INCEPTION: A CROSS COMPARISON

• The movie opens and closes with Cobb’s kids in a potentially unreal place. So there’s a sense of symmetry there, something that ties the end to the beginning. If you haven’t read my Redrum Road or mirrorform analyses, The Shining has two ways of tying its end and beginning together.

• The name Cobb would’ve asked for is Saito, but the audience doesn’t hear that for a few moments. Saito happens to be the name of the colonel in The Bridge on the River Kwai who says to his POW camp, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

• The top that Saito’s helper places beside him inverts between shots. A subtle absurdity. The top also ends the film, so there might be a cool timing thing going on between that shot and this one.

• When Cobb is pitching to Saito, he asks him what the most resilient parasite is, and, while Saito shovels noodles or meat chunks or whatever that is into his face, Cobb speculates that it might be an “Intestinal worm.” He’s forcing Saito to consider that what he puts into himself without thinking might be bad for him. Cobb’s also drawing attention to himself, and to his purpose for being here. In a moment, when he starts insisting Saito allow him to have the complete run of his inner sanctum, Saito’s suspicions are triggered and he flees the room. This brilliant few seconds of dialogue succinctly describes the problem of trying to incept someone honestly: once you tell someone you’re trying to embed an idea in their mind, their defences go up. So, the master inceptor will hide in plain sight, seemingly telling you exactly what you’re afraid they’re going to tell you, while secretly telling you much, much more. Don’t mind what I’m doing to you because, hey, I’m telling you it’s what I’m doing, aren’t I?
• So, Cobb is basically behaving like the opposite of Lloyd the bartender here. Lloyd doesn’t tell Jack what he is, he simply feeds off of Jack’s every terrible impulse. And while Jack puts into his face what Lloyd dolls out, he does so without any reservation, and Lloyd allows it without any trace of warning (beyond, you know, his generally obvious odiousness).
• The Shining is about the collapse of a patriarch into murderous violence. And while that’s revolting, it’s not nearly as revolting as the genocidal subtext.

• Cobb is saying that an idea is the most resilient parasite. This puts us, the audience, on the defensive about being incepted immediately (putting us just a step behind Saito), so we automatically ignore what the film’s buried subtext might be. When Arthur later says “I say: don’t think about elephants. What are you thinking about?” This is the same thing. He’s making you feel foolish for thinking about what you’re told to think about, which has a double purpose. A) you ignore and/or analyze for danger everything you hear, and B) you accept the premise of your mind as an open vessel, waiting to be filled with whatever stimulus comes your way. Also, elephants are a minor factor of The Shining, appearing in at least two obvious locations.
• Also, Cobb has an enormous falcon drawing on the wall behind him here. Most of the film takes place technically on a plane flight (dreams therefore take on a subconscious connection to flight, and this falcon enhances our sense of dreaming on repeat viewings). And Cobb is right about to say, “Because I am the most skilled extractor.” In The Shining, our hero, Danny, is most associated with winged creatures. In Japanese culture, the falcon represents, among other things, vision. And this is a kind of imposed vision upon Saito.

• As Saito leaves the meeting, we discover that this is actually taking place in a kind of hotel.

• In this first shot of the “dream within a dream” as Saito will soon describe it, there’s a little white balloon with a butterfly on it, next to the explosion.
• There’s also an orange soccer ball flying up through the shot while a purple soccer ball hangs in the distance. Not sure the significance of this (all dreams are but games?), but The Shining is also quite concerned with sports objects.
• Actually, I’ve since discovered that this shot will repeat at the end of this sequence, so perhaps part of the effect of the orange ball is to give us an easy way to know we’re seeing a replay of an earlier moment.

• In the next shot of the carnage there is still one orange ball flying through the air, and on the opposite side of the street there’s a purple and an orange ball suspended on the wall.

• Arthur: “We’re here to work.” This reminded me of All Work and No Play. Arthur is chastising Cobb for his dead wife, Mal (pronounced “mall”), showing up in this dreamscape. All we ever see Cobb do in the movie is work on inception and extraction, with one exception, whenever he starts to talk to Mal or tell someone like Ariadne about Mal. So inception is Cobb’s work and Mal is Cobb’s play?
• In the sense that Mal is “mall”, we could also hear that as “moll”, which is a generic term for a gun-toting gangster woman, circa 1920s. This is a seeming gender inversion of the relationship between Wendy/Danny and Jack or even Charles Grady. Jack and Charles are names that literally mean “some guy” (while Wendy and Danny have more illustrious meanings). So The Shining‘s villains are archetypal men, while Inception‘s villain (so to speak) is an archetypal woman. Which is especially apt, given how Cobb will later describe her as an imperfect shade version of the original Mal, who his tiny brain could never reproduce in all her “imperfection”.
• Also, note the twin pillars behind Arthur as he regards Cobb and Mal. Arthur knows Mal is a shade of her former self. This causes him to see a duality in Cobb: the genius extractor in touch with reality, and the deluded grief-stricken sucker for the tricks of his self-destruction.
• Also, Cobb’s real work is to return to his children.

• Mal says “Looks like Arthur’s taste.” To which Cobb replies, “Actually the subject is partial to post-war British painters.” This is an interesting instance of the original script for the film differing from the finished movie. Originally, Cobb identifies Saito directly, “Mr. Saito is partial…” Although I probably would’ve still made the connection instantly to the abundant British and Canadian painters seen in The Shining, giving the line that more general flavour makes it sound like a direct reference to Kubrick.
• This piece is Study for Head of George Dyer by Francis Bacon (1967). The piece is part of a triptych of similar images, and presents the face of Bacon’s then lover, Dyer, who committed suicide the day before the paintings were unveiled to the public. Mal, we later learn, is a projection of Cobb’s lover who suicided some time not long ago (going by the ages of his children in all sequences). Incidentally, the other famous Francis Bacon, was concerned with the Pillars of Hercules. And Arthur was just standing by some pillars…
• Incidentally, the name Arthur may mean “bear-man” or “son of the bear”, which could suggest that our hero’s right-hand man bears a spiritual connection to Wendy Torrance, who is often associated with bears. I’ve often wondered, even before this project, if Arthur was named after King Arthur, and if the dream-thief crew were some reflection of the knights of the round table. But I’m still not sure, honestly, why that would be. Or why our Arthur isn’t the lead, and never takes on a “lead” quality. Also, the knights of the round table are a bit like Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in the way the main character is a thing of some uncertainty and diffusion. While, in Inception, we never really lose Cobb as our perspective character, owing somewhat to DiCaprio’s natural charisma (it’s not that we don’t think he’s a dick for getting everyone into the dream peril, but the plot moves pretty fast past that revelation, and everyone resigns themselves to getting the job done–even when there’s the moment of possible ultimate failure at the 11th hour, the reaction from Eames is “So that’s it. We lost. Dang.”).

• As Cobb moves back to jump out the window another painting is seen completely obscured by a nearby light (time and effort could crack it, I think), and a painting of a crane is on the wall to his left. Cranes are symbols of longevity in Asian cultures, perhaps underscoring the impossibly extended relationship Cobb and Mal possess. They lived together in a dream world for a life age, and even after waking from it, even after her suicide, she continues to visit him in the dreamscapes of his work.

• The first thing Mal does in the film is abandon Cobb, alerting Saito to the plan, and ruining everything. This would go with my Pillars of Hercules theory. And, again, the George Dyer painting is behind the now-empty chair. Cobb should’ve tied off to something that wouldn’t abandon him. Was he trusting her to help him suicide? Jack Torrance explodes at Wendy whenever she gets in the way of his attempts at intellectual suicide.
• Played by a French actor, the name Mal, then starts to look like the French word “bad”. But everyone pronounces it “moll” as in “woman”, or “mall” as in “a cob of shopping centres” (see what I did there?). So this character could be read as “bad woman” or “bad commerce”. What the entire point of the film will become is Cobb will get to go home to his children if he and his team can successfully incept the heir of an empire with the idea that he should dissolve his father’s legacy. That section goes on so long you can almost forget that Cobb’s success is in performing an act of major industrial sabotage: bad commerce.
• In a sense, Mal becomes like a secondary totem to Cobb. Her un-Mal-ness in the dreamworld reminds him he’s dreaming.

• Cobb gives Arthur a third eye bullet wound to wake him from the dream. Third eyes are a feature of the mirrorform Shining. I don’t have an easy link to show that, but there’s a point when backwards Wendy’s eye appears in the centre of Ullman’s head during the interview, while she’s watching the bloodfall. Stuff like that.

