How do cobb and ariadne get to limbo

In Greek Mythology, she was considered the "Mistress of the Labyrinth". In the legend of Theseus and the Minotaur, Ariadne was a princess of Crete, and her father the king created a labyrinth with a Minotaur inside it. Every year seven men and seven women would have to be sacrificed to it. One year, a hero named Theseus offered to kill the Minotaur, and Ariadne fell in love with him, so she gave him a ball of string before he entered the labyrinth as well as directions.

Theseus was able to kill the Minotaur and took Ariadne for his bride. In some accounts of the myth, Theseus later abandoned Ariadne on the island of Naxos, where she was discovered and rescued by the god Dionysus.

Ariadne eventually became the wife of Dionysus and joined the pantheon of gods on Mount Olympus. This song can also be read as backing the theory that "Inception" follows the metaphysics of "A Course in Miracles", a spiritual text which describes humanity as dreaming. The dream is described in the Course as having a flavour or underlying, all-pervasive guilt—just as Cobb tells Adriadne he experiences.

Truth, says ACIM, is buried deep in the dreamer's unconscious mind cf. Mal's safe , and Spirit tries to wake us up to our innocence through what is metaphorically described as "an ancient melody" that speaks of our innocence cf.

Cobb is told by Ariadne that the key to him undoing the nightmarish situation in which he is entrapped with Mal is forgiveness. Cobb forgives both Mal and himself, releases his regrets, and so heals his past another key theme of ACIM.

Thus in the movie, Ariadne serves as the "mistress of the labyrinth" both in the obvious sense of devising dream labyrinthine architecture, and in the more subtle sense of leading Cobb out of his mental imprisonment. The city Yusuf's Dream 2. The hotel Arthur's Dream 3. The mountain Eames' Dream 4. Limbo the decaying city and the castle where Cobb finds Saito Edit. This is a storytelling device. As Cobb tells the story, the audience and Ariadne both imagine Cobb and Mal as they are young-the only way we know them, because it is from our and Ariadne's point of view.

When Cobb reminds Mal that they did grow old together, and we see them as they really were in his memory, walking together as older people, finally we see their aged hands clasped together, shaking as they lie on the tracks. It is then we realize how that final scene really was in Cobb's memory, and we understand the full life that they have shared. It is not explicitly explained. The device used to enter dreams connects to the wrist of the people using it, but it does not appear to be intravenous IV.

After Saito wakes from his dream on the train, he feels his wrist, which shows no evidence of needle puncture, etc. The machine is a plot device that somehow allows the experience of shared subconscious during dreaming, and it also apparently rapidly induces REM sleep the phase of sleep in which dreaming takes place.

It also maintains this REM state for the duration of its activation, obviously necessary for the extraction missions. The science or mechanism behind these features of the machine are not explained, presumably as they have nothing to do with the actual plot. An example of a plausible explanation may involve the use of electromagnetic pulses to stimulate rapid onset of REM, but this is pure speculation. In this case it was both. The fact that Cobb and Ariadne can voluntarily follow Fischer into Limbo means that Limbo is simply the fourth dream level, where you also end up when you die in one of the first three dream levels while still sedated, which is what happened to Saito and Fischer.

Due to the sedative, a synchronized multi-level kick was needed the van freefalling, the original plan for the hotel floor explosion, and the snow fortress explosion. Yusuf's kick van freefall was too early due to Fischer's projections attacking, and thus, the kicks weren't synchronized.

This was designed to ensure that the team was able to stay where they needed to and finish the job. If one kick failed because it wasn't synchronized, they could try another while using the musical countdown to warn the next level that it was coming. Earlier in the movie Arthur tells Ariadne that if Yusuf kicks too early i.

While normally in order to wake up you must receive a kick in the level above, this isn't true when using the special sedative. Instead with the sedative it takes two or more synchronized kicks in all levels simultaneously.

