Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi thriller Inception does not use many of the building blocks of ancient Greek mythology, but they are present nonetheless. The film’s plot takes place in the modern time, where the main character Dominic Cobb is engaged in industrial espionage by introducing other people into the dreams of chosen victims. In this film, there are two essential parallels: the image of sleep as a labyrinth and the manifestation of Ariadne in the character of the same name.
The indirect interpretation of the labyrinth from the Theseus myths forms the idea of building the sleep levels as its architecture. In Nolan’s illustration, the labyrinth has the structure of a city – it is a collection of buildings on a virtual spatial segment. The architect has complete power over this world, distorting its space and changing the laws of physics. Unlike the ancient Greek myth, the film’s heroine, Ariadne, does not just give a ball of thread, but she designs the locations of dreams herself. Being an architect by profession, she shows similarities with Daedalus.
The protagonist finds Ariadne and asks for help entering one businessman’s mind. Together with other participants, he then enters the labyrinth as a guide and coordinator of actions. In the past, Dominic Cobb lost his wife, Mal, and periodically she comes to him in dreams, interfering with the operation. Ariadne helps Cobb meet Mal again on the deepest level of sleep, removing the feeling of guilt for her death.
The labyrinth in the film appears not only as a structure of dreams but also as a person’s path to himself. There, the character of Ariadne, like Daedalus, helps resolve the internal conflict between Cobb-Icarus. But in the film’s open ending, there is a premonition of the tragic fate of the sunburnt. Thus, to solve practical problems when creating a cinematographic work, Christopher Nolan refers to the well-known cultural code, using suitable imagery to connect the function of Ariadne and Daedalus with its inherent symbolic content.
Reference
Thomas. E., Nolan, C. (2010) Inception [Film]. Warner Bros, Legendary Pictures, Syncopy.