Film

A Master Builder

Name: A Master Builder
Genre: Drama
Released: 2014
Cast: Wallace Shawn, Julie Hagerty, Larry Pine, Lisa Joyce, Andre Gregory

Drama
Slow-burning

Wallace Shawn commands this 2014 adaptation of Ibsen's play as an aging architect confronting his ambitions, cruelties, and mortality. It's chamber drama—spare, wordy, psychologically ruthless. For anyone who loves watching a brilliant actor dismantle a character from the inside, or who wants theatre that doesn't apologize for being talk.

TMDb rating

2.9

If you liked this

Another Year2010

Mike Leigh's portrait of a contented couple visited by friends in various states of despair. Like Ibsen but British and modern: a masterclass in how people wound each other through small acts of smugness and judgment.

But It's deliberately slow and offers no catharsis. The unhappiness around these people never resolves, which some viewers find punishing rather than enlightening.

Carnage2011

Two couples meet to discuss their children's fight, and Polanski strips away civility in real time. Dialogue-driven, claustrophobic, savage—the theatrical DNA that runs through *A Master Builder* but compressed to ninety minutes and wickedly funny.

But The comedy can feel brittle and exhausting. If you don't enjoy watching people be deliberately awful to each other, this becomes wearing.

The Killing2011

A investigation that matters less than the weight it places on the detectives conducting it. Sarah Lund's personal unravelling mirrors Solness's: work as a kind of slow psychological demolition, ambition as pathology.

But It's bleak and demands your full attention across twenty episodes. The final season divides viewers sharply, and patience runs out before answers appear.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from A Master Builder

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Days of Being Wild1990

Both examine seductive, willful men who've spent their lives accumulating damage to others while remaining fundamentally untouched. The difference is that Kar-wai photographs this as beautiful; Shawn and Ibsen see it clearly.

Wong Kar-wai's debut about a beautiful drifter who damages everyone he loves through indifference and charm. Utterly unlike *A Master Builder* in pace and style—kinetic, gorgeous, pop-inflected—but its moral centre is identical: ambition and narcissism as forms of violence.

But It's fragmentary, elliptical, sometimes incoherent. The narrative circles rather than progresses. If you need clarity or resolution, you'll find it infuriating.

Scenes from a Marriage2021

Bergman's six-episode masterpiece about a marriage's slow erosion. Intimate, humiliating, brilliant. If you want to see a relationship examined with the same unflinching attention Shawn brings to Solness, this is essential.

But It's austere, deliberately paced, and emotionally draining. Designed to provoke argument, not comfort. Some scenes are difficult to watch.

The Dresser1983

Albert Finney as an aging Shakespearean actor and Tom Courtenay as his dresser. Sheer performance—two men talking in a dressing room, power shifting like water. The theatrical ego laid bare with affection and mercilessness.

But It's very much a play photographed, not a film. The setting never changes and dialogue dominates. If you need visual variety, this will feel static.

August: Osage County2013

Meryl Streep as a narcissistic matriarch who poisons every relationship around her through drink and cruelty. Family dysfunction as a kind of architectural masterpiece of damage. Brutal and gripping.

But It's an adaptation of a stage play and shows it—sometimes overwrought, sometimes feeling like an acting showcase rather than a story. The length can feel self-indulgent.

In the Mood for Love2000

Wong Kar-wai's visual poem about desire, restraint, and the gap between what people feel and what they allow themselves to show. Completely different mode, but the same deep sadness about human connection.

But There's almost no plot and it moves like a dream. If you need narrative momentum or external events, you'll find it precious and frustrating.

Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai2011

Masaki Kobayashi's meditative, gorgeous revenge film about pride, compromise, and the cost of maintaining honour. Slow, deliberate, about a man confronting what he's become. The visual opposite of *A Master Builder* but emotionally aligned.

But It's a samurai film that's primarily about talk and morality rather than action. The pacing tests patience and the ending is deliberately ambiguous.

The Turin Horse2011

Both are about the end of things—ambition, marriage, clarity. One exhausts you with words; the other with silence. But both insist you bear witness to decline without looking away.

Béla Tarr's final film: wordless except for a few exchanges, mostly silent, mostly static. An old man and woman in decline, repetition as a kind of mercy. It's not talk but visual meditation on aging and the slow dissolution of everything—the inverse formal choice but the same emotional weight.

But There is almost no dialogue, minimal plot, and it moves at the pace of ice. If you found *A Master Builder* wordy and theatrical, this will feel punishing. Likely the slowest film you'll ever watch.

Satantango1994

Like *A Master Builder*, it's about the terrible clarity that comes when people see themselves and each other without performance. But Tarr takes hours to achieve what Ibsen does in two, and reaches a different kind of truth through that duration.

Béla Tarr's seven-and-a-half-hour masterpiece about a small community waiting for a con man. Hypnotic, severe, black-and-white, mostly dialogue-free. The slow revelation of corruption and complicity as an almost sacred experience. For viewers who want chamber drama that operates entirely through image and time.

But The length is real. The pace is not for everyone. The lack of conventional narrative drive can feel like pretension rather than art depending on your patience and mood that day.