Arthur didn't have the second kick ready when the van drove off the bridge, so he wasn't awakened by the van falling off the bridge. When the elevator hit the ground floor and the group was kicked by the van hitting the water, they were pulled out of Eames' dream the snow fortress and simultaneously pulled out of Arthur's dream the hotel back into Yusuf's dream the van.

Cobb and Saito weren't kicked back up because they were still stuck in Limbo and weren't being kicked at that moment. So they were left in the van underwater still attached to the dreaming device. For normal sedatives, you just go back to reality if you become aware that you are in Limbo.

As shown where Cobb and Mal returned to reality. If the timer on the machine reaches zero and you've forgotten where you really are, you accept it as reality become older like Saito and die. You'll never go back to reality as your mind perceives that you're dead coma. But these are memories—fresh in his mind due to the fact that he just woke up from dreaming about the time Mal and he spent in Limbo together. If you notice, there is no evidence that the window is part of Yusuf's bathroom.

The curtains with their warm glow are even the same as those in the hotel room. This is followed by a close-up shot of Mal sitting on the ledge of the hotel room where she committed suicide. These are all fresh recent memories to Cobb since he relives them in his dream. The room behind her is fine. The room she lured Cobb to is trashed because she is setting up a crime scene that will implicate Cobb in her death. She lures Cobb to the room across from her so she can try to convince him to die with her, without giving him any chance of stopping her.

Here she shows a more sinister side: if he doesn't join her in jumping off the ledge willingly out of love for her, she has made it so he might be pressured to jump unwillingly to avoid being framed for her murder. And, in fact, it is because he doesn't jump that he ends up framed for her murder, which would motivate Cobb to follow after Mal and commit suicide to avoid a life sentence. It's also possible she hoped that if he didn't jump, he'd be sentenced to death and upon execution, would join her.

She was hedging her bets in trying to ensure he would wind up dying in every scenario to join her in what she believed would be the real world. Time needed in Reality: 10 hours. In Level 1, time in the dream: 1 week. Idea to be planted: I will not follow my father's footsteps. Method: Eames disguises and impersonates Browning, Fischer's godfather and convinces him that his father loves him and doesn't want him to follow his footsteps. Cobb gets a random number from Fischer's mind to set the hotel room number in level 2.

Yusuf drives with everyone in the van to the bridge where they can perform the Kick. Kick: the van hit through the barrier and off the bridge. In Level 2, time in the dream: 6 months. Idea to be planted: I will create something for myself. Method: Eames reminds Fischer about the number. The team tricks Fischer by letting Fischer's projection of Browning tells him that his father so it seems self-generated has an alternate will which supersedes the other and his father wants him to split his empire.

Kick: to have the floor of the hotel room with everyone drop from underneath by triggering the explosives in below. In Level 3, time in the dream: 10 years.

Idea to be planted: My father doesn't want me to be him. Method: By now, the random number Fischer comes up will be the security code for his safe. His projection of father should appear in the vault. Eames need to come up with something to put in the safe paper fan from the picture Fischer cherished most to let Fischer thinks that his father doesn't want Fischer to be him.

Kick: Drop from exploding the hospital floor. All the kicks are synchronized. Dropping hospital floor sends them from Level 3 to Level 2, dropping hotel floor sends them from Level 2 to Level 1, the falling van in Level 1 Yusuf back to the plane, where he performs final kicks to wake the rest of the team. Charles" is a gambit designed to alert the Target Fischer to turn against his own subconscious by telling him that he's dreaming and pointing out the strangeness of it all, gaining his trust in order to move forward with the mission at hand as quickly as possible.

Cobb impersonates as Mr. Charles, a projection of Fischer's subconscious trained by an Extractor who comes to help him to get rid of the intruders. This is extremely dangerous as this alerts Fischer's trained subconscious to be well-prepared to find the intruders and kill them Fischer's projections in the third level down are militarized and well-armed. Eames is the "dreamer" for the third level. Fischer, as he is for dream levels 1 and 2, is the "subject" of the dream. The task of being the dreamer on each level requires being someone within the team so the designs for the dream space can be correctly constructed according to plan.

