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's 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 Laslo 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 not very attractive. The job of architect has often been depicted in movies, even though the practice of

architecture 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,

and he teaches an architecture on screen course at Harvard's Graduate School of Design.

So he's basically the first and only call you make when you want to talk about this stuff.

Mark, thank you so much for

joining us. It's super fun to be here. Thanks for having me. And you have seen the movie, The Brutalist.

I have heard you talk about it. Yes, I have definitely seen the movie The Brutalist. I have

podcasted about it. I wrote a review of it for our newspaper. So, yes. So let's talk a little bit just about

...