This is 99% invisible.
I'm Roman Mars.
The Brutalist is a movie.
I don't know if it's a good movie or a bad movie,
but it is definitely the most movie I've seen this year.
It is also a movie nominally about architecture and is nominated for 10 Academy Awards.
So it felt like journalistic malpractice
if we didn't talk about it on the show at least a little bit.
The story follows a fictional Hungarian architect named Laszlo Toth
and his struggles to build a community center in rural Pennsylvania.
The film neatly summarizes the debate about the architectural style known as brutalism.
In this one exchange, concrete is sturdy and cheap concrete.
It's not very attractive.
The job of architect has often been depicted in movies, even though the practice of architecture is.
Is not very cinematic.
It's mostly meetings and such.
But it is a romantic profession that lends itself to high drama and strained metaphors,
which, after seeing the Brutalist, is why I wanted to talk to Mark Lamster.
Mark is the architecture critic of the Dallas Morning News,
editor of a book called Architecture and Film,