New York’s heat wave gave us the perfect excuse to escape into the cool movie theater for a few hours to check out Christopher Nolan’s latest production, Inception (don’t worry, we won’t spoil the movie for you, we just want to share some thoughts about this very architectural-ish movie).
The movie’s protagonist, Dom Cobb, assembles a skilled team to extract secrets or, in rare cases, to implant ideas deep within a person’s subconscious. Arguably the most important member, the architect, Ariadne (Ellen Page), designs these dreams. At the simplest level, she is designing a maze – a complex and compelling labyrinth where the buildings and their layouts are controlled by the architect, but how it is occupied and what the “projections” do (figures the subconscious envisions), is determined by the dreamer. As you can imagine, her designing leads to some crazy ideas, such as a penrose staircase or even cities that literally fold on top of themselves. Yet, her success lies not in grandiose, crazy designs, but rather in the ability to connect with the dreamer, allowing his subconscious to comfortably take to the design and let his mind fill it with his ideas.
