Huh...Nolan made a movie about religion...

[trevelyan]

this film has no bearing towards religion... its more about psychology and philosophy ... this thread is a bit silly

Have you read The Republic?

I'm not offended to find myself defending what I think is the most internally consistent reading of this film that is possible. The problem here is that is that skeptics would be more convincing if they could offer a remotely reasonable explanation of why the ending is NOT a heaven sequence. But no-one is doing that. Because it is very hard to discredit the only interpretation that sensibly anticipates Nolan's own remarks that the only significance of the spinning top at the end lies in Cobb's decision to ignore it.

It seems bizarre to me to read anyone seriously argue that a screenwriter with a university degree in literature is not invoking religious ideas and themes when his script explicitly talks about "leaps of faiths", and has characters tell us "you have to die to wake up". Subtle religious allusion is Lucas crucifying Luke on a weathervane below Bespin in Empire, or Fincher spreading his killer in a cruciform position when he is arrested in Seven. Inception is not subtle on this particular point. I'm not sure how it could be less subtle.

Why in a story where names are so significant and symbolism (water, mirrors, etc.) consistently and conventionally applied, do we have children named after Christian apostles (pick two random characters from any films, what are the odds...)? Why are the themes of free will and original sin highlighted in the scene between Cobb and his father in Paris? And why do we get repeated visuals invoking Matthew 24.7 in the visuals of Limbo? The filmmakers went to considerable expense to show us special effects of the buildings on the beach crashing into the sea. The connection is to the children building sandcastles on the beach, and to Cobb and his wife constructing the world of Limbo. Saving this, I'll also take a good explanation for why Cobb falls into a bathtub in the opening scene. The only sensible explanation for this comes from the allegorical necessity of Limbo's destruction coming consistently by water.

The most serious rebuttal in this thread simply pointed to a number of other films in which the author claimed there was religious imagery (and in which there is). They did this presumably to argue that it is possible to read religious symbolism into films generally. Of course, the funny thing is that two of the films they cited had titles pulled directly from the bible, so all they really demonstrated was how influential biblical symbolism is when it comes to western culture.

Who is the chemist...?

Joseph? Not a subtle reference for someone who holds the keys to the world of dreams, although I don't think it's particularly significant and wouldn't hinge an interpretation on it either way. Ariadne on the other hand....

[trevelyan]

Correction, Matthew 7.24. This is the relevant passage:

Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock:
And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.
And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand:
And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.

[prince0gotham]

geeeeeeeeeet ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooouuuutt of here, ghost!!!!

[tykjen]

Ok. Washing ashore at the beach, could be seen as a form of [Baptism] for Cobb, cause he starts a new life when he comes back. But it is his own subconscious who does it to him. There is no form of higher power in Inception, other than the SELF.

[RIFA]

I get the thread but I don't get it's title...


Huh is used as "Huh?"... but here we don't have a question or a sign of doubt... we have a flat "huh" which means just a "huh"... then you have some Nolan affirmation... Huh?

It doesn't work for me... I'm not sure what I'm supposed to understand from the title...

[steveportee]

I'll bet that if Nolan read this topic, he would be laughing his ass off.

[tykjen]

Can you be more specific please? I bet that since you assume to know Nolan's grade of understanding, you could feed us some insight of your own. That could make Nolan think like "wow this guy is onto something" instead of laughing his ass off, right?

[steveportee]

Can you be more specific please?

I'd rather not.

[prince0gotham]

He denied to have had the intention of making a movie about filmmaking and people are on about religion...

[trevelyan]

Ok. Washing ashore at the beach, could be seen as a form of [Baptism] for Cobb, cause he starts a new life when he comes back. But it is his own subconscious who does it to him. There is no form of higher power in Inception, other than the SELF.

Water is a common symbol for the subconscious in much Western literature. The convention dates back to romantic readings of The Odyssey from the 19th century, although some more interpretive biblical scholars also see the bible's episodes of walking on water as metaphors for Jesus' control over his emotional impulses. Regardless of where this interpretation comes from, we see it in a number of contemporary films that are not Inception:

1.A.I. starts with a shot of the ocean (it is also film about consciousness). Despite the fact that the middle of the film is a bit of a mess and the dominant language of the film is one of fairy tales (sleeping beauty, the wizard of oz, etc.), the scene when the young boy dives underwater in search of the Blue Fairy has clear symbolic meaning: having failed to find God in the outside world, he seeks it within himself.

2. In the Star Wars trilogy, water is uniformly the home of warrior castes (gungans, clones) and monsters of the id. Whatever you think about dramatic merits of the new films, Lucas is consistent in his use of traditional symbolism, even down to positioning Palpatine's final seduction of Anakin in front of a water opera of sorts.

There are more, but I am not film school. The discussion here is over what Inception means, and it seems clear:

In addition to starting Inception with a shot of the ocean, Nolan shows us the ocean about halfway through while the narrative talks about the characters washing up on "the shores of our subconscious". This is about as literal a symbolic mapping as you can expect. The ocean is presented as a symbol of the subconscious.

And it could be coincidental, but then why is the rest of the film overwhelmingly consistent in associating the subconscious with water imagery? Cobb sees Mal in a mirror while washing his face. It is a glass of water that sends Fischer and Cobb to sleep on the plane. And water becomes increasingly violent and prominent the closer the characters get to their own subconscious. We have a light drizzle at the first dream level, a thunderstorm at the second and an avalanche at the third before the characters finally "wash up" on the shores of their subconscious.

It's possible to accept that Nolan is using water imagery as a symbol for the subconscious without making the leap to Matthew 7.24. But I don't believe it's possible to argue that the ending is "just another dream" once you're paying attention to the symbolic language of the film. And if it isn't just another dream what is it? The fact that Limbo is destroyed twice in a violent storm of unprecedented proportion, exactly as anticipated by Matthew 7.24 and the allusion to the parable of the wise and foolish builders is fairly compelling evidence in my eyes, as is the scene in Paris and the logic of both sequences in Limbo as explained above.


@steveporter,

'll bet that if Nolan read this topic, he would be laughing his ass off.

I'd be very curious to read Nolan interviewed about this sort of thing as well. I'd presume the reason this doesn't happen is that most entertainment journalists are simply not familiar with film analysis or literary interpretation. It may also be that they don't like writing articles or expressing viewpoints that get them mocked by people without much experience reading films (as you seem comfortable mocking me).

But I don't take it personally. If you really think this is overreaching and that films really don't do what I'm suggesting you should check out some of the films in the Criterion Collection and watch them with the director's commentary turned on. Fritz Lang and François Truffaut are good places to start: because sometimes a bottle of milk isn't just a bottle of milk.