Top left and right: The people sleeping in the room in Mambasa (left), is similar to the roomful of unconscious patients in Coma (right), the 1978 film based on Robin Cook's novel of the same name. (Coma was re-made as a television mini-series in 2012). Above left and right: Dom holding Mal's foot (left) is a reference to the same thing as the prominent showing of women's feet in certain of Quentin Tarantino's films, such as the fitting of a shoe to Bridget Von Hammersmark's foot by Colonel Hans Landa in Inglouorious Basterds (right). What both of these refer to is Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist Carl Jung's idea that in dreams, the foot represents the relation to Earthly reality.[a]
Top left: Some people sitting near Dom and Fischer in a hotel restaurant, look over at the two men. This is an indication that the people sense the 'foreign nature' of someone in the current dream. Top right: The liquid in Fischer's drink begins to vibrate as the hotel building becomes unsteady. Arthur tells Ariadne that this unsteadiness is due to Dom drawing Fischer's attention to the strangeness of the dream, which is making his subconscious look for the dreamer (supposedly, Arthur, who is sitting with Ariadne in a different part of the hotel). Above left: At certain points in Martin Scorsese's 1976 film, Taxi Driver, the main character, Travis Bickle, senses that strangers (such as these two men) are looking at him. As indicated in the analysis of Scorsese's movie on this blog, part of it depicts a dream Travis experiences. Above right: We're shown a close-up of Travis's drink 'fizzing' after he puts two antacid tablets in it.
Top left: Heywood Floyd touches the rectangular black 'monolith' in Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. As indicated in the analysis of 2001 on this blog, Floyd's body is occupied by an alien life force representing 'feminine evil', and the monoliths in the movie were placed by an alien race representing the same. Top right: Inception's Ariadne touches a large rectangular mirror-door. This corresponds to Floyd touching the 2001 monolith; and as stated, Floyd's body is occupied by an alien life force representing feminine evil. Thus, the fact that Ariadne here sees herself in an object representing the Space Odyssey monolith, is a clue from the makers of Inception that in actual reality, i.e., 'outside' all of the dream layers of the film, Ariadne represents the presence of feminine evil, i.e., she is a feminist ideologue. As suggested in part 2 of this analysis, Ariadne's appearance as someone who is helpful to Cobb, a man trying to re-unite with his children, is really just a 'front'. The audience of Inception never sees Ariadne as she is in reality because, as will be described later in the analysis, the entire movie is a dream.
Above left: Ariadne steps on and breaks a wine glass, alerting Mal to her presence. Above right: Moments after Mal confronts Ariadne, we hear a crunching noise when Mal steps on shards of the same (now-broken) glass. In this scene, the two women are alone together in a suite in the hotel where Dom and Mal spent their wedding anniversaries together. In some lesbian Jewish wedding ceremonies, both participants step on a wine glass.
a. "The foot, as the organ nearest the earth, represents in dreams the relation to earthly reality..." (--Jung, C.G., The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Vol. 5, Princeton University Press, 1967, para. 356.)