• As Cobb succeeds in capturing Saito’s confidential documents, Saito’s men pursue him through the labyrinthine hotel-style building they’re in, toppling totem-like statues, and shattering a series of glass display cases that contain priceless artefacts. The Overlook hotel contains more than a few of these.

• Cobb is woken from the dream by a flood descending from above. In the reality of the other dream, Cobb is falling into a tub while holding a small white cord in his left hand. An umbilical cord?
• This also functions as a way to combine the idea of a flood with the idea of the zombie horde of subconscious NPCs that attack the inceptors when the dreamer figures out they’re in a dream. So our unconscious ability to self-defend is like a flood.

• In the next shot of the dream riot, we get another look at the butterfly balloon while a man jumps on top of a car, and performs a motion not unlike the one Moongazer does in 2001: A Space Odyssey, when she figures out how the bone club can be used to smash animal bones apart. Perhaps this is a soft reference to the fact that Saito has figured out that he’s in a dream within a dream, just as Moongazer figured out the power of murder.
• Also, while a flood brought the last dream to a complete end, this one is going up in flames.
• Also, the car that Moongazer man has climbed atop is a Simca 1307, according to the good people at IMCDb. Simca was invented by the other car company Fiat. The word “fiat” is latin, and means “let it be”. That’s kind of close to Let It Be (a Kubrick reference on top of a Beatles reference…?). The term is also used to describe currency, but especially the way that paper money has no intrinsic value, and that’s an interesting way of looking at a dream world, where the dream only has power over us if we interpret it one way or another (or remember it at all). There’s also something called “military fiat” which is when a military performs actions without other political interference, and this riot has the quality of something happening as a result of arms alone.
• To further that whole thing a bit, by simplifying it: the moment could simply be about the clash between the development of technology (2001) and the seeming imposition of value upon valueless things (fiat). In other words, developing the ability to kill something else with a superior tool, that has real value, almost no matter what the other circumstances are. But money has no value, unless we all agree it has value. It can change into electronic signals, it can change into bitcoins. If everyone woke up tomorrow and decided, fuck it, the only currency left anymore is seeds. If you don’t have seeds, you’re fucked. Then you either better get some seeds, or have enough skill and technology to survive without seeds. I think the Nolans have been concerned with this idea in several of their films, but perhaps it was never better (subtextually) depicted than in this moment. There’s a frustration in knowing that escalations in science and technology seem to be leading us toward meaning, but really, basically all the meaning we ever invest in anything is…fiat. We should all learn to just…let it be. But we can’t because we’re all of us, always striving for something better. We’re all trying to “have it all” in a universe that doesn’t care about supplying us with our every whim. We’re all the heroes of our own stories, trying to make the world a better place, but we can only do that with what’s actually available. And what if what can never be truly available…is meaning. Pretty frustrating. Especially when you’re just a dream sprite.
• As for “1307” this was the year William Tell performed his most famous feat. Tell is highly obscurely referenced in The Shining by way of its reference to Sgt. Pepper, which includes a depiction of William S. Burroughs, who famously killed his wife while attempting a William Tell trick. More on the nose would be Kubrick’s use of the William Tell Overture in A Clockwork Orange‘s super fast sex scene.

• Saito describes the earlier dream as a failed “audition”. So, Inception begins with a job interview. He says “your deception was obvious” to Cobb. And as my Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are research shows, Ullman expected Jack to go axe happy. Much as Jack tried to deceive with his “PR smile”.

• As covered, there’s a repeat of the exact same image of the carnage that we saw at the beginning of this sequence, with the same orange soccer ball flying through the air. And what immediately follows this repeated shot is a shot of Lukas Haas sleeping: our first shot of “reality”.
• On that note: the fact that Inception begins and ends with shots of Cobb waking up on the creamy shore outside Saito’s, and shots of Cobb’s totem, and shots of Cobb’s kids, you could argue that this twin shot of the carnage in this dream is meant to signal that such twins indicate the dreamness of a situation. At least three of the four shore/totem sequences are known dreams. But Cobb does walk away from the totem without bothering to see what becomes of it. On the one hand, you might say, well, he could come back and find it still spinning, but there’s more than a few ways that could be undone for him, just as Cobb undid it to Mal. And it’s also fair to point out that none of these shots are repeats of the earlier shots, which could be indicating the reality of Cobb’s reality. The question would probably remain, however (from this point purely), that the question isn’t whether this technique indicates a dream, but that Cobb may be entering into a dream reality that he will learn to accept as real reality. Anyway, by the end we’ll have a much better discussion about all this.

• The song that wakes up dreamers throughout the film is Non, je ne regrette rien (No, I Don’t Regret Anything/No, I’m Not Sorry for Anything) by Edith Piaf. Marion Cotillard, who plays Mal, won the Oscar for her performance as Piaf in the 2007 film La môme (a curious example of a film with an “English” title that is presented in its native tongue, French: La Vie en Rose). So this is a) a good instance of casting (possibly) affecting the contents of the movie (like when The Shining was given an Easy Rider reference), and b) a good instance of uncanny valley, of the film drawing attention to its filmness, for anyone familiar with Cotillard’s towering achievement.
• Also, Mal doesn’t make it into this dreamscape level, but Piaf does. Is this the only dream Mal doesn’t appear in (at some point)?
• Also, “la môme” was Piaf’s nickname among the French peoples, and it meant “the butterfly”. There’s a butterfly on the white balloon outside. And butterflies appear in The Shining as a symbol of death/murder and symmetry.
• Also, the lyrics that start the song go, “No, nothing of nothing”. And these men are in a dream within a dream, a nothing of nothing. So, perhaps the casting of Cotillard was luck and good timing? (I realize that Nolan has denied this, but, like all good magicians, he’s not giving up his tricks…and honestly, would you expect him to? He made a movie ABOUT MAGICIANS NOT GIVING UP THEIR TRICKS, people! It’s not the job of the magician to explain, it’s the job of audiences to understand.)

Lots of shots of wristwatches in the opening dreams sequence, making us think about time, and the absurdity of time as a literal feature of this dreamscape.

• Not a big thing, but the button in the dreamlink case is red when its active and yellow when it’s inactive. Red and yellow are significant Shining colours.

• Tadashi, an assistant to the audition (not to be seen again), is here seen reading what I’m guessing is Shonen Jump, a monthly magazine that collects all the latest instalments of the most popular boy’s manga of the day (it might help to know what’s on the back cover here, but I’m gonna skip it–I did a cursory search of the series appearing in the magazine at the time, and nothing jumped out at me). The name Tadashi means “correct” as in “I…corrected them, sir. And when my wife tried to stop me from doing my duty…I corrected her.” I think that might be more than just me being an overthinker, because the dreamlink case, called the PASIV, bears two shapes inside it that are basically identical to the didrachm, which is associated with the minotaur, in ancient Greek culture. And Grady’s “corrected” speech is certainly linked to Jack’s lesser impulses. When he attempts to “correct” his own family…that’s when he becomes the minotaur. So, Cobb’s two major attempts at inception could be being slandered here, for the way he’s trying to “correct” the minds of these men. That said, Dominick Cobb has that “ick” sound in it. Like Icarus.

• Cobb first tests his totem next to a stack of Japanese books. Knowing the name of this book might tell us something. I did a rough translation myself, but it just looks like gibberish to me. Feel free to help me out, here; I’ll include the best image below.
• Also “totem” is an Ojibwe word (giving Inception a consistent indigenous subtext), and there’s a painting in the BJ stairwell that might have a totem in it.

• Cobb says he’s going to escape the botched COBOL job to Buenos Aires. Hitler is said to have escaped to Buenos Aires to escape the war. The Shining features a scene with a truck full of American phone books and one for Buenos Aires. As discussed in Room 237, there’s some suggestion that Jack is a Hitler figure, but is Cobb?
• Also COBOL starts with the same letters in Cobb. Is this a way to suggest that Cobb has failed himself, just like Jack Torrance is a failed writer?
• Also, COBOL can be an acronym for Common business-oriented language, which is a “compiled English-like computer programming language designed for business use” = invented in 1959, it finally declined into obsolescence in 2014, five years after this movie = in 1975 Edsger Dijkstra, a preeminent computer scientist, wrote a letter to the editor of Communications of the ACM “How do we tell truths that might hurt?”, in which he was critical of COBOL and several other contemporary languages, remarking that “the use of COBOL cripples the mind”.

