THE LABYRINTH OF MEMORY: IPHIGENEIA, SIMONIDES, AND CLASSICAL MODELS OF ARCHITECTURE AS MIND IN CHRIS NOLAN’S INCEPTION (2010)

Abstract

Chris Nolan’s 2010 film Inception uses architecture as a language whereby to comment upon the relationship of the protagonist, Dom Cobb, with his deceased wife, Mal. This paper argues that three classical models – Homer’s tomb of Myrhine described in the Iliad, Iphigeneia’s dream of the collapse of the house of Agamemnon in Euripides’s Iphigeneia Among the Taurians, and Simonides’ Memory Palace mnemonic technique – manifest parallel uses of architecture as a metaphor for mind. The film identifies each of its main characters – Dom, Mal, and Ariadne – with different architectures and with different modes of cognition. The Mal who haunts Dom’s dreams is explicitly identified as a force in his subconscious, and Nolan associates her with amorphous architectures and spaces – foremost with the formless viscosity of water. Dom himself is her antithesis, identified with linear architectures like palaces and straight-line mazes. Ariadne is identified with circular mazes and proves capable of mediating between Dom and his memories of his deceased wife in order to help him successfully to complete his greatest heist.

This paper agues that Inception‘s implied tripartite division of the self – with Dom representing the analytical conscious mind, Ariadne the intuitive mind, and Mal the dangerous depths of the subconscious – draws upon pop-Jungian formulations of the relation between conscious and subconscious modes of cognition in order to critique a set of gender norms often associated with male protagonists in the genre of the hard-boiled detective story. Inception is anticipated in subverting a dominant narrative of male heroes rescuing damaged female beloveds by the Classical models listed above; an examination of each of these passages helps to illuminate Nolan’s own interrogation of the “damaged beloved” narrative in ways which can be fruitfully used by secondary and college-level teachers in class discussion and writing assignments to promote empathy and more healthy relationships among their students.