'Inception' Was Christopher Nolan's First Odyssey
Ahead of his rendition on Homer's classic epic, let's revisit his maiden voyage into Greek mythology.
As the world prepares for Christopher Nolan’s take on The Odyssey, it may come as a surprise that this will not be the newly minted Academy Award winner’s first foray into a Greek myth. That honor belongs to Inception, celebrating its 15th anniversary in July.
Through the leading characters and science fiction concept of Nolan’s groundbreaking blockbuster, Inception explores many of the same themes and narrative points from the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, the monstrous half-man, half-bull.
In terms of key plot points, in the Greek myth, the protagonist, Theseus, enters the labyrinth — the giant maze where the Minotaur is imprisoned — to defeat the monster and earn his place as prince of Athens. Ariadne, the princess of Crete, guides Theseus out of the labyrinth by giving him a thread to retrace his path.
In Inception, the protagonist, Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), goes into dreams designed as mazes to return to his home and be reunited with his children. He is assisted in retracing his path by Ariadne, who guides him back with a figurative thread…one made from emotional support.
Ariadne Rules
The most prominent overlap between the myth and the movie is Ariadne, the name of a character in both stories (played by Elliot Page in Inception). But Nolan altered the myth to make his film more thematically interesting through Cobb and Ariadne’s relationship.
The myth follows the antiquated male/female dynamic: Ariadne is a princess who falls in love with Theseus. He promises to marry her and take her back to Athens to be his queen if she helps him escape the labyrinth. Theseus essentially seduces Ariadne only so she would assist him because no one who entered the labyrinth had ever escaped. Without her, he would have died even after he killed the Minotaur, because he would have gotten lost and starved to death.
She helps him, and then on the way back to Athens, he abandons her on the island of Naxos. She ends up marrying the Greek god Dionysus, though, so she wins in the end.
Cobb also meets Ariadne out of need. He can’t build the dreams himself, because his presence brings in the villainous projection of his deceased wife Mal (Marion Cotillard), and he doesn’t want her to know the maze. So, Cobb’s father-in-law, Miles (Michael Caine), introduces him to Ariadne. From there, instead of seducing her or deceiving her, Cobb is her mentor. He is forthright about the nature of the job and trains her to build the dreams, which she finds fascinating.
Conversely, Ariadne has an equally profound impact on Cobb. When she senses he is struggling with his guilt for his role in Mal’s death, she sets out to help him. She did have to enter his dreams of her own accord to see the nature of the issue, but once she is aware, she insists she joins the job to support him. Ariadne is the only person to whom Cobb confides the truth. Then, when Mal kills Fisher (Cillian Murphy) in the final dream layer, Ariadne encourages Cobb to go into limbo and face Mal one last time, salvaging the mission.
Many tales of old, like Theseus and the Minotaur, devalue the role of women. It is refreshing to see Nolan empower Ariadne as both a prodigious creator and an essential member of the team, which consists entirely of men besides her.
Mal & The Minotaur
The other female character in Inception is, of course, Mal. The Minotaur. The evil force at the center of the maze.
Another common thread in Greek mythology is that if something goes wrong, it’s likely because one of the gods was offended. In The Odyssey, much of Odysseus’s plight comes from an angry Poseidon, and the same is true in the case of the Minotaur.
The humanoid beast exists because Minas asked for Poseidon’s favor in fighting his brothers for the throne of Crete. Poseidon, the god of the sea and horses, grants Minas his wish and sends him a bull to sacrifice as a show of gratitude. But apparently, Minas thought the bull was so pretty that he sacrificed another bull instead.
Why did he think Poseidon wouldn’t find out? Who knows. But obviously, the god did find out, and he used his godly influence to force Minas’s wife to mate with the bull he originally sent, giving birth to the Minotaur. To avoid upsetting Poseidon further, Minas built the labyrinth around the Minotaur instead of killing it.
