According to director Alex Ross Perry, the indie rock band Pavement didn’t want a documentary made about them. It’s easy to see why. Many rock docs tend to follow a set pattern, following the band’s story before gushing about their legacy. That’s the best-case scenario. At worst, you get a prestige biopic primed for awards season, with a cast that may or may not resemble the real deal. (Perry even opened the screening by jokingly welcoming the audience to James Mangold’s Bob Dylan biopic with Timothée Chalamet, A Complete Unknown.) As Perry said during the Q&A, Pavement’s music defied easy categorization, and a hundred fans could each have different opinions about them. Encapsulating their career in a single movie about them wouldn’t make sense. This is why he didn’t make a single movie encapsulating their career. He made every single movie about Pavement, and just edited them together.

I wanted one “weird” pick for my NYFF screenings, and Pavements fit the bill more than I could’ve imagined. Part rockumentary, part mockumentary, brazenly satirical and refreshingly idiosyncratic, it is probably unlike any music movie I’ve seen. At first, it seems standard. It opens with “the world’s most important and influential band” Pavement breaking up in 1999 (which is described as “not a big deal”) and then reuniting in 2022 (“a huge deal”). As expected, from there the film alternates between two threads: tracing the band’s history through a wealth of archival material covering everything from international interviews to their appearance on Space Ghost Coast to Coast, and a present-day look at the band as they prepare for their first tour in 12 years (they briefly got back together in 2010). If that were it, I likely would’ve eaten this up anyway because I love 90s indie rock, but I probably wouldn’t have much to write about.

As mentioned, though, Pavement didn’t want a standard documentary, and Pavements is anything but. It’s not long into the movie before Perry plays his true hand. He’s not only directing a documentary about Pavement, but he’s also making an off-broadway jukebox musical about Pavement that re-interprets their songs. Not only that, he’s also making a museum dedicated to Pavement. Not only not only that, he’s also making a big-budget Pavement biopic with an all-star cast that seems primed for awards season. All at the same time.

From there, the movie basically becomes a mosaic, often using split screen to cover the movie’s five threads (six if you include the making of the biopic, which Perry also includes). Just in case that still seems too normal, half the movie is also a mockumentary. (The NYFF program guide called it a “sorta-documentary). Perry is filmed creating the musical, Slanted! Enchanted!, as a pretentious theater director, while the cast’s experience with Pavement ranges from them being longtime fans to finding out about them within the last few weeks. The bulk of the film’s humor, however, comes from the biopic, Range Life. Perry made his disdain towards these kinds of movies known during the Q&A, and it’s on full display here. I won’t spoil some of the best jokes, but suffice it to say, he was pretty spot on. The cast of the film-within-a-film is great and includes Fred Hechinger, Griffin Newman, and Nat Wolff as members of the band, while Tim Heidecker and Jason Schwartzman portray the executives of Matador Records. The real scene-stealer, however, is Stranger Things’ Joe Keery as lead singer Stephen Malkmus. Playing himself, he believes he’s bound for Oscar gold for this part, and all I’ll say is that he gets a bit too involved trying to get into the role.

The more the film goes on, the more the line between truth and fiction begins to become a liquefied blur. Even after looking it up, I was surprised to find out what was real and what wasn’t. (HBO sponsored the documentary screenings at NYFF this year. Noticeably, they didn’t for this movie.) This all may seem like an experiment that has a good chance of falling apart, and it does drag a bit at over two hours. Yet as the film goes on, a coherent story does begin to emerge, and everything started to make some sense by the end. If you don’t know the story of Pavement, as I didn’t, this should be a good primer and a hilarious comedy to boot. If you do know the story of Pavement, this should be a refreshing reprieve from the standard treatment I’ve seen bands like this get. Either way, you are not prepared for Pavements, and hopefully you’ll all get to see it soon.

Spanning decades, the film tells the story of László Toth (Adrian Brody), a Hungarian Jewish architect who escapes a concentration camp and flees to America. After reconnecting with family in Pennsylvania, and awaiting news of his wife’s relocation, he meets the wealthy industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), who employs him for a massive project. In just two films, The Childhood of a Leader and Vox Lux, Brady Corbet established himself as a unique filmmaker. He’s also an auteur to a fault, and those movies, while certainly conveying a vision, left me underwhelmed. So I didn’t have high hopes for this movie, especially one of that length. Yet here I am, 4 hours later, as the elements of Corbet’s filmography have finally come together in a way that, for the most part, works.

The Brutalist has some of the best filmmaking of the year. The cinematography is stunning, which is fitting for a movie about art. It alternates between wide vistas and gorgeous landscapes, and more intimate closeup and handheld photography (which is notable for a film shot for such a grand format). The score is similarly incredible. Corbet’s last two movies were scored by Scott Walker, who has since unfortunately passed, but the composer for this movie, Daniel Blumberg, has proven himself more than up to the task of filling Walker’s shoes. Corbet supposedly made this movie on a small budget (reportedly under $10 million), and you wouldn’t know it from what you’re seeing onscreen.

Adrian Brody does a great job as Toth. Without giving too much away, he has a notable transformation as the film goes on, and it’s handled very well. He conveys both the resilience and the pain of being an outsider in America. (Brody said during the Q&A that he channeled his own parents’ experiences as both refugees and artists in the role.) The rest of the cast does a great job too. However, the real standout is Guy Pearce as Van Buren, easily one of the best supporting performances of this year. Playing a titan of industry, Pearce is charismatic yet intimidating, giving a grand portrayal that contains all of the worst impulses of those in power.

This is an epic, and what would a film like this be without some truly big ideas? I went into this expecting a sweeping look at the immigrant experience, and for the most part, that’s exactly what I got. Throughout the film, there’s a palpable sense of otherness for Brody’s Toth. Not just being a Hungarian in America, but a Jew in a predominately Christian country. The film’s portrayal of identity is powerful. Toth and his ideas aren’t just foreign to the elite he engages with, but objects of fascination that they, especially Van Buren, seek to exploit. The movie is also a portrait of industry in Pennsylvania and America at the time, supplemented by era-appropriate footage of educational films. It’s a very long film, but I did think the runtime was used well.

However, I did have some issues near the end of the film. The central themes and metaphors come to a head with a brutal moment that, without spoiling anything felt a bit too on the nose, and I wasn’t sure how to feel about it. I also thought that they could’ve done a better job sticking the landing. I plan on seeing this movie again when it comes out, and maybe I’ll have a different opinion of it. There’s a lot here, after all. A towering and deeply personal achievement, The Brutalist deserves to be seen on the big screen in a huge theater. While I didn’t think this was the best movie of the year, it is absolutely the biggest surprise of the year for me, and I’m definitely excited to see what Corbet does next. The movie comes out in theaters on December 20th.