The Builder

Directed by Rick Alverson; 94 minutes. Featuring music by Bon Iver, Gregor Samsa, Pan American, Spokane, Robert Donne. Following an Irish immigrant carpenter from coastal Queens to the Catskills and beyond, The Builder is an American existential portrait that explores the gulf between the idea of a thing and the thing itself. Having set off to the New York countryside to construct a reproduction of the earliest of American cape houses, the protagonist (Colm O'Leary) finds himself overcome by an inexplicable fatigue. Debts and expectations mount alongside the crudest and most naive of deceptions, that of both self and of family. As exaggerations become lies, the chasm grows and the Builder finds himself confronted by the unnerving ambivalence of the world around him. A subtle, contemplative rendering reminiscent of the films of John Cassavetes and The Dardenne Brothers, The Builder is the first full-length feature directed by R. Alverson (Spokane).