• When Cobb asks Saito what he wants from them he says “Inception.” In The Shining, Hallorann says the name of the movie, “She called it shining“. Both describe fantastical ways of embedding and/or stealing thoughts from other people’s minds. Shining is more passive, inception is more active. So it’s funny that the technology that connects dreamers together is called PASIV (Portable Automated Somnacin IntraVenous Device).

• Arthur, in describing the impossibility of inception, says, “The subject’s mind can always trace the genesis of the idea. True inspiration is impossible to fake.” To which Cobb replies, “That’s not true.” On the word “genesis” the shot cuts to Cobb staring moodily out the window. Genesis is the first book of the bible, in which we get the great flood, Jacob’s ladder, and the tower of Babel, all referenced directly by The Shining. This could be a poetic way of suggesting that the patriarchy, as established in Genesis in the likes of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, cannot be faked according to Arthur (King Arthur?), but can be faked according to Cobb (Jacob?). The job that Cobb is about to embark on will be about mending the patriarchal connection between a father and son, only in order to dissolve their empire.
• Incidentally, Cobb will later assert that a positive emotion always trumps a negative one, so inception should be positively oriented. This could be a sly way of suggesting that the meme of the bible (and most patriarchal mythologies) survives because it has a positively reinforcing message to men, who benefit from that positivity. Women, classically, do not benefit directly from that positivity (if at all), which is probably why feminism works as an antidote to it.

• Saito offers Cobb the ability to “go home” to America and his children, in exchange for inception. It’s a bit complicated but, in The Shining, there are numerous subtextual examples of someone venturing forward into a dangerous place as a way of seeking return. For Cobb, this will be the entire literal focus of his work.

• Saito refers to the job as a “leap of faith”.

• Miles has three free-standing pillars of different sizes and shapes in his lecture hall, two of which have square tops, and both of these are on a separate podium. I’m not sure if that counts for a Pillars of Hercules reference, but, you know, they are pillars.
• This might be a good time to note that Cobb is also the name of one of the two main characters from Nolan’s first movie, Following, and the only character in that movie to have a name. In that film, Cobb is an architect who likes to break into people’s homes as a way of disrupting their reality.

• Cobb: “No, not just money; the chance to build cathedrals, entire cities—things that have never existed, things that couldn’t exist in the real world…” Again, invoking the formation of religion and myth, and connecting it to impossibility. And invoking the idea of fiat vs. objective meaning.

• Cobb and his father/father-in-law, Miles, debate the advent of “dream-share”. This is a good metaphor for cinema/art. Miles says it was wrong to tell Cobb to dream big and invent dream-share, and Cobb says no, it’s where we took it that was wrong. “You told me it would free me” = art is not bad, it’s the hijacking of art by the religion of commerce and economics that’s bad.

• Miles tells Cobb he’s got someone better than Cobb was at designing dreams: Ariadne, who shares a name with the Greek goddess of the labyrinth and mazes. She was in charge of the labyrinth where sacrifices were made to Poseidon and Athena (depending on the myth). It was she who gave the clew (ball of string) to Theseus to help him escape the labyrinth after defeating the minotaur. Saying Ariadne (Greco-Roman myth) is better than Cobb (Judeo-Christian myth) might be a bit of a slight on biblical tradition. Also, the roots of Greco-Roman myth go back further than Judeo-Christian myth, so that’s an inversion of the timeline. Ariadne is younger and better than Cobb, but their respective myths are the other way around.
• Also, Jack’s ultimate subconscious fear is to be bested by his son’s “very great talent” but Cobb doesn’t seem too bothered by Ariadne’s potential virtuoso status. He needs her to be excellent; she happens to be superior.
• As we’re introduced to her, sculptures are all about the room, which look like they’re from the Hellenistic period. I’m not going to kill my eyes trying to identify them, but if one involves a Cretan myth, don’t be surprised.
• The classic Ariadne was a daughter of Minos and Pasiphaë. Pasiphaë sounds like PASIV. Our Ariadne is about to get addicted to PASIV.

• Cobb’s challenge to Ariadne is to design a maze in 2 minutes that it takes 1 minute to solve. Kubrick famously burned through a set designer in a similar fashion, expecting him to design a draft for the Overlook in something like 5 minutes (sorry, I can’t find where I read that, but I did read it; possibly in a book).
• To get better, Ariadne flips away from the grid side of the page, and draws a circular maze on a blank surface. This seems like a poetic escape from the geometric approach Kubrick took to crafting the mirrorform Shining, to a more freeform approach.

• Cobb and Ariadne dine at Café Debussey (not a real place) in their first dream together. Debussey was a composer who worked to rebel against the work of Wagner (who was invoked by Hitler in WWII), was a big fan of Symbolist poetry and was a strong influence on Béla Bartók. I didn’t want to do a deep dive on Debussey, though I imagine there’s much to this reference. One thing that seems of note, though, is that Debussey’s idiom was formulated on the basis that we should “never be absolutely sure “how [an art form’s beauty] is made”” (reminiscent of the Lovecraft line Kubrick underlined, “In all things mysterious, don’t explain”). So here we are having dream operation/construction explained to the architect (and to us) by the main operator, and they’re doing it at Café Debussey. So the film does much to hide its own purpose and structure (including all the Shining links), and it uses explanation of how the art form’s beauty is made as a red herring. Would Debussey have been impressed? Certainly the following sequence is perhaps a bit more bombastic than Clair de Lune.
• Debussey was another composer to use Fibonacci in his compositions, in particular, Image, Reflections in Water, in which the sequence of keys is marked out by the intervals 34,21,13, and 8. Incidentally, the price board in front of the made-up Café contains the numbers 13 and 55 (the next number up the sequence from where Debussey ended).

When the dream starts exploding, as Ariadne realizes she’s in one, this reminds a bit of my Orgy of Evidence theory. You’re being caused to think of too many details, too many potential references to think that there could possibly be a constellation of clues.

• When Café Debussy explodes it tips over a car with a licence plate that features a backwards 42 and a backwards 237. AA 7324 AD. The car is a Renault Twingo, so perhaps the “AA” is meant as a twinning, and perhaps the AD is meant as a “DA”, as in father. And yes, Danny sees the twins after touching 237.
• Also, the car makes a full flipping rotation through the air to show us 42 and 237 in their proper order (so to speak), as bits of debris make it alternately visible and invisible. Check out the third image below for that.

• The room where the heist is planned is full of Roman columns, and the table that holds the PASIV device has legs that look like bull horns.
• Ariadne finds that the lengthy dream only took a few seconds of real time and is surprised = time manipulation = the film is drawing our attention to the way visual storytelling moves time around like a dough. Also, it’s almost at this exact minute in The Shining that we get our first instance of time being distorted by the hotel (the discrepancy between the kitchen clocks and the lobby back hall clocks).
• Dream-sharing was “developed for soldiers” to experience combat scenarios. I liked that detail because it’s so true, the way war is so often the root of technology, which also makes us think of war. But it’s also funny to think that the dream-share wouldn’t repel soldiers from remaining as soldiers.

• Ariadne asks what happens “when you start messing around with the physics of it all?” which leads to the folding back of the cityscape upon itself. This is basically a perfect visual metaphor for the mirrorform. As they see once the process is complete, the buildings almost perfectly line up with the buildings on the opposite side.
• The Shining also has a bunch of folded up beds (or whatever they are) in several hallways. These have mirrorform appearances to them. Like Ariadne’s dream.

• After Ariadne creates a bridge, they pass a sign reading Tabac (Tobacco) at the same time as a woman with a desert scene on her jacket. Wendy wears a similar jacket while she’s smoking and trying to contact the forest service.

• Ariadne creates a hall of mirrors and then, by touching a mirror, smashes it to reveal a new pathway = this feels like a shorthand for Danny’s ultimate mastery: when you learn how to master the backward-forwardness of life you can create a new way forward.

• Cobb warns: never build a dream from memory, always use made-up places = aside from being a great way to account for why dreams themselves often distort real environments, this seems like an interesting general comment on art (you make art that’s too real and people will start to confuse it with reality), and on how almost everything in The Shining is artificial, despite taking its details from real buildings.

• The knife Mal uses to “wake” Ariadne is similar to the one Wendy uses against Jack. Black handle, long silver blade.

