will feel obligated to pursue or else fear he's missed the point

This riddle really isn't that hard to decipher. On the scale of Inception, where there's massive loops layers paradoxes and meanings behind it all, this really is probably the most classic aspect of the film to deconstruct, it's a simple poem.

The riddle is essentially setting a very loose metaphor for life and commitment (marriage). Essentially what the characters are promising to each other is that they will stick together and continue the journey that is their life together with commitment. They know how they would like the journey to end, how they would like their life together to turn out, but of course life has other plans quite often, so it's esesentially a promise to each other that they can and will brave any twist and turn of the journey as long as they stay together, and that as long as they're together they will always be in their world together essentially. It's a LEAP OF FAITH into whatever answer the world gives to the riddle, that they'll stay direct and strong together.

The film, of course, covers a sequence of events that become incredibly complicated and philosophically complex. In this case, their journey gets lost to the point that they no longer are capable of doing right by their responsibility to the world, their children, and so Cobb at least within the story he tells has no choice but to perform inception on his wife in order to manipulate their journey together to a specific end, all done with the best intentions of getting back to the children.

An Idea can grow like a virus though, and the inception sticks until Mal and Cobb are left with opposing views of what reality is, they no longer can take the journey together because their models of reality are combative.

The issue is, this rebrands leap of faith, so what once was a freedom inducing leap of faith that, as long as they never leave each other's side they'll accept the journey, now becomes pure dysfunction. They are left incapable of living in the same reality and yet, as the riddle tells us, hopelessly committed to being together, as thsi is their joing model of reality.

The film follows Cobb's journey to finally letting Mal go and coming to the understanding that he had his time with Mal and can't stay dedicated to her. This allows him to rebrand leap of faith BACK into the positive, catharsis filled term it once was for him, as he now brands it as a leap of faith away from requiring Mal and Mal's world (her totem) to confirm reality, allowing him to walk away from the top and be there for his kids, much like he once would have done for Mal.

Essentially the riddle is simple in message and yet the all important key to Cobb's journey or Inception, to make his children the model of reality instead of Mal, since he and Mal are hopelessly caught in an opposing loop. When all is said and done, that's all that's changed, Cobb is again willing to let go of control over where the journey takes him and where it stops as long as he's with who matters most to him, he simply has finally transferred that all important value to his children.

Mal dead wife, children are children. So apply that, and you have a massive metaphor for the maturation of Cobb to let go of the past, his regrets and his stubborn vision of life, so that he can instead make that commitment to the future. Apply philosophical and social implications of that as you may.

But the riddle is simple, it's a leap of faith, a riddle where the answer is not needing the answer as long as you have the person by your side whom defines your world, but this is Inception and as I've covered, shit got real after things got fuckkkkked up, to put it all in laymen terms.

dustbust5 wrote: But the riddle is simple, it's a leap of faith, a riddle where the answer is not needing the answer as long as you have the person by your side whom defines your world.

PERFECT

dustbust5 wrote:The riddle is essentially setting a very loose metaphor for life and commitment (marriage). Essentially what the characters are promising to each other is that they will stick together and continue the journey that is their life together with commitment. They know how they would like the journey to end, how they would like their life together to turn out, but of course life has other plans quite often, so it's esesentially a promise to each other that they can and will brave any twist and turn of the journey as long as they stay together, and that as long as they're together they will always be in their world together essentially. It's a LEAP OF FAITH into whatever answer the world gives to the riddle, that they'll stay direct and strong together.

This is how I interpreted it too, as the central tragedy of the story. Mal and Cobb made a promise to each other, to be together always no matter what, then Cobb could not bear to follow her to suicide. Confronting his guilt is his journey that the movie presents. No matter if you interpret the movie as literal or metaphor, that is the central tragedy of the story.

I think you could expand that thought from the movie into real life, because when our loved ones die, it feels like they're leaving on a train without you.

dustbust5 wrote:This riddle really isn't that hard to decipher. On the scale of Inception, where there's massive loops layers paradoxes and meanings behind it all, this really is probably the most classic aspect of the film to deconstruct, it's a simple poem.

