This article contains mentions of suicide.
There is a hidden meaning behind the names of almost every main character in Christopher Nolan’s mind-blowing sci-fi work. Beginning that relates to their motivations or the themes of the story. After The Dark Knight Made Nolan a household name, Beginning He proved that he could turn a puzzling original story into a global blockbuster. Audiences around the world were captivated by Nolan’s tale of a group of robbers planning a daring job in a dreamscape. From the dream-within-a-dream logic to the ambiguous ending, fans still debate the ins and outs of this film to this day.
As with all of Nolan’s work, Beginning It was meticulously crafted to hide deeper meanings in every little detail, including the characters’ names. The initials of six of the main characters (Dom, Robert, Eames, Arthur, Mal, and Saito) come together to form the word “Dreams.” Add Peter, Ariadne, and Yusuf to that and you get the word “Dreams Pay,” alluding to the characters’ unusual profession of jumping from dream to dream. Most of these names also have their own individual meaning. Nolan named all of the key characters in Beginning with a hidden thematic or dramatic meaning.
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8 Yusuf
Dileep Rao appears in the Beginning You play Yusuf, the unconventional pharmacist who supplies Cobb and his team with all the sleeping pills they need to pull off their dream heists. Cobb wants to do all his work under the radar, with no one regulating his activity and no chance of it being traced back to him. That’s where Yusuf comes in; he operates in the underworld, providing Cobb with unapproved drugs that allow him to enter and exit the minds of his victims. The chemist has a unique role on Cobb’s team.
Cobb and company are the ones who infiltrate their victims’ dreams, but Yusuf is the one who controls their dreams by controlling their sleep and monitoring their unconscious minds. The key to understanding the hidden meaning of this character’s name is that Yusuf is the Arabic form of Joseph. In the Bible, Joseph interpreted the Pharaoh’s dreams. Yusuf doesn’t necessarily interpret his victims’ dreams, but he does put them into a state of sleep so deep that it leaves their dreams open to interpretation.
7 fisherman
Nolan’s frequent collaborator Cillian Murphy appears in Beginning as Robert Fischer, the wealthy heir whose dreams are infiltrated by Cobb and his team to implant an idea in his head. Fischer shares his name with chess prodigy Bobby Fischer, the 11th World Chess Champion, which might be more of a nod to the themes of the film as a whole than anything specific to the character himself. Beginning It’s all about mind games and using your wits to outsmart your opponents in an intellectual showdown, and chess is the epitome of that.
It might also have something to do with the myth of the Fisher King. The Fisher King was the last line of defense protecting the Holy Grail, but the most interesting thing about his story is that his wounds affected his surroundings; his wounds were reflected in his kingdom. BeginningFischer’s thoughts and emotions impact his subconscious mind, causing changes in the characters’ surroundings as they go through their dreams.
6 Eames
Eames is the silver-tongued demon played by Tom Hardy. He is described as a dealer, a buyer and seller of stolen goods, but his main area of expertise is counterfeiting, specifically identity theft. Eames doesn’t just steal people’s credit cards; he goes a step further and impersonates them in the dream world. He uses his ability to embody other people to manipulate Fischer in the dream world, making him an invaluable asset to Cobb’s team. Eames is also one of the funniest characters in the film; he always has a hilarious quip up his sleeve.
The name Eames comes from the surname of Charles Eames and his wife, Ray-Bernice Kaiser Eames. Collectively known as “The Eames Office,” they are two of the most important and revered designers of all time. They broke new ground in the fields of architecture and furniture. Their crowning achievement, the Eames House in Pacific Palisades, is lauded as a landmark in mid-20th-century modern architecture. Nolan draws many parallels between the principles of architecture and the construction of his dream apartments, and this is one of the most obvious.
5 Saito
Reunion with Nolan after his role in Batman BeginsKen Watanabe appears in Beginning Saito is the Japanese businessman who kicks off the main plot of the film by hiring Cobb and his team to introduce an idea into the mind of Robert Fischer. It is made clear that the initial idea is extremely dangerous, but Cobb accepts the job because Saito promises to clear his criminal record, allowing him to return to his children if he does so. Watanabe captured a different dimension of Saito’s character as he progressed through each dream level, making for a well-rounded portrayal of the role.