• Arthur’s totem is a loaded die, something someone uses to cheat at a game. Cobb’s (formerly Mal’s) is a top, a children’s toy, and Ariadne’s will be a chess piece, a bishop. So, Cobb’s is symmetrical, Arthur’s is asymmetrical, and Ariadne’s is mostly symmetrical, with a slight chip to make it asymmetrical. All are objects of play; one for sheer entertainment (top), one for gambling games of chance (die), and one for strategic play (bishop). Eames’ totem is thought by some to be a poker chip of his own design. Perhaps part of the reason that was left unclear was to avoid pointing out its similarity to Arthur’s as a token of chance. And if we see Saito’s as being the rug from before that makes five totems identified in the film. That means that Yusuf (the chemist) is the only one to go into the dream without a totem. Perhaps that’s because he’s such an old hand at it, with his dream den below the shop.
• Anyway, it struck me that the totems might be Inception‘s answer to my four horsemen theory, or rather the way I’ve correlated the four horsemen of the apocalypse to the five principles that govern the universe: time (Death), mass (War), energy (Famine), gravity (Conquest), and light (The Shining). Cobb’s totem works when time causes the top to topple or not topple. Arthur’s totem works because only he knows the way gravity pulls its lopsided weight. Ariadne’s works because…we don’t really know why, but as a chess piece it’s engaged in an eternal battle of wits (and it is a bishop, the godly game piece). And when we see Eames playing with his chips, he rubs them together, like he’s trying to make sparks of energy fly, and if he loses them in a game it’s hinted that he just makes more of them. And the one time we see Saito with his rug, there’s a gorgeous splash of light pooling around him, catching in the fibres of the rug. This could be why we see his watch (time), and see him straight on from above (gravity), rubbing the fibres in his fingers (mass & energy). Yusuf, with his massive ring of keys, could be the film’s answer to the two keys of Danny’s lessons and escapes.
• As for how that relates to The Shining’s specific handling of the four horsemen, I think it’s fitting that War (Ariadne) and Death (Cobb), which have a very twin-like quality in that film, belong to the two architects, while Famine (Eames) and Conquest (Arthur), which are similar sequences, if not quite as twinny, belong to the two members of Cobb’s crew who are constantly squabbling, and they’re both fixers of a sort, previously known to Cobb, while Saito and Yusuf are more auxiliary. With regard to Saito and Yusuf relating to the shining: Saito is the reason everyone’s in this dream, and Yusuf is the chemist responsible for putting everyone under. Though Ariadne designs the shines, as it were, the purpose and mechanism for these visions to be occurring to our heroes, are Saito and Yusuf.
• Finally, just to really hammer this home, Arthur (gravity) gets stuck at the dream level where he has to deal with anti-gravity, Cobb (and Saito!) gets stuck at the dream level where he has to deal with infinity, and Eames gets stuck at the dream level where the two energy magnates achieve inception. The whole dream is technically without mass, so perhaps that’s why Ariadne had to experience every level of it.
• Also, I know we’re a ways off from Ariadne making her bishop, but the precursor to the bishop piece in the game of shatranj (the game that lead to the development of chess) was the alfil (which means “elephant”), and some think the groove chipped into the piece was meant to reflect the tusks of the earlier game piece. There were other names for the bishop that could be of interest, but I’ll leave that for now.

• Arthur says that Eames (if he was a “doc”, wouldn’t that make him Dr. Eames?) is in Mombasa. Mombasa is the capital of Kenya, which is located on the Indian Ocean. The name Mombasa derives from the Kiswahili word, meaning “war”.
• Past the balcony here we see the Mombasa Palace Guest House. I’m guessing this is a hotel.

• Eames says that he was part of a failed inception, and that it failed because the idea was too complex to take hold. If that’s a reference to The Shining being too complex, it might be a bit of a platitude on the Nolans’ part. Then again, it might just be them being cheeky. He goes on to say you need to work with the simplest form for the idea to grow naturally in the inceptee’s mind. When Cobb asks what that’ll be in their case, Eames replies, “The relationship with the father.” In doing so he points out that their goal involves “political motivations, anti-monopolistic sentiment and so forth”, which underscores the film’s point. This story is political, this story is anti-monopolistic, which is inherently anti-capitalistic (if the capitalist asking for such a hit is honest with themselves). Also, it’s richly paternal: Cobb is a father trying to restore his family, Miles is possibly either Cobb’s father or Mal’s father, and the Fischers are father and son, and Browning has a surrogate father quality to Robert Fischer.

• I just spent ten minutes trying to get the below image, so I hope you appreciate it. The flair from that bullet ricochet illuminates the van interior for the splitest of split-seconds, revealing a large Kenyan flag behind the gentleman huddling for his life. Flags are a theme of The Shining. The symbolism of this one has to do with the people (black), their fight for independence (red), what they fought for (green; the common natural resources of the land), what they’ll do to protect what they’ve fought for (Maasai shield and spears), and what they’ve gained as people for the fight (peace and honesty). When we get to the notion of global hegemony in a second, this will seem much more significant.
• Also, this vehicle, the Daihatsu Hijet, is one of only two Asian vehicles in the film (the other being the motorbike blown up in the dream earlier, used to make 237 out of the licence plate), both of which are Japanese, like Saito. I’m not sure if this is meant to foreshadow Saito’s saving of Cobb at the end of this chase, or Cobb’s future endangerment of Saito, leading to the bullet wound which drops Saito into limbo. But probably both. Let’s go with both.

• Arthur demonstrates the Penrose stairs and calls them a paradox. He later uses a paradox to destroy a dream drone (projection). The Shining is full of such paradoxes and absurdities.

• The chemist, Yusuf, takes up a big ring of keys and leads them to the sleeper room. Eames counts 12 dreamers. Yusuf is the Arabic equivalent of Joseph, which, if these 12 dreamers are symbolic of the 12 apostles (something that happens in Shutter Island; did DiCaprio not notice?), probably makes him equivalent to Jesus’ faux-daddy.
• Of course, Joseph son of Jacob had 12 siblings, and one amazing technicolour dreamcoat.
• Yusuf’s dreamers are “very stable”; this reminds me of Plato’s cave. Yusuf’s helper says “they come to be woken up”.

• Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy) sounds a bit like “robber-fisher”, which pairs nicely with the film’s themes of theft.
• Also, in much art fish are symbolic of Christ. Saito says that Fischer Enterprises (or whatever they’re called) is “one energy source controlling the world”. So there should never be one hegemonic philosophy or culture or way of life (Tower of Babel = bad). No idea is powerful or rudimentary enough to apply to all peoples in all situations. Not even the so-called Golden Rule is that good, and it’s the best one we’ve got.
• Fisher also sounds like “fissure” which is what needs to be healed between these men (ironically, by inspiring the son to further delineate himself from his father).
• Note that the medical report contains a didrachm symbol (visible onscreen for about half a second), which also looks a bit like a sniper scope. That’s a funny symbol for a medical office, eh? “Your health…is in our…sights.” Of course, Cobb will be watching Robert Fischer through his sniper scope at the end of the movie, right before Mal shoots Fischer. Is Mal the minotaur in Cobb’s labyrinth?
• Small thing: given the pronounced reference to chess in the film, could Robert Fischer be a reference to child prodigy Bobby Fischer? I mean…they have the same name. As for Morrow, there’s a player named Alexander Morozevich who achieved International Master status by 15/16 in 1993 (probably around a year older than Fischer was when he achieved same) and Grandmaster status by 17, and is still one of the top 100 players in the world (the best player with the “morrow” sound in his name, he achieved “peak” rating and ranking (No. 2), whatever that means, in summer of 2008, a year before this film was filmed). Ariadne is the one who makes herself the bishop, so perhaps that’s to speak to her status in the group as the child prodigy. She was 22 during filming. Also, Fischer is played by Cillian Murphy, who has a very similar name to a child prodigy who Bobby Fischer considered one of the greatest players of all time, Paul Morphy.
• Oh, I’ll just note that in one way of looking at things, Morozevich had the second best game of all time the year before filming took place, while Fischer had had the 4th best game of all time by that point. But note too, in that last link, how Fischer is still the best of all time in some of the other ways of ranking people. I guess I’m still not a hundred percent on what this means. Like, does this speak to the Fischers’ energy dominance? Does Morozevich having had a better single game say something about the possibility for the corporation to break apart?