The riddle is essentially setting a very loose metaphor for life and commitment (marriage). Essentially what the characters are promising to each other is that they will stick together and continue the journey that is their life together with commitment. They know how they would like the journey to end, how they would like their life together to turn out, but of course life has other plans quite often, so it's esesentially a promise to each other that they can and will brave any twist and turn of the journey as long as they stay together, and that as long as they're together they will always be in their world together essentially. It's a LEAP OF FAITH into whatever answer the world gives to the riddle, that they'll stay direct and strong together.

The film, of course, covers a sequence of events that become incredibly complicated and philosophically complex. In this case, their journey gets lost to the point that they no longer are capable of doing right by their responsibility to the world, their children, and so Cobb at least within the story he tells has no choice but to perform inception on his wife in order to manipulate their journey together to a specific end, all done with the best intentions of getting back to the children.

An Idea can grow like a virus though, and the inception sticks until Mal and Cobb are left with opposing views of what reality is, they no longer can take the journey together because their models of reality are combative.

The issue is, this rebrands leap of faith, so what once was a freedom inducing leap of faith that, as long as they never leave each other's side they'll accept the journey, now becomes pure dysfunction. They are left incapable of living in the same reality and yet, as the riddle tells us, hopelessly committed to being together, as thsi is their joing model of reality.

The film follows Cobb's journey to finally letting Mal go and coming to the understanding that he had his time with Mal and can't stay dedicated to her. This allows him to rebrand leap of faith BACK into the positive, catharsis filled term it once was for him, as he now brands it as a leap of faith away from requiring Mal and Mal's world (her totem) to confirm reality, allowing him to walk away from the top and be there for his kids, much like he once would have done for Mal.

Essentially the riddle is simple in message and yet the all important key to Cobb's journey or Inception, to make his children the model of reality instead of Mal, since he and Mal are hopelessly caught in an opposing loop. When all is said and done, that's all that's changed, Cobb is again willing to let go of control over where the journey takes him and where it stops as long as he's with who matters most to him, he simply has finally transferred that all important value to his children.

Mal dead wife, children are children. So apply that, and you have a massive metaphor for the maturation of Cobb to let go of the past, his regrets and his stubborn vision of life, so that he can instead make that commitment to the future. Apply philosophical and social implications of that as you may.

But the riddle is simple, it's a leap of faith, a riddle where the answer is not needing the answer as long as you have the person by your side whom defines your world, but this is Inception and as I've covered, shit got real after things got fuckkkkked up, to put it all in laymen terms.

This is one amazing post.

The meaning of the riddle only comes clear at the end when Cobb reminds Mal that they grew old together when she states that Cobb had promised that they would grow old together - here, Cobb points out that it no longer mattered to him where they had their time together, yet they had it with each other and that's all that Cobb cares about.

In some ways, it ties into the ending:

'You don't know where that train will take you' - we don't know, and Cobb doesn't know, whether it's a dream or not.
'But you'll be together' - Cobb is with his kids and that's all he cares about.

So in some ways, through the use of the riddle and the events of the end, it becomes clear to us that Cobb doesn't care about what is real and what isn't, he's tired of being alone.

One could argue that Cobb incepted himself - when Mal reminds him that he promised they would grow old together, he's reminding himself of this, thus, it prompts him to remember the time they shared and let her go.

christophmac wrote:So in some ways, through the use of the riddle and the events of the end, it becomes clear to us that Cobb doesn't care about what is real and what isn't, he's tired of being alone.

I think Cobb does care about the difference between dream and reality. That's the only reason why he rejects Mal's shade: he knows that they can't be together in his dreams because that's not the real Mal. So how could he not care if those children are real or not?

dustbust5 wrote: When all is said and done, that's all that's changed, Cobb is again willing to let go of control over where the journey takes him and where it stops as long as he's with who matters most to him, he simply has finally transferred that all important value to his children.

As I said, I love your post, it is wonderfully written and it has given me a lot of food for thought, but I don't completely agree here. I do think that, at the end of the film, Cobb stops trying to control his own reality, but he does so because he understands that it would mean living in a fake world, and he can't accept that.
It does matter whether he is in reality or in a dream at the end, because if he were in a dream, his children would be as fake as the life with Mal he turned down soon before.
I think that Cobb, as soon as he sees his children, simply takes the final "leap of faith" and he doesn't have to rely on the top anymore.