You don't learn BIM. You fight it.
Lessons from Paul Thomas Anderson's "One Battle After Another"
There's a mental scene many professionals know well, even if they've never seen it on screen. You've just finished a challenging project in Revit — or any other BIM software — and for a moment, you feel in control. You know the commands, you've found your rhythm, you know where to click without thinking. Then the next project arrives, with a different typology, a client with new demands, a software update that moved three menu items. And it all starts again.
Welcome. You're not doing anything wrong. You're simply fighting the next battle.
"One Battle After Another" — Paul Thomas Anderson's film released in Fall 2025, six Oscar statuettes including Best Picture — carries a truth in its title that those working in BIM instinctively know. There is no final battle. There is only the next one. And the one after that.
The Veteran and the Floor He Never Laid
Bob Ferguson, the character played by Leonardo DiCaprio, is a former revolutionary who fought his battles years ago. He knows how the world works — or at least, he knows how it used to work. He has his methods, his habits, his reflexes built over time. When the present knocks on the door, the first reaction is defensive: what I know worked, why should I change it?
In the design world, that character has many faces. It's not necessarily the elderly, immobile professional — it's anyone who has invested years in a method and finds themselves having to evaluate whether that investment is still worthwhile. It's someone who draws exceptionally well in CAD and wonders if it's worth the effort. It's someone who runs a small studio and looks at BIM license costs as an insurmountable wall.
And it's worth pausing here, because there's a distinction often lost in the CAD vs BIM debate: resistance to change isn't always laziness or irrational fear. Sometimes it's a perfectly rational economic calculation. A Revit, Archicad, or Vectorworks license has a cost that can be prohibitive for a small studio or freelancer — especially if the market they operate in doesn't explicitly demand it yet. Judging those who are still on the fence without considering this context is convenient, but dishonest.
That said, the fear of the unknown is as real as the costs. And often, it's that — not the license — that truly blocks progress.
Willa and Choosing Sides
Bob's daughter, Willa, is the most interesting character in the film precisely because she has no nostalgia. She doesn't carry the weight of previous battles. She looks at the world as it is now and acts accordingly — not because she's better, but because she chose a different starting point.
In BIM, that choice is called mindset, and it has nothing to do with age or years of experience. There are designers over 50 who have embraced the method with more enthusiasm than many recent graduates, and young people who have used Revit for years without ever truly understanding what they are modeling. The variable is not age. It's the willingness to question one's working methods — not once, but continuously.
Implementing BIM is not adding a tool to an existing workflow. It's choosing a new language. And like any language, you learn it by speaking it — not by waiting to know all the rules before opening your mouth.
For those who ask "where do I start?", the answer is less heroic than they expect: start by placing walls. Or the floor. No one who already uses the software knows everything — and anyone who says otherwise is lying or overestimating themselves. The starting point doesn't have to be total mastery. It has to be the first conscious step. A basic training module, a simple project to use as a test bed, a colleague available to answer the first questions. Revolution always starts small.
However, there is a third character worth mentioning, because he is perhaps the most useful as a point of reference: the sensei Sergio St. Carlos, played by Benicio del Toro. He too is a fighter, he too carries a heavy past — but unlike Bob, he fights today's battles with today's tools. He hasn't lost his instinct. He has updated his arsenal.
Sergio is in the middle: he hasn't abandoned experience, but he's not a prisoner of it. In the design world, that profile exists and is valuable precisely because it understands both languages. He doesn't tell you "you must use BIM because it's the future" — he shows you how he uses it, on a real project, with the same pressures you know. And he demonstrates that the baggage accumulated over the years is not an obstacle to transition. It's an advantage — provided you don't turn it into an anchor.
The Manichean Trap
There's a flaw that can be attributed to certain discussions about BIM, and which Anderson's film — in its deliberately non-prescriptive nature — helps to dismantle. It's the tendency to construct a binary narrative: CAD equals past, BIM equals future. Those who still use CAD are behind. Those who use BIM are ahead.
It's a simplification that makes those already on the "right side" feel good, but it serves no one.
The reality is that there are contexts where CAD is still the most efficient answer — simple commissions, clients who don't require 3D modeling, studios with consolidated workflows that work. There are also terrible BIM models, poorly built families, Revit projects that are more chaotic than any DWG. The tool doesn't guarantee quality. Quality is guaranteed by the user and the method they use.
The important thing — and this is the key takeaway — is that the choice is conscious. Not forced, not imposed by a trend, not made out of fear of falling behind. An informed choice, evaluated against one's own context, resources, and the market in which one operates.
Bob in the film is not stupid. He is a man who fought real battles with real tools. The problem is not his past — it's that he continues to fight yesterday's war while the world around him has already changed.
The Revolution is Not in the Tool
Film critics have described "One Battle After Another" as a film about permanent revolution — the idea, borrowed from Trotsky and filtered through Pynchon, that an authentic revolution can never be considered complete. It must be continuous, unsatisfied, always looking towards the next battle.
In BIM, this sounds familiar to anyone with a few years of practice. Revit changes. Workflows evolve. The cloud arrives, real-time collaboration arrives, integration with calculation and analysis tools that didn't exist or weren't accessible five years ago arrives. Anyone who thought they had "learned Revit" in 2018 had to re-engage in 2022. Anyone who thinks they've learned it today will find themselves doing the same in a few years.
This is not bad news. It's the nature of the work.
The real revolution is not moving from one software to another. It's developing the ability to be within change without being overwhelmed by it — to fight each battle with what you have, knowing that there will be another one after.
Willa knows it. Bob learns it. Sergio lives it every day. And we, in front of a screen with an open project, are somewhere in the middle — and that's okay.
This article was inspired by a valuable prompt: the Instagram post by our colleagues at RT BIM Lab — "Oscar-Winning BIM Analogies" — in which five films become five lenses for viewing the BIM world. I added my own, which became this piece. Thanks for the inspiration.