Saito is a common Japanese surname, especially in the northeastern region of Japan, but it has a deeper meaning in BeginningIt means “purification,” which ties into Saito’s role in the story. Saito gets Cobb to accept a dangerous job by planting an idea in Fischer’s mind promising to wipe his criminal record—in other words, “purify” his record.
4 Bad
Mal, played by Marion Cotillard, is the closest thing to… Beginning There has to be a top-notch villain. The real Mal died before the events of the film; she took her own life to prove she was in a dream, but turned out to be in the waking world, where death is permanent. The character who appears in the film is a projection of Cobb’s guilt over Mal’s suicide. Although Cobb is a master dream extractor who can control virtually anything in the dreamscape, he can’t control his projection of Mal.
Mal wasn’t an evil person in life, but her posthumous manifestation in the dreamscape acts as the film’s villain. Since she messes with Cobb’s mind every chance she gets, she’s a classic femme fatale, and has a name to match. “Mal” is the Latin root for all things evil, as in “malice,” “malevolence,” “malpractice,” “ill-intentioned,” etc. In French, Spanish, Portuguese, and several other languages, “mal” means “wicked” or “wrong.” Suffice it to say, it’s an appropriate name for a villain.
3 Arthur
Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Cobb’s partner, Arthur, who leads the crew and investigates all missions. He is Cobb’s right-hand man and most trusted confidant. BeginningThe characters in ‘ represent members of a film crew. If Cobb is the director with the unifying vision, Arthur is the producer who oversees operations and makes sure everything runs smoothly. The hidden meaning behind Arthur’s name is not as obvious as that of other characters in ‘ BeginningIt doesn’t come from a historical figure, like Eames, and it’s not the root word of what the character represents, like Mal.
BeginningArthur is often associated with King Arthur, and Cobb’s crew is compared to the Knights of the Round Table. But that doesn’t make much sense, because Arthur is not the leader of the crew at all. BeginningAlternatively, it could be named after legendary science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke. 2001: A Space Odyssey He’s been a huge influence on Nolan’s work, and Clarke is exactly the brain behind it. Beginning‘s Arthur is.
2 Ariadne
Elliot Page co-stars Beginning Ariadne is the newest addition to Cobb’s team. She’s a graduate student in the field of architecture who is recruited to build labyrinths in the dreamscape. Ariadne is essentially the audience surrogate for the film; while Cobb explains the entire complicated story to her, he’s also explaining it to the viewer. Ariadne’s name has its roots in Greek mythology. In Greek mythology, Ariadne was the name of a Cretan princess, nicknamed the “Lady of the Labyrinth.” She is the daughter of King Minos of Crete and is best known for helping Theseus escape from the Minotaur.
Ariadne helped Theseus escape from the Minotaur by giving him a sword and a ball of rope to guide him through the labyrinth, which is where the connection to her lies. Beginning The name comes from. But the Beginning The character turns the mythological character on its head. In the myth, Ariadne simply helps Theseus find his way out of the labyrinth; BeginningShe creates the maze. Ariadne earns a place on Cobb’s team by creating a maze that he can’t solve.
1 ear of corn
The leader of the dream team in Beginningplayed by Leonardo DiCaprio, is named Dom Cobb. This isn’t the first time Nolan has given a character that name; Cobb was also the name of the gentleman thief in Nolan’s low-budget debut film. FollowingIt could be that Nolan liked the name Cobb, which is why he used it twice, but there seems to be a subtle connection between the two. These two characters share a heady softness and moral ambiguity. Cobb’s name is easily interpretable; it’s similar to “khwaab,” which translates to “dream” in Sanskrit, Urdu, Hindi, and Punjabi.
So the name of the main character in Beginning Dom Cobb literally means “dream,” but that’s not the only deeper meaning hidden in Cobb’s name. Cobb’s first name is Dom, which means “home” in Polish (derived from the Latin word “domus”), and the character’s goal is to complete one last job so he can return home to his children. Dom Cobb infiltrates the khwaabs, or dreams, so he can return home, or domus, to see his children.