• We see on the Fischer-Morrow board of important names is one Gregory Commons, Finance Director. Commons is the old way of describing the natural resources of the world. Protecting the commons was a way of saying protecting the forests and lakes and mountains from the major concerns of plunderous kings and queens and corporations. Fischer-Morrow isn’t just going to become a “new superpower”, as Saito puts it. They’re seeking to replace nature, and the rights of citizens to that nature. Gregory, therefore, could be a reference to the Gregorian calendar, the way most of the world tells what year it is. Gregory Commons. Time and Space. Also, there’s an interesting name in The Shining connected to the Overlook’s finances, who we also never officially meet.
• On the board behind Eames is the word inheritance surrounded by asterisks. It’s the only word on the board so marked. The commons is the inheritance of every generation of men and women on earth. Should one man control it? Is Robin Hood the bad guy (he asked hollowly)?
• There’s also a board to Eames’ right featuring mini profiles on many of the world’s major cities. Does it make sense for one family to control the energy supply of all of these places? Should one corporation, I don’t know, install cameras all over all of these cities in order to innocently track the movements of all of their citizens, to help promote more utopian city planning measures? I suppose it would depend on whose definition of utopian we’re using, eh?
• Also, recalling that Eames’ totem refers to energy/Famine in the Four Horsemen quartet, it’s fitting that he’s giving the first big speech diagnosing Fischer-Morrow as a corporation, and Robert as a figure.

• Between Arthur and Yusuf is a French poster calling out to “le syndicat” or “the union”. I can’t ID the poster specifically, but it seems like a call for workers to unionize. Saito lounging beside this sign is a nice little nudge to CEOs, like, hey, relax, unions are a good thing. They’ll help you avoid a 99.9% situation, that utterly cripples the world economy. That’s a good thing, right? You don’t want to be toppled, do you?

• A “top” won’t “topple” in a dream; this sounds a bit like things won’t behave naturally in a dream, won’t do as their name suggests, but also, things that are at the top won’t ever come crashing down in a dream; so they’re using a dream to do something undream like (dismantle a world superpower), turning the dream against the nature of a dream; this is like a quadruple paradox.
• The top totem is symmetrical, mirror-like, and is at its most mirror-like when it’s functioning as it should, spinning in place. When it topples, it looks less symmetrical.
• The top was Mal’s totem, and, as we learn, it’s why Cobb blames himself for her suicide. He uses his dead wife’s totem to remember what reality is. This reinforces his sense that he is to blame for her suicide. But also, it’s a subtle suggestion that he doesn’t have a totem, or that his totem is truly something else. My theory is that the projection of Mal is his totem. Reality is a place with no Mal, no “bad woman” in it. When he sees her behaving unMal-like, he knows he’s dreaming, but he needs to see her do something unMal-like in order to remember that that’s the situation. This is why he can’t kill her so long as she’s doing something real enough.

• When Cobb reads out “I will split up my father’s empire” there’s a poster above his head which reads “TU VEUX” which means “you want” as if the film is telling us, the viewers, and Robert Fischer, this is what you want. You want to split up your father’s empire. That’s not what I want you to want, it’s what you want you to want. But also, at the bottom it says “SYNDIQUÉ-TOI!” which I think means “you should unionize!” or “your union”.
• Cobb’s totem relates to time/Death, so it’s fitting that he would lead this discussion about wanting to “split up” an empire. See? Not all death is bad. Unless it’s the tragic death of your asshole father who actually secretly just wanted you to blow your little windmill all along!

• In this profile of the Fischers in the Sunday Business column, the word “father’s” gets stretched completely across the margin, despite the fact that the next word is only “sucess”, which happens to be the only typo in the article. So not only is the next word not long enough to necessitate this kerning, but it’s also shorter than it should’ve been. And the misspelling of “success” undermines Maurice’s “winner-take-all” approach to business. The next article we see after this has a similar error (it reverses the names of Robert and Peter Browning, the two potential heirs to the company, mistakenly), but I’m not sure what the point of that is. Perhaps a foreshadowing of Eames impersonating Browning, and the fakeness of dream Maurice?

• The first time all our heroes are in a dream together there’s a Famima!! convenience store right behind Arthur. These were upscale Japanese convenience stores (shortened from FamilyMart–similar to the famicom, a Japanese invention that swept the first world), which were trying to expand into Western markets. So it’s interesting that Saito and Arthur are the closest figures to this sign. As the shot pans, Saito obscures part of the Famima!! logo, as he faces the audience.
• Also, our heroes are here discussing how to destroy an empire by fixing the emotional conflict between a family.

• Until almost halfway through the film there is only one shot of a ladder, which is just as Arthur is walking into the workshop for the first time (25 minutes in), obscured by this column. The next ladder to appear is quite different and the first time appears in conjunction with Cobb and Ariadne (48 minutes), then Yusuf and Cobb (Joseph and Jacob?) (51 minutes). Then behind Yusuf while he’s explaining how the sedatives could potentially keep people trapped down in the dreamscape for ten years (52 minutes). And then behind Ariadne when a missing Yusuf allows her to sneak into Cobb’s dream with him (54 minutes). The first ladder seen appears one last time, right before the job as Saito and Arthur walk in (60 minutes). I’m not sure if these times have especial significance, but I thought it was neat that one appears at 25 and 52 minutes. Jacob’s ladder, of the bible, is seen within a dream.

• According to the interpretations of some scholars, the rungs on the ladder of Jacob’s ladder equal years. I’m wondering if the floors of this elevator could mean the same thing. When this shot starts none of the floors are lit up, but we see it moving downward. Then the nine lights up. So we just left ten. Ten years is how long dreamers could be trapped in limbo if they’re killed in the dream.

• The first time we see the dollhouse where Cobb plants the spinning top that destroys Mal’s sense of reality, it’s presented without context, and we see a mobile of our solar system hanging to the right, and a Rubik’s Cube with every colour right except the centre colour on a shelf to the left. So it seems like the endlessly spinning top is reflected in the endlessly spinning spheres of our solar system. And a Rubik’s cube of this design likely has the same design on all sides, so no matter how you looked at it, the wrong colour would be at the centre. This is a lot like the spinning top at the heart of the red house. It’s not right. And it breaks Mal’s mind.

• Cobb and Mal’s house is lined with framed leaves. The Overlook Suite 3 bedroom has a lampshade with a very similar design.

• They also pass a sketch of an arc which vaguely resembles the Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile (“Triumphal Arch of the Star”) in Paris. I have thoughts about why this might be, but they’re fuzzy. Cobb will come down this corridor at the end, in “reality”, so could this be a sign of his “triumph” over unreality? There’s a horns-shaped motif in the stained glass of Cobb’s dining room, and the minotaur was named Asterion (“starry”). So is the triumph of the star the triumph of the minotaur? If so, is Cobb his own minotaur?

• Mal killed herself at the hotel where they used to spend their anniversaries. The Shining invokes quite a few dates and holidays. New Year’s, Independence Day, May Day, etc. Also, this is yet another hotel.
• Also, just a word on the supposed mind-rape that Ariadne performs on Cobb by stealing into his subconscious. I’ve heard some say over the years that Ariadne was being rather despicable for this dastardly deed, but I feel like this overlooks the fact that they’re not only committing an act of corporate espionage of the highest possible magnitude, but that the mind-rape they’re committing against Robert Fischer, however well-intentioned, is subversively robbing him of his right to free destiny.
• Also, everyone wants to see what’s in someone else’s subconscious. When Ariadne runs to get down into Cobb’s subconscious, she’s not much different from the most of us, who go to see movies and to spy on the thoughts and inner workings of the characters on display. This is the very function of theatre and drama. They allow us the voyeur’s gaze. And we crave that, because we are isolated with our own truths, for our whole lives. If you don’t identify with that last phrase you are either lucky to have had such a head injury or you are delusional.
• When they wake up, Ariadne asks Cobb, “Do you think you can build a prison of memories to lock her in?” That reminded me of the minotaur.

• Maurice Fischer dies, we learn from Saito, and his funeral will be on a Thursday. Jack Torrance dies on a Thursday.
• Also, note that the ladder we first saw when Arthur opened up the warehouse is now behind his shoulder here.