Mal told Cobb her plan to incriminate him if he won't jump with her. Mal went to 3 different psychologists to prove that she's mentally sane, then sent a letter to their attorney that Cobb is trying to kill her and papers indicating her mental state. Considering that Mal had deliberately staged a struggle in the hotel room before she jumped off the ledge of the opposite room, this is why the police refuse to listen to Cobb's explanation that she's mentally unstable and conclude that he killed her.

It's left unclear as to how forensic pathologists wouldn't have been able to verify that Mal fell from the building on the opposite side of space between the buildings, but it might suffice to say that the street or alleyway was narrower than it seems to us the audience or that Cobb was convinced enough of Mal's plan to simply run from the law without giving his statement, making him a fugitive. In either case or both cases, it's possible that what we see or gather from exposition is Cobb's imperfect and guilt-filled recollection of the events, which aligns perfectly with the "metaphysics" of the movie's narrative—that the world is what one makes of it.

That's the original Inception plan. However, it seems that not even a day has passed in level 1 dream throughout the whole mission. This is due to the unforeseen circumstances such as Fischer's subconscious being trained heavily armed and capable of finding the intruders quickly and Saito is hurt and dying, so their mission needs to be completed as quickly as possible. The team knew the number beforehand, when Fischer told them.

Since Arthur is the Dreamer, all he needs to do is to change the room number s. Most importantly, the person needs to be fully aware that he's in Limbo. Under heavy sedation and with the time machine still in countdown, one needs to produce two synchronized kicks to return to the level above or one needs to synchronize the kick that person performs in Limbo with all kicks on the level above to the level 1 dream, then return to reality.

Under normal sedation, just killing oneself or performing a kick on each level separately would do doesn't need to be synchronized since a slight disturbance can cause dreams to collapse. The evidence is generally very weak in demonstrating that the "reality" present in the film is any different than the reality that we experience every day, and that is in the context of cinema and television in general, in that tales conveyed through motion pictures are comprised of distinct scenes that are usually edited together and contain gaps between them in a similar way as how the collection of dream segments in a single period of REM sleep play out to a dreamer.

That is to say, the events in Inception form no more of a dream than the events of any other "typical" flick. The arguments and counterarguments are as follows. Repeated lines of dialog shared amongst the characters: Mal and Saito both tell Cobb to take a "leap of faith", and Cobb predicts what Saito will say in limbo. However, coincidental and repeated lines are common in countless films without any reason to believe they are "all a dream.

In fact, "take a leap of faith" is a common and widespread expression, which Cobb tells Mal to convince her to suicide in Limbo.

The other phrases were said during conversation between Saito and Cobb after he was shot and before they went to 2nd dream. The clumsiness of the homicide police investigation regarding Mal's case and put the blame on Cobb entirely.

We don't know all the circumstances surrounding the investigation, and bad investigations happen all the time, so this is hardly evidence for the whole film being a dream. The spinning top at the end of the film. The top is a totem used to help verify whether Cobb's in reality or in someone else's dream, but it offers no verification against being in his own dream. He knows the exact weight, composition and how it should spin.

So whether the top stops or continue spinning, it's not important as even when it stops, it could be that Cobb believes that he finally reunite with his family, hence his dream fully becomes his reality. It's true that if the whole film is a dream, the top wouldn't matter, but this is not evidence for the film being a dream. You could say that about any behavior of any object in the whole movie. Also, Cobb tells Ariadne how it worked. Another possibility is that Ariadne was hired to seduce Cobb into telling her how it worked, and then trick him into looking at his children and forget to watch it until it stopped.

In Mombasa, in the bathroom after he tests Yusuf's sedative, you see the figure of Mal behind the curtains, if he was in "reality" then his subconscious could not be projecting her. Not projections. These were just memories. The curtains were not in Yusuf's bathroom-they are the same curtains as in the hotel room, Cobb was just remembering of her.

Cobb's totem was not Mal's top, rather one could suggest that Mal was his reality check, his "real" totem. Yet throughout the movie he was directly or indirectly responsible for either killing her or imprisoning her, in essence losing his sense of reality and refusing to face up to the facts-which may be that he was indeed dreaming the whole time.

