When I watch a film or a series, I pay attention not only to the plot, script, visuals, acting, and music but also to its message and the life lessons or new perspectives it might offer. This time was no different.

László Tóth—the main character, inspired by the great modernist architects—is a man whose life has been shaped by war, loss, and exile. His work is more than just art; it is a way of confronting his past. He doesn’t shut out pain or try to erase it. Instead, he transforms it into something tangible—a structure that echoes the places where he was once imprisoned but with one crucial difference: space. High ceilings, light, air—architecture born from trauma, but instead of enclosing, it allows one to breathe. A symbol of freedom.

Personal experience can be a powerful creative force. Not every artist chooses to work this way. Some distance their work from their own history, separating life from creation. Others, like Tóth, can’t—or won’t—draw that line. And maybe that’s why his work carries so much weight.

But vision is one thing, and reality is another.

Tóth struggles not only with his own ambitions but also with the expectations of others. Creation is never a fully autonomous process. Every artist, designer, or architect eventually faces the question: how much can you stay true to yourself, and how much do you need to find common ground with your audience?

Vincent van Gogh remained true to his style until the end of his life but was only recognized posthumously. Staying completely faithful to your vision is a romantic ideal, but reality rarely allows for it.

If you design for people, sooner or later, you reach a point where you have to consider their needs. A bridge that leads nowhere is just a sculpture. A building that no one inhabits remains an abstraction. You can resist, fight for your ideas, but if you want your work to exist in the world, you have to find a way not just to speak but to be heard.

“No matter what others try to sell you, it is the destination, not the journey.” The film’s final words seem to challenge the popular philosophy that the journey matters more than the destination. They prompt a reconsideration: what is truly more important? The road or the result?

In art, design, and architecture, the final outcome is what others see. No one looks at how many iterations, trials, and failures led to it—what matters is what remains in the end. But if you focus only on the final result, it’s easy to miss everything else.

Maybe the outcome is for others, while the journey is for ourselves. We are the ones who experience the process, who learn, who struggle. It’s up to us to make the journey meaningful, but the world will only see the final work.

Perhaps it all depends on context. Perhaps it’s about balance. I don’t know. All I know is that after this film, I know even less.