• The number Robert will spit out at the team in a few minutes is 528491. 948 starts off his passport number. Coincidence? Maybe. But it would make for a nice inversion of reality. What I don’t get is: why not do the whole number backwards, here? If the point is to suggest that Robert understands subconsciously that this dream is not reality?
• Also, fun fact: while Sept. 17th is not Cillian Murphy’s birthday (as any good Cilliholic should know), it is the most popular birthday in Australia. Cuz, you know, Robert Fischer is secretly a really relatable, ordinary guy like most people. Also, it can be written as 17/9/1973, which is a near palindrome (there are actual palindrome numbers coming up, don’t worry). Having him be born in ’73 means we’re thinking of him being 37, though, which is a little palindromical. Palindromey? Palindromicon? I guess something can’t be like a palindrome. It either is or it isn’t.

• The first thing our plucky heroes do to Fischer is have Eames steal his identity from him (his passport) so that Cobb can return it to him (to give a context to why Cobb shows up in his dream, perhaps). But on a figurative level, this is what the Overlook does to Jack. It slowly steals away his identity through sleep dep and the promise of fame and fortune, only to supplant that identity with ghost booze. If Cobb represents Death, then Fischer is being returned to life, here. Perhaps furthering a Christ metaphor.

• At 66 minutes in, Jack is drinking the Jack Daniels that finally begin the process of transforming Jack utterly into the minotaur. At 63 minutes in to Inception, Robert Fischer is drinking the knockout juice water that will subject him to the machinations of the dream warriors.

• The inside job flight attendant is played by Miranda Nolan, first cousin to the Nolan brothers, in her very first screen appearance. She appears at 61:48 and sends them into the dream at 64:00, only to reappear at the end to greet the wakening superfriends with hot towels. At this point in The Shining, Wendy is discovering Danny’s bruises, chewing out Jack, and then Jack stalks to the Gold Room bar, and is just about to offer up his soul for a glass of beer. That seems significant to me because in doing so, Jack passes the spot where Vivian Kubrick sits during the ghostball. The Nolans also had Christopher Nolan’s son play 20-month-old James Cobb. And, actually, since I don’t think I’ve mentioned this anywhere before, there was a period during the buzz leading up to Inception’s debut where the press couldn’t get over how similar DiCaprio and Christopher Nolan are in appearance. So, intentional or not, there was a twin effect going on there. And here it’s a Nolan putting Christopher’s celebrity look-alike into the dream world, so he can fight to return to his Nolan child.

• The Famima!! convenience store that we see as our heroes hijack the taxi cab lets us know that we’re starting off right from the same spot as we were in when they were all together in the other dream. Also, only Saito and Arthur (the two who actually hijack the taxi) are seen in conjunction with Famima!!, just as they were the two closest to the sign before.
• Also, the car that the gang first appears in in this dream is a Hyundai Genesis. Do I need to expound on that?
• Also, when the train appears, it will smash the Genesis’ front end, and then proceed to smash a bunch of other Japanese cars, as well as a Ford Taurus and Thunderbird. The Ford references there seem pretty obvious (bull and bird = Jack and Danny), but I wonder if the three Toyotas are references to the three dream levels. There’s a Toyota Truck and Celica. And one of the dream projection vehicles is a Toyota Tundra. So the train smashes a “Truck” (the first dream level is Yusuf trying to protect everyone in the large van, while being pursued by enemy vehicles), and a “Celica”, which comes from the latin for “heavenly”, could be describing the fourth level of limbo that Cobb and Saito get stuck in. The Tundra is associated with the assault-rifle toting (if that’s what they are) projections, and the third dream level takes place on a snowy mountain (like a tundra) while similar projections are similarly firing on them. The train also smashes into a VW Jetta (means “jet stream”; the crew are on a jet in reality) and a silver 1998 VW New Beetle (this is the oldest model of New Beetle, and I probably don’t need to remind you what Jack Torrance drives). The train also smashes into a bunch of Volvos with number names (740, 760, S40), which could be an oblique reference to the role of numbers in the second dream level, the Hotel Valfierno. In that dream, Arthur will blow a hole between rooms 528 and 491 to carry the anti-gravity sleepers to the elevators.
• I’ll just discuss a few other neat car things about this section. The van that the team spends the rest of this sequence in is the Ford F-350. Hallorann passes a Ford E-350 when he passes the crushed Beetle on his rescue mission.
• The very first car (van) to pass Yusuf in the dream is a 1993 Mercury Villager. The very first car that passes Jack on his drive to the Overlook is a 1972-76 Mercury Montego Villager. And the last might be (apparently it’s unclear) a Mercury Bobcat Villager of some kind.
• During the big shootout that leads to Saito getting tagged, there’s an Infiniti Q45 [G50] seen driving away from the action. Ken Watanabe was 50 during filming, and Infiniti is another Japanese car brand. Saito’s encroaching dream death could lead him (and does) to limbo, a kind of infinity. But not so bad as actual infinity, I suppose.
• Okay, so if you want to check up on the veracity of these claims, here’s the link to the IMCDb page for The Shining, and here’s the one for Inception.

• The number on the cab that kidnaps Fischer is 2053. The number on the train that smashes into Cobb’s car is 3502. We’ll later see that this was the room number in the hotel were Cobb watched Mal kill herself. So the taxi having the opposite number–was that by Ariadne’s design? Did she somehow glean the number by stealing into Cobb’s subconscious? If so, that’s exactly how Danny gets 237 out of Hallorann’s head, and 237 is a hotel room number.
• Also, when the train smashes home, there’s a rainbow in the air, underneath the red light. There’s a rainbow near 237.
• Also, the licence plate happens to contain 237, but it’s a little more vague than the last time. Still, it’s hard to imagine the Nolans being like, “Huh! Whaddaya know! Ah well. Keep it!” Also, the bonus number here is 8. As in 8(am) to the last car’s 4(pm) (those are placards from The Shining, in case this is the first analysis you’re reading).

• Also, the cab is a Ford Crown Victoria, which seems like it might be a nod to the notion that the base at the end of the film is modelled after the mountain base from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969). But, you know, unless someone said this in a behind the scenes featurette, I’m skeptical. They are both mountain bases, kissed with snow. But saying they resemble each other is a bit like saying a Ford Crown Victoria resembles a Hummer. They both have four wheels! But yeah, the Crown Victoria is what gets them to the safe house, so that would seem to be some kind of reference.

• Eames says being locked in limbo will turn their brains to scrambled eggs. Eggs are a consistent motif of The Shining, but also, when Cobb is dragged before Saito at the very beginning, we see him eating an oatmeal kind of mush. Nice callback. Also, later, when we see the story of how Mal came to doubt reality, she’ll be seen slicing avocado, which look like eggs. But also, how Jack meets Grady is by having Advocaat spilled on him, which sounds like avocado, and is made of eggs.
• Also, the Overlook is a kind of limbo.

• Discounting the opening logos, the middle moment of the movie is Eames saying he’s going to “sit this one out” at this level of the dream. Immediately following that is Cobb giving the justifications for why everyone needs to work together. He concludes this speech with “Downwards is the only way forwards.” Both Inception and The Shining use up and down to convey higher and lower states of consciousness.
• We also know that Cobb’s own internal downward leads to the hotel where Mal killed herself, which is just below a level where we see the train that they used to kill themselves in the dream. Later, when Cobb is telling Ariadne about the way Mal struggled with re-entering reality he says she came to believe that, “…in order to get back home…we had to kill ourselves.” So, in that light, Cobb’s taking everyone down into Fischer (Christ?) with him is a form of group suicide. Of course, finishing the job means Cobb gets to literally go home to America, so this suicidal quest will prove fruitful…or will it? Again, The Shining is in part about Jack’s quest for the tomb and Danny’s quest for the womb, and how these things are not mutually exclusive at times. Sometimes forwards is the only way backwards.

• There are two appearances of an old typewriter, both about 20 seconds from the middle moment of the movie. Doesn’t look like Jack’s Adler, but might be some older model.

• The symbol of Robert’s longing for his father’s affection is a photo of him blowing a windmill. The Fischers own an energy concern. So, Robert’s positive emotion, which is what we’ve been told this is, is a form of clean energy. Perhaps this is part of Inception‘s buried inception on the audience, the shift away from fossil fuels to clean energy. I’m sorry if pointing that out spoils the broth, but it’s pretty on-the-nose. Which is actually why I wonder if there’s something deeper to it.

