Inception

A film written and directed by Christopher Nolan and produced by him and his wife Emma Tomas; starring Leonardo Di Caprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Elliot Page, Marion Cotillard and Ken Watanabe among others. 

Di Caprio plays the role of a criminal who introduces himself in the subconscious of his targets and steals information. In the team, there is also Gordon-Levitt as Arthur. But why is this film related to architecture? Well, because in order to be able to get into people’s minds, first, they need to design the dream. Elliot Page as Ariadne is an architecture student in Paris who is asked to work for them. So as to explain to her what her job would be like Cob (Di Caprio) shares a dream with her where she can experience what is like to design without any limitations, even defying laws of physics. But in this first dream she is attacked by Cob’s deceased wife (Marion Cotillard) so she declines the offer. However, once she has experience what it is like to bring to life the most incredible designs, she cannot settle for reality and accepts it.  

The job of the architect is crucial in this film because she is the one responsible for making the dreams look like real life, for creating mazes that only she is able to solve and that will keep the rest of the team safe and sound. The first thing that she is asked to do is to design a maze in less than two minutes that takes only one minute to solve. She is also shown how to create paradoxical sutures such as the Penrose steps.  

The first time that I saw this film was about six years ago and I was amazed by all those impossible scenarios and the special effects as well as by the plot itself. But this last time what caught my attention was the fact that there were no restrictions when it came to imagining buildings. I remember one scene where Cob says that he and his wife preferred the dream world because they could choose how their house could be like without any limitations whatsoever.  He says as he shows Ariadne a modern building while dreaming “we both wanted to live in a house we loved this type of building. In the real world we’d have to choose but not here”. There is indeed a condominium inside a building that looks like a brand-new co-op. It is true that in the real world it is not likely that two different types of houses with such a different structure are merged.  

In short, I really enjoyed watching Inception again because I could fantasize with the idea of buildings that are not limited by reality.