The way Mal fills the same thematic role as the Minotaur is far less crude, but the intention that caused it is the same: betrayal. Minas betrayed Poseidon’s trust when he didn’t sacrifice the bull. Cobb betrayed Mal’s trust when he implanted in her mind the idea that her reality wasn’t real, causing her eventual suicide. They both paid the price for their actions.
Cobb, So Complex
This represents how Cobb reflects both Minas and Theseus. He creates the villain, but also faces the villain. Due to Cobb’s guilt, Mal, like the Minotaur, haunts the mazes. She always shows up at the worst times to throw a wrench into the mission, murdering or torturing anyone who stands in her way. But she is there because she is haunting Cobb’s mind. His guilt for his role in her death continues to destroy him.
Nolan also creates a contrast between Cobb and Minas. Cobb spent a long time immersed in his guilt. He created the prison of memories for her, which empowered her as the villain. But the climax of the movie is his decision to face her once and for all. On the other hand, in the myth, Minas puts the Minotaur out of sight and out of mind. Had Theseus never shown up, that monster might still be alive today, and it seems from the story that Minas would be OK with that. Especially because the Minotaur also provided a means of retribution.
Theseus went to Crete its forces defeated Athens in war. As a result, Athens was required to send Crete seven young men and seven young women to be sacrificed to the Minotaur every seven years. Thus, Theseus faced the Minotaur to spare further Athenians from a horrible fate, earning his place as prince of Athens.
Therein lies another overlap with Inception. Both Cobb and Theseus have selfish reasons to go into their respective labyrinths: Cobb to get home to his children and Theseus to be a prince. This sees them act without considering others. Cobb refuses to tell the team that, by entering the dreams under sedation, being killed won’t wake them up as usual. Theseus seduces and then betrays Ariadne.
But there are selfless reasons they go about the task, as well. By taking the risk, Cobb helps the world via Fisher breaking up his father’s energy empire, and Theseus spares the Athenians from a horrible fate.
The Maze is the Mind
In the myth, that horrible fate is corporeal. Literal. The labyrinth is a massive man-made structure fit for imprisoning a monster. In the film, the labyrinth is symbolic. It exists as the mazes Ariadne builds for each dream layer.
Through this presentation, Nolan taps into the most prevalent metaphor the labyrinth has come to represent since ancient Greek times: the human mind. Cobb and his team enter people’s minds through their dreams in order to gather information (extraction) or introduce new ideas (inception). The deeper they go, the more dangerous it gets, but the more effective their methods are because they are going deeper into the subject’s mind.
Such thematic and intentional overlaps demonstrate how and why old narratives can serve as models for modern stories in any medium. When looking back at the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, the themes are universal: venturing into the unknown to face challenges, asking for help from those around you along the way. There are probably thousands of retellings from a purely thematic standpoint.
In this case, Nolan’s retelling is more direct than thematic. He consciously inserted the concept of mazes into his story, and he could only do so through science fiction.
His solution is truly elegant. Because the dreams are mazes built with dream-sharing technology, we never see any characters enter a literal labyrinth. But he laid out the plot so the viewers believe they’re in one. Plus, the theme of the labyrinth being internal is also supported by the idea that exploring someone's dream in the movie is exploring their mind.
Without the sci-fi element, Nolan would have to find a way to build a maze somewhere big enough for a team of adults to explore. This would automatically shift the tone away from humanity and more towards fantasy and adventure, akin to Indiana Jones or Tomb Raider, finding a hidden maze in some vast, unexplored landscape.
Plus, Nolan’s method allowed him to film in any kind of environment. The mazes can exist in any form within the dream, so the characters can explore a modern city, a lush hotel, and a mountainous fortress, all while Nolan adhered to the bones of the Greek myth.
The one official image Nolan has shared from The Odyssey suggests that the movie will be a time-accurate retelling (see header image), so he won’t necessarily have to concoct elegant ways to integrate the expansive elements of the myth like the cyclops, Scylla and Charybdis, the sirens, and the underworld.
It’s safe to expect he’ll show it all. It might not be historically accurate, but after Inception, Nolan has proven he is up to the task of capturing what truly matters in a Greek myth and turning it into a triumph of cinema.