• Two minutes past the middle of the film is this supremely impressive (if somewhat inconsistent) CGI of Eames turning into Browning, seen in three different ways across three different shots in this make-up mirror. At right about this time in The Shining, Jack is seeing the 237 ghost, who will transform in a mirror.
• Also, Tom Hardy is becoming Tom Berenger, just like Jack and Danny play Jack and Danny, or how Barry Dennen and Barry Nelson play Watson and Ullman. By which I’m simply pointing a silly, hilarious coincidence with no inherent meaning.

• Fischer describes his father’s terse words of flaccid comfort over the death of his mother (“Robert…there’s really nothing…to be said”), and punctuates his indignity with “I was 11.” Danny is wearing the Apollo 11 shirt when he goes into 237 in search of his mother. And after entering 237, Danny will find that there’s nothing…to be said, for quite some time thereafter.

• Saito and Cobb together repeat an earlier line spoken by Saito: “become an old man” “filled with regret” “waiting to die alone”. This is essentially what Robert is lead to believe his father was when he passed. So we’re being incepted with the idea that it’s not good to be a Maurice Fischer, an old man who couldn’t topped the patriarchy.
• Also, repeated lines are The Shining‘s bread and butter.

• In the dream they’ve designed for Robert, they’re trying to get him to give up a code for his father’s safe. In Cobb’s story about what happened between him and Mal, we learn that she’s locked the top in a safe. The safe she crafted inside the dream world happens to be by Sargent and Greenleaf, which happens to be a subsidiary of Stanley Security Solutions. That might be a cute wink toward Kubrick. But I also noticed that the taxi company in the Fischer dream is Greenside, and Cobb’s alias inside the 2nd level of the dream is Rod Green (until it becomes Mr. Charles). So it seems that dreams are green. Meanwhile, Robert’s competition for control of Fischer-Morrow is Peter Browning. Green and Brown. The colours Wendy wears throughout most of The Shining, once she realizes the terror she faces.

• In the reality (from Cobb’s memories) there’s a children’s drawing of a red house on a hill. A red house is where the endlessly spinning top is put. There’s also a painting of a red house in the BJ well, though not quite as nice as this one.

• The hotel room where Mal kills herself is 3502, same as the train that smashes up the car.

• Mal describes what she wants from Cobb as a “leap of faith”, just like how Saito described the inception job. In both cases, suicide is an element.

• In the second iteration of the Cobb Abandons His Children sequence, we get a glimpse of the bullhorn-shaped stained glass in the kitchen/dining area.

• The escape ticket has a large sun decal on it.

• Fischer gives the number 528491. Backwards this is 1948 25, or 2/5. Possibly this is a reference to some other date, as well; August 5, 1942, April 2, 1985, etc. On February 5^th an army guy named Tom testified before HUAC that he didn’t think the American Communist Party should be crushed. So that’s something, anyway (Robert is sitting next to the Tom twins, Hardy/Berenger; and there was that pro-union poster in the planning room). On the opposite date Eisenhower formally resigned from the army. This could also just be 1948, 1942, 1945, the three extensions and the root decade. Was 1948 a “war” year? It was the year of the Arab-Israeli War, according to Wikipedia. Given the unionization subtext in the workshop, the HUAC one does sound the most compelling.
• It also occurs to me that 6, 3, and 7 are the single digits omitted by this number, but I haven’t had any thoughts on why that might be. Did the Nolans juuust miss the chance to make it 237? Seems like the sort of thing they would’ve thought of.

• In fighting off Robert’s subconscious, the first thing they do is blow up a hydro station, where a sniper is taking cover. Robert is hiding behind himself (energy), and the heroes are blowing it up.

• Eames says they’re going to repair Fischer’s relationship to his father while “exposing his godfather’s true nature”. Browning is Robert’s godfather. If Inception has similar aspirations as The Shining to subvert religious dogma about patriarchal power structures, that use of “godfather” is interesting.

• Mr. Charles is a “gambit”, designed by Cobb for something called the “Stein job”. Charles is the name Kubrick gave to Grady. Grady in the books is Delbert Grady, and that’s how Grady describes himself, but Ullman calls him Charles. Mr. Charles is a gambit where the inceptors/extractors introduce themselves to the dreamer, to draw their attention “to the strangeness of the dream.” As for the Stein component, I’m wondering if the Nolans are seeing a connection between The Shining and Frankenstein. Dr. Frankenstein is also possessed by the notion of resurrection, and eternal life, and the creation of life. Inception shows why long-lasting life in a world where you feel like gods, is not what makes people happy. The title of that book is partly The Modern Prometheus suggesting that the trends and attitudes of the day (modern) can affect our concept of myths and religion (Prometheus), and perhaps the inverse. Dr. Frankenstein isn’t simply promethean, he’s modernly so. Prometheus is also about the gods bucking humanity for striving to evolve. Kubrick saw this in the Icarus myth as well, but took a more optimistic view. Anyway, was Frankenstein about drawing attention to its own strangeness? If there were intentional flaws, or winks, in that novel, I didn’t notice them. But I wasn’t looking for them, and I’m not well-versed in pre-Gothic literature anyway. I suppose you could make an argument that all speculative fiction is about drawing the reader’s attention to the strangeness of the situation as a means to making some other point. The Invisible Man doesn’t just feel invisible, as some of do from time to time, he’s literally invisible! Isn’t that strange?
• Also, in The Shining, the Delbert (Charles) Grady sequence runs from 84:40-91:40 (roughly), and in Inception, the Mr. Charles sequence runs from 85:40-96:40 (roughly). And as we’ll see, they both take place at length in a hotel bathroom, after starting near a hotel bar.

• The napkin reads Hotel Valfierno. Eduardo de Valfierno is the possibly fictitious man who is thought to have stolen the Mona Lisa in 1911, for the purpose of making forgeries. Mr. Charles is another fictitious man.
• Also, someone has given Fischer a number that he will later discover is a set of hotel rooms. Not a perfect 237 situation. Kind of a reverse one, actually.

• I didn’t want to do as deep a dive on Inception as I’ve done on The Shining, but I just noticed this, and thought it was interesting. When Eames reveals to Saito that he is the bombshell blonde, it’s similar to his Browning transformation, in that he’s partially revealed in a hall of mirrors. But what I noticed is that he’s the third of eight reflections. When Cobb is earlier telling the story of how he and Mal came to feel like gods, he wipes out the third of eight sand cubes, thus toppling a building behind them. And near the end, when Cobb is revealing his role in warping Mal’s mind, the sun shines between the second and third of eight towers. I could see this being a pure coincidence, or just an aesthetic instinctual thing. But if the Nolans, who are obviously brilliant, were clever enough to intentionally encode all this Kubrick style into Inception, then they’ve probably baked in a fair bit of their own systems and meanings. This could be one of them, for anyone who feels like going on a deeper dive.
• Oh man, I’m not gonna reformat the above, but it hit me while editing the last bit of this whole section that a chessboard has two sets of two sets of eight pieces on it. The third piece from either side of the back row is the bishop. A bishop is Ariadne’s totem. So this connects Eames, Cobb/Mal and Ariadne, at least. Perhaps there’s other moments like this (for Arthur, Saito and Yusuf) I didn’t notice. Is this just about connecting inceptors to the concept of a spiritual gameplayer, like a bishop. Or do they each have their own meaning? Like, Cobb will destroy Mal’s totem, and here he’s symbolically destroying Ariadne’s totem, you know? But how would that apply to Eames’ little joke on Saito? Food for thought!

• When Eames goes into Fischer’s wallet to find the cherished clean energy photo, there’s a little card above it reading “Metro commissions artists to incorporate art into a wide array of transportation projects throughout–“. I thought this was interesting, this vague allusion to art being installed all over the place. It’s almost like a reference to all the embedded art in movies like Shutter Island, The Shining, Inception, and so on.

• The two men who chase Cobb and Fischer into the bathroom are rather twin like in attire.

• This one’s a little obscure, and perhaps too convenient (it feels more like a reference Kubrick would be making to Nolan, than vice versa), but Arthur’s plan involves C-4, or something like it, and the deep freeze that Hallorann takes Wendy and Danny into is C4. That’s the deep freeze that magically becomes the deep freeze on the opposite side of the hall (C3). And this C-4 will be used to connect room 491 to room 528.

• Again, notice how similar this sequence is to the one of Jack and Grady talking in the Gold Room bathroom. In terms of time codes, that sequence is over by this point in Inception, but the mirrors and the two men, and the fact that something impossible has just taken place (Cobb just murdered two dream men in here who have magically vanished from the room without a trace). All very reminiscent.