Cobb's totem was Mal's top. In no way was Mal his reality check-it is quite the opposite. The musical score that is heard, is the slowed down playhead of "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien", which is the Edith Piaf song used for the musical countdown.

The significance here is that the deeper you go into the dream, time slows, thus the music will slow too, mimicking the score. This musical design perhaps indicates that Cobb's reality was still very much a dream state too. The music only slows down when listened to from a lower level, due to the time dilation at that level.

Yes, the song was integrated into the score, but only as a theme. Numerous improbable or coincidental events that happened during parts of "reality".

Cobb is saved by Saito coincidentally during the chase between Cobol Engineering agents and him. Saito has been tailing Cobb to protect his investment-not coincidental at all. Nearly the entire team is highly proficient with all types of weaponry, though certainly Cobb at least, does not appear to have had any particularized weapons training. How does Ariadne know how to even fire a gun, much less hit anything?

All appear to be highly capable in all sorts of militaristic tasks, from skiing, to explosives, to hand to hand combat, to sniping etc. They are in a dream world during all scenes involving weapon use. Their real world weapon abilities would have no effect here. Like Eames was saying on level 1, "You need to learn to dream bigger", and then produces a grenade launcher.

During the dream state, they have limited control over the experience, similar to The Matrix. This may be a continuity error, but when Arthur goes to get Cobb in Tokyo after the failed extraction of Saito, they leave the hotel room and go to the roof for the helicopter at night.

When they're on the roof, it's day. More counter-evidence: 1. The children are two years older in the last scene see cast list. The spinning top starts to wobble just as the movie ends, and also is heard to topple and scoot across the table after it cuts to black. Hinduism and Buddhism both share the idea that the world is "maya", or an illusion and that we are on a journey of "awakening from the dream".

This has been taught by such Indian saints as Sri Ramana Maharishi and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who call it "Advaida", which means non-duality; the idea that all the universe is just one consciousness, connecting everything in it. We act out our lives like a play shown onto a movie screen.

But only those who achieve Nirvana a. According to the Advaida philosophy, it is only when we are in a state of deep sleep that we come close to the timeless, "true" state of being that is the universal consciousness, which all Nature is part of.

When we wake up, in effect we are waking into a world that is illusory. A separate movement believes in the specific idea that humanity is collectively dreaming a dream of guilt and separation, from which we need to wake up by practicing forgiveness. This is a metaphysic ideology given in "A Course in Miracles" and "The Way of Mastery", which are spiritual texts purportedly channelled from Jesus in the s and '90s respectively.

ACIM in particular has influenced most spiritual "new age" authors and commentators today. The wedding ring on Cobb's hand that's present in dreams but absent in the real world. To refute: This could be because in what Cobb sees as a dream, he wants Mal to still be alive and married to him keeps her alive in his memories , but in so-called reality, Cobb knows he's not married anymore and took it off.

It may, in fact, be his totem, so if Cobb took it off long ago he would not know that he wasn't in reality. While mourning his wife I doubt he would consciously check the weight. If "reality" is his dream, which Mal says in an argument while alive, his subconscious would recreate the weight anyway; totems only tell you when you're in someone else's head unless you know you're dreaming. The kids at the end of the film are different and are older compared to the younger ones we've seen throughout the film.

Their clothes are slightly different. The girl has a white shirt underneath her red dress and his son was wearing shoes instead of sandals at the end. This is the most solid evidence. Observe carefully. Also if he was dreaming, he would not be able to know what his children's faces would have looked like turning around and seeing him seeing as how he cannot change a memory.

He even said himself earlier in the film that no matter how hard he tried, he, "can't change this moment. The top. There's a significant difference between the top that keeps spinning flawlessly when he's in a dream and the top that's spinning at the end of the film which clearly wobbles, loses momentum and does sound like it is stopping. It does wobble and lose momentum, strong signs, but it sounded not like it toppled but that the sound for the top cut out.

