Bobby Fischer is the key?

This 2010 contemporary sci-fi actioner follows a subconscious security team around the globe and into the intimate and infinite world of dreams.
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I think Bobby Fischer is one big key to the movie. There are many hints.

In the movie Robert Fischer is the mark of the inception. This name is obviously linked to the real "Bobby" Fisher, famous chess master, who became world champion and then drifted into madness and paranoia. His american passport was cancelled on 13 july 2004 after controversial declarations about 9/11... just like Dom Cobb... Bobby Fischer was born in 1943, and his father left him, his mother and sister when he was two... just like in the movie... And Fischer full name is Robert James Fischer name of Dom Cobb's boy in the movie.

However the best evidence for this interpretation is Ariane's totem. Her totem is a chess piece: a white bishop... Bobby Fisher favourite strategy was a gambit aiming to keep his pair of Bishops (for instance: http://www.bobby-fischer.net/game_of_th ... _chess.htm )

In this perspective it's possible to think that all characters in the inceptions are Cobb's projections. Cobb is the only real character. All the others are projections. That would explain why Dom Cobb shares some characteristics with the real Bobby Fischer and theses characteristics are disseminated through his subconscious to the other characters which are merely projections.

Ariadne is the white (positive) Bishop who leads him out of madness. The name Ariane hints to Ariane in the Greek mythology who leads Theseus out of the minotaur's maze. Mall is the Black (negative) Bishop who drags him into madness. And by the way Mall is very similar to "evil" in french (le Mal). Another pair would be the Good Father/Bad Father couple between Maurice Fischer and the godfather of Robert Fischer. Another pair would be the opposition between Arthur (logical mind) and Eames (creative mind).

So what I think is that all the movie is just a projection of Dom Cobb guilt, trying to heal from something he did.
The whole movie can be seen as a psychoanalysis of one mind. It's all a nightmarish dream or obsession. A pathological mind who invents projections to materialize his guilt and force his way to healing. As Eames say: you have to come down to the basic of the psyche: the father/son relationship.

If we accept that in the end it's all a dream, a question remain though... why is Dom Cobb so fucked up?? What did he do? As he killed his wife? I don't think so... I reckon it's more a symbolic killing. In the light of Bobby Fisher biography, I assume that Dom Cobb ran away from his wife and children when they were two, just as Bobby Fisher's father, and he is consumed by guilt. He has killed the promise he made to "grow old" together with Mall. That's how he killed her. He killed her in himself.

The thing is we never see the reality in the movie. What a beautiful metaphor! As Dom Cobb says: you can tell it's a dream when you don't know how you get there... In the movie the action is always cut... we are always projected in the middle of the scene having to admit that what we see is real... Isn't that precisely what cinema is about?? This movie is also a beautiful metaphore of cinéma: you assume what you see is real but you can never tell how you get there... Just like Memento, excellent movie of Christopher Nolan....

So in my opinion, the inception of Robert Fischer is in fact a mirror, a subconscious projection of the real inception: the one Dom Cobb as to do in the deepest regions of his mind. He has to forgive himself. But in fact, he chose another way. He planted in himself the idea that what he did was not real, and drifted into madness, projections, trying to believe that he didn't do what he did: ran away from his daughter, son and wife. He invents characters who share common characteristics with him to avoid looking at the fact that he did it all himself. It's a psychosis.

I still can't figure out what the numbers are for (528 941) someone an idea??

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Joined: July 2010
WOW :clap:
Awesome find!
http://www.528inception.com has a whole spiel on the 528 stuff...
In my opinion, the stuff on that site is B.S. tho :batface:

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Joined: August 2010
Location: Saito's Apartment, On His Carpet.
SonarLikeaSubmarine wrote:WOW :clap:
Awesome find!
http://www.528inception.com has a whole spiel on the 528 stuff...
In my opinion, the stuff on that site is B.S. tho :batface:

Not one Inception theory is BS/wrong. Thats the beauty of the film. Any opinion can be true.


Anyway, excelent theory GuzGuz, and nice find SonarLikeaSubmarine :thumbup:

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Joined: May 2010
Guzguz wrote:I think Bobby Fischer is one big key to the movie. There are many hints.

In the movie Robert Fischer is the mark of the inception. This name is obviously linked to the real "Bobby" Fisher, famous chess master, who became world champion and then drifted into madness and paranoia. His american passport was cancelled on 13 july 2004 after controversial declarations about 9/11... just like Dom Cobb... Bobby Fischer was born in 1943, and his father left him, his mother and sister when he was two... just like in the movie... And Fischer full name is Robert James Fischer name of Dom Cobb's boy in the movie.

However the best evidence for this interpretation is Ariane's totem. Her totem is a chess piece: a white bishop... Bobby Fisher favourite strategy was a gambit aiming to keep his pair of Bishops (for instance: http://www.bobby-fischer.net/game_of_th ... _chess.htm )

In this perspective it's possible to think that all characters in the inceptions are Cobb's projections. Cobb is the only real character. All the others are projections. That would explain why Dom Cobb shares some characteristics with the real Bobby Fischer and theses characteristics are disseminated through his subconscious to the other characters which are merely projections.

Ariadne is the white (positive) Bishop who leads him out of madness. The name Ariane hints to Ariane in the Greek mythology who leads Theseus out of the minotaur's maze. Mall is the Black (negative) Bishop who drags him into madness. And by the way Mall is very similar to "evil" in french (le Mal). Another pair would be the Good Father/Bad Father couple between Maurice Fischer and the godfather of Robert Fischer. Another pair would be the opposition between Arthur (logical mind) and Eames (creative mind).