• Browning describes Fischer-Morrow as his “entire life”. It occurs to me that the name sounds like “fissure-(to)morrow”. As in, the future is split. Tomorrow has two faces. Actually, there’s a book by James Hogan called The Two Faces of Tomorrow in which a scientist named Ray Dyer tests an AI that could destroy or protect humanity. And this film has a picture of George Dyer near the beginning. Coincidence…? Probably.
• Browning describes Maurice’s alternate will as “his most precious gift” to Robert, and then Robert wonders why he would voluntarily “destroy [his] inheritance”, and then we find out that the one word dying Maurice could say to Robert was “disappointed” the dream later morphs this into “I was…disappointed…that you tried [to be me]” So the inheritance of patriarchy is something to be thrown away and abandoned.

• The mountain in this shot, according to IMDb, is The Fortress Mountain in Alberta, Canada, which happens to be about 10km west from Fisher Peak. That seems apt.
• Also, the first-tier dream is about cars and traffic, the second-tier dream is a giant hotel, the third-tier dream is about snowy mountains (with a “labyrinth” in it, coming up), and the fourth-tier dream is Cobb’s subconscious. All we’re missing from The Shining box set is an industrial kitchen, but perhaps the one in Cobb’s subconscious will suffice.
• Also, Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy would appear in the shadow of The Fortress once more six years later in The Revenant. I just thought I’d point that out, in case these mountains looked familiar to you too. In both movies there’s a massive snowfall.

• The dream wires look a lot like umbilical cords. Returning to the womb, etc.

• Man, the skiing up here must be fantastic.

• Ariadne says she designed the compound in the third-tier dream “as a labyrinth”.

• Eames throws a literal clew around a tree, then weaves the cord through some trees to create a wire that trips all his pursuers. A little less elegant than Danny’s solution, but certainly appropriate to this narrative.

• Small thing: the design on the jeep looks a bit like a really wonky labyrinth map. I don’t love this point, because if this were a map, it includes a lot of trapped spaces. A labyrinth should all be open and connecting.

• Air ducts can cut through the maze, Ariadne gives up the ghost to Cobb. I thought this was an interesting detail because everyone always wonders why Jack doesn’t hack his way out of the maze; he probably couldn’t have gotten two walls before collapsing.

• It’s worth pointing out the cute duality in how the last leg of Robert Fischer’s journey toward manufactured enlightenment involves him carrying along at unawares the dying man who bought and paid for Fischer’s mind to be warped. Saito becomes a kind of twin to Maurice Fischer, a dying energy mogul that Robert wants to care for, who bears Robert an ill will. Without any baggage, Robert is able to help this dying older gentleman, and it primes him for the confrontation with his father.

• For absolutely no reason Cobb moves the operation over to another part of the room in order to set up to drill down into the fourth layer of the dream–limbo. In doing so, he thrusts this large silver bowl on wheels out of the way. The Shining is full of silver and golden bowls. As discussed in my Shining work, golden bowls are connected to the bible passage “All is vanity”. So pushing the bowl out of the way could be the story’s way of saying, all is not lost. Robert Fischer is shot, and all seems vain, but perhaps this plan will save the day, silver bowls be damned!

• The first thing we see in the deepest level is Ariadne gasping in a flooding torrent. As we see in a second, it’s as if the world is sinking into the sea. So if you read my Pillars of Hercules stuff, you’ll find this interesting. And at the top level of the dream, the truck is plummeting backwards into the river. And the second level gets hit with the rainstorm, and the third level has the avalanche. Lots of natural disasters going on.

• Mal tells Cobb he’s “wrong” and that he’s “confused” about the nature of reality and their relationship. The Babel in Tower of Babel comes from the word bilal, which means/meant “confusion”. Wendy Torrance tells Jack she’s confused when he’s chasing her through a room where we earlier see a magazine with the Tower of Babel on it.

• When they’re walking in, Cobb tells Ariadne he knows Mal won’t be in the house she grew up in (the address of which happens to be 3, like the suite that the Torrances stay in at the Overlook), and later we find out that this is where Cobb planted the spinning top that incepted Mal with the notion that reality isn’t what it seems to be. He corrupted her totem, but it was a totem she was trying to forget. She was trying to forget her basis for reality, so she buried it inside her projection of the house she grew up in. Again, this is very Pillars of Hercules.
• The house within a house in the dream within a dream = Danny has a little boy who lives in his mouth, the labyrinth has a tiny model of itself in the lobby of a labyrinthine hotel.

• “You’re waiting for a train…” Another example of mirror dialogue, we’re finding out here that the words that dream Mal spoke menacingly to him earlier were actually the words he used to soothe Mal while the two of them committed suicide.

• When Mal wakes from limbo, there’s a still bowl on the table, like a stuck top. Symbolizing her inability to escape from the effects of Cobb’s inception.

• The second time we see Mal jump, her arms go out in a Christ pose. Cobb shouts out, “Mal! Jesus Christ!”

• When Eames gives Fischer the defibrillator in the third-tier a storm breaks out in the fourth-tier dream. This means that a storm and a flood situation is going on in the first-tier and fourth-tier dreams.

• “I’m the only thing you do believe in anymore” Mal is Cobb’s totem, but he’s trying to destroy her.
• If the subconscious is down from reality, and hell is down from heaven, is reality heaven? That would gel with the appearance of the Buddha man early on.

• Under the revised will of his father’s, Robert finds a symbol of his own happiness and self-conception. Clean energy. A windmill.
• Note too that the windmill is formed out of a piece of (probably Robert’s) childhood art. So we should be using our arts (and our dreams) to advance society.

• The kicks that involve flooding imagery happen in pretty close step with the Shining bloodfalls, with regard to the runtime of both films.

• The dialogue in this scene is like an orgy of mirror phrases. A bunch of callbacks to earlier moments in the film.

• As Cobb approaches the gates, there’s a split-second moment where we see two signs featuring the words “B. LAM” and “TINSLEY”. I’m guessing the Tinsley reference is to the British immigration detention centre (for some reason, but possibly just to underscore how close Cobb came to getting detained). And LAM is Mal backwards. Has Cobb entered Life After Mal? Or is this a reference to the fact that Cobb’s inability to let go of Mal got him stuck in limbo, twice (a kind of detention centre)? If so, why is it backwards now? Is that because he’s escaped detention?
• Of course, “LAM B.” could be another Jesus reference. But what would that have to do with Tinsley or Howard Johnson?

• The two names on the two name signs are Howard and Johnson. Howard Johnson. Another hotel.

• When Cobb gets home we get the best view in the film of the stained-glass horn shapes all along the dining room window. Is this a sign that the minotaur has been bested and mastered? Or that his reality is now completely the maze?

• As we watch the spinning top begin to wobble we see a couple dinosaurs, robots and some monkey men, and a bunch of art supplies. So, art and science is all to the left, and a whole lot of nothing is all to the right. Which way would you rather believe?

• Incidentally, I did a sort of sloppy Fibonacci test and found that there are some interesting trends. The middle movie, for instance, contains both of Cobb’s Mal stories to Ariadne. Section I is Cobb on the beach; Section II is old man Saito meeting scraggly Cobb; Section III is the Saito pitch into finding out that Saito is dreaming; Section IV is Leo’s extraction of Saito for COBOL; Section V is the botch and Saito waking up in the second dream up to the kick; Section VI is the second botch and everyone leaving the dream up to Saito reverse pitching Cobb; Section VII is Cobb finding Ariadne and training her; Section VIII is assembling the rest of the team and meeting the Fischers up to Ariadne breaking into Cobb’s dream; Section IX is the two Mal stories, with the set-up and into-dream of Robert Fischer, and then the second-tier dream up to Robert being let in on the dream by Mr. Charles; Section X contains basically the entire extraction sequence past Robert being made aware, and then three moments of post-dream finale.
• It’s interesting that almost the entire film takes place not in America. While we see scenes set in America, they’re understood to be dreams. When Cobb returns home at the end, there’s a question as to whether it’s real (thanks to the very end), and so America itself takes on an uncanny valley quality. The main action of the film takes place in or strongly references Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India, South America, and Australia. So there’s obviously a will to make this story about the world, and make viewers consider the world.
• Also, the movie is 30 seconds shorter than The Shining.

---

RETURN TO:

MAIN PAGE
SITE MAP
GLOSSARY