See the FAQ entry concerning totems. Mal's top adds another layer of unreliability to determining whether the end is reality or dream, since everyone knows the nature of Mal's spinning top; not to mention it does not take any special knowledge to cause a spinning top to fall over in your dream-that's what tops do.

It is showed at the end that Cobb and Mal did grow old together for 50 years in Limbo with them walking the streets as old man and woman, two old hands hold together on the train tracks. The rules, technical aspects of performing the Extraction and Inception in the film. Cobb remembers exactly how he got to where he is, which he wouldn't know if he was dreaming.

But where was the car ride from the airport to home? Did he even think to try to remember? These aren't explicitly revealed. The emotional depth of the film. If the ending is real, it shows that Cobb does go on an emotional journey, to take a "leap of faith" to believe that Saito will honor their agreement so he could go home and see his kids and finally get over with his wife's death and guilt. The scene where Cobb talks with old Saito is significant as it shows they've grown and become friends, as Cobb had said to him: "Come back and let's be young men together.

This is hardly evidence to support it was reality. The important part to the ending is that it doesn't actually matter if the top fell or not-if it's reality or not. That is the resolution. Cobb and Mal do not end up together. This could only be a factor of reality. If it were a dream, Cobb would have found a way of keeping Mal alive in the dream so that he could be with her. Cobb wouldn't want to do this because he states that his recreation of her in his dreams "isn't good enough" because it doesn't truly capture what she was in real life, with all her perfection and flaws.

In fact, Cobb never wanted to stay with her, he just created that projection to keep remembering her, as somebody who keeps all the time remembering of a dead loved one, but in this case he was doing that in a much "real-looking" way.

So, making them together would never work, as he kept rejecting her the whole movie. Every time this occurs, it's not cutting to another scene with in the "present" reality, but it "cuts to" either a higher or lower dream within the dream, or it "cuts to" reality.

He's not a "happy ending" director, but he's optimistic about the future All scripts start with Fade In and end with Fade Out Alternatively, Nolan is showing that what we commonly believe to be reality exists during the film, and that Cobb is indeed in what we'd call "reality" at the end of the film. But the spinning top is a clue from him-an inception to us, the audience-that our idea of "reality" may in itself be the projection of a dreaming mind, that collectively, we are all dreaming an outpictured "reality" full of projected figures.

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Version labels for answers. Linked 1. Limbo exists as a shared space that is not dreamt by any one of the individuals dreaming together, but is a shared space where any one of the minds sharing the dream can make drastic alterations of any kind without limits or obstacles. Because of the apparent lack of limitations, limbo is a dimension that can allow a dreamer to manifest their deepest desires, but also unwittingly trap themselves in a world where they lose their awareness that the world created is not reality.

During Inception , limbo takes on the appearance of an endless ocean. Under the influence of Dom and Mal, an enormous and elaborate city was built, though it has been abandoned and is decaying since Cobb's last appearance to the city. Limbo can be entered by traveling deeper through the dream levels. The only reason this is possible is because, as Yusuf establishes earlier, the team cannot create more than three stable levels of dreams.

Therefore, sleeping in Level 3 results is a sleeper dreaming themselves into Limbo. It should also be noted that manually entering Limbo allows a sleeper to retain the knowledge that they are dreaming, making it easier to avoid becoming 'lost' in Limbo. At some unspecified point in time before the Fischer inception job began, Cobb and Mal were performing experiments to see how deep they could travel within their minds.

Eventually they manually dreamt themselves into Limbo. Here they were able to create a perfect environment together and "feel like gods". Eventually, the couple began to build from their memories, making the distinction between reality and dream more difficult to distinguish.

Over time, Cobb became dissatisfied with Limbo because he knew that it was not real, while Mal was beginning to accept it as her reality, as she saw Limbo as a paradise. Mal would not accept that she was asleep, so Cobb was forced to perform Inception on her, planting the idea in her mind that her world was not real. At this point Mal was filled with enough doubt to allow her and Cobb to kill themselves on train tracks in order to wake up.