So what I think is that all the movie is just a projection of Dom Cobb guilt, trying to heal from something he did.
The whole movie can be seen as a psychoanalysis of one mind. It's all a nightmarish dream or obsession. A pathological mind who invents projections to materialize his guilt and force his way to healing. As Eames say: you have to come down to the basic of the psyche: the father/son relationship.

If we accept that in the end it's all a dream, a question remain though... why is Dom Cobb so fucked up?? What did he do? As he killed his wife? I don't think so... I reckon it's more a symbolic killing. In the light of Bobby Fisher biography, I assume that Dom Cobb ran away from his wife and children when they were two, just as Bobby Fisher's father, and he is consumed by guilt. He has killed the promise he made to "grow old" together with Mall. That's how he killed her. He killed her in himself.

The thing is we never see the reality in the movie. What a beautiful metaphor! As Dom Cobb says: you can tell it's a dream when you don't know how you get there... In the movie the action is always cut... we are always projected in the middle of the scene having to admit that what we see is real... Isn't that precisely what cinema is about?? This movie is also a beautiful metaphore of cinéma: you assume what you see is real but you can never tell how you get there... Just like Memento, excellent movie of Christopher Nolan....

So in my opinion, the inception of Robert Fischer is in fact a mirror, a subconscious projection of the real inception: the one Dom Cobb as to do in the deepest regions of his mind. He has to forgive himself. But in fact, he chose another way. He planted in himself the idea that what he did was not real, and drifted into madness, projections, trying to believe that he didn't do what he did: ran away from his daughter, son and wife. He invents characters who share common characteristics with him to avoid looking at the fact that he did it all himself. It's a psychosis.

I still can't figure out what the numbers are for (528 941) someone an idea??

Good information, but I figured out that Fischer's journey is a mirror to Cobb's journey from the offset. As for the numbers, they mean nothing, which is the point. They're random numbers, but made to believe they have some importance to Fischer's in order for the inception to work.

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There is a question that I think is important: why does COBB feel such guilt?

Has he killed his wife? Pushed her to suicide?

I think we have to look more at the father/son relationship rather that at Mal's suicide for three reasons.
First, MAL is obviously a projection, more like an archetype of the Evil inside him (le Mal means Evil in french, and part of the movie takes place in Paris, and Marion Cotillard is french so it seems pretty clear). Maybe she is just the materialization of the evil inside him: what makes him evil, his negative side born of guilt.
Second, the father/son relationship appears central: it is the plot of the inception of Robert FISCHER, and Eames says "we have to get down to basics: father/son relationship.
Third, we know that what we see is not real. It's all a projection from COBB. A big INCEPTION that has taken control of him like a virus. He is an injured mind, and we shouldn't trust him to much when it comes to tell what's real.

There are obviously two hypothesis to explain COBB'S guilt and his craving for redemption.
First hypothesis: we believe the story COBB tells: he planted an idea in the head of his wife that led her to suicide and forced him to ran away from his children.
Second hypothesis: his wife didn't committed suicide.

I would go for the second hypothesis because Robert Fischer character is designed from real Bobby Fischer, famous chess master. (This is confirmed from Ariadne totem -Ariadne the one who leads out of the maze- which is a chess piece: a white bishop (again positive). Bobby fischer favourite piece was a pair of bishop, white and black). And it happens that Bobby Fischer's father ran away from home when he was two. Bobby Fischer' middle name was "James" as COBB's son. And they are same age. So we have a strong indication here that the big mess is with COBB's son.

In this perspective, my interpretation is that:
- Robert Fischer is his mirrored projection on the positive side (COBB does say that he believes positive emotions are stronger than negative to lead to the inception= we want to believe positive things about us).
- Mal is his negative projection of the guilt he feels towards his own son
- he didn't killed his wife nor implanted an idea in her that led her to suicide (if so there would be a paradox, because that would mean the technology actually exists, so what we see is real)
- In fact the deepest part of his subconscient SAITO has the power to clear the charges that are against him: that's clearly a way to say that this criminal charges only exists at the deepest level of his mind, in the safe in the mountain, in the limbo, to protect him from reality and guilt.
- his father tells him to get back to reality, to get back home
- he created in his mind the whole story of his wife suicide to justify the fact he ran away from his children. Mal's suicide plays the role of a denial of responsability: he was forced to flee the US and abandon his children in order to avoid jail.
- litterally, MAL, the evil inside him, his guilt, designed an evil plan to take his children away from him....

conclusion: the inception of the movie is the one that he created himself: reality is not real, my children were taken away from me by my wife's evil suicide, and I'm not guilty. That is his mantra. The thing he wants to believe in.
Reality is that now, he has grown old and alone, he cannot be a young man anymore. He has ran away from his family, it's too late to see them digging worms anymore. Dreams are all what are left to him to live with his guilt.
It's a very common story in a sense. A sad story that happened and will happen to thousands of children. And Christopher Nolan tells here an universal story in a very original way.

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Way too much analyzing guys. It's just a movie. :JGLface:

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EliMichelMan wrote:Way too much analyzing guys. It's just a movie. :JGLface:
Oh no you didn't?! :batface:

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Actually, I read that Robert Fischer is based on Bobby Fischer, so nice find with the Bobby Fischer thing.

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In the movie Robert Fischer is the mark of the inception
Actually I think the real mark is Cobb :lol:

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peloto wrote:Actually I think the real mark is Cobb :lol:
Exactly my point :D

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