The Brutalist

SPOILERS!

I sensed something significant and big when I saw a trailer for 2024's THE BRUTALIST.  A film directed and cowritten by Brady Corbet, whose name I had heard in connection with certain things in which he had starred and VOX LUX, a film he directed (unseen by your author at press time).  Brady was clearly interested in creating cinema, enough so to shoot this three and one-half hour film in VistaVision, a process in which 35 mm film is oriented horizontally, creating a very fine grain image.  1961's ONE-EYED JACKS was the last time an American film used this process.  Damn.  Impressive in an age when most films are content with flat digital.

Unfortunately, I did not get to a theater for this movie.  On the technical side, it would've been something.  But I doubt it would've been enough to compensate for the narrative deficiencies, which perhaps are even worse and more noticeable when viewed at home.  I was surprised at how thin it was.  A would-be epic whose screenplay is strewn with partially realized characters and themes, some of which are so on the nose as to be embarrassing.  Example?

A WASP American industrialist named Harrison Van Buren (Guy Pearce) rapes the protagonist, Laszlo Toth (Adrien Brody), a Hungarian-Jewish immigrant and Holocaust survivor he had commissioned to build a monument to his late mother.  In his drunken stupor, Van Buren rants about how Jewish emigres such as Laszlo (also drunk) invite their own persecution.  Does symbolism get any more crass?

Then there's that odd epilogue, during which a character explains what Laszlo's massive architectural marvel really represents.  Interesting, but a bit insulting to the audience.  Then we hear a peppy Euro-disco song during the credits.  I get what you were doing, Brady, but c'mon!

The cast is fine, but all have done better work elsewhere.  It will be impossible not to be reminded of Brody's work in the far more powerful THE PIANIST.  Felicity Jones, as Laszlo's handicapped wife Erzsebet, seems a bit miscast.

There are nods to several filmmakers in THE BRUTALIST.  Images of the works of Paul Thomas Anderson such as THERE WILL BE BLOOD loom large.  That PTA film has also been problematic for me in various degrees, but nothing as arduous and heavy handed as this. 

One does have to applaud Brady for his chutzpah, and for making such a huge movie on a low budget.  The young director has potential, but needs some accountability.  More ruthless collaborators.

I suspect many of the goyim/anti-Semites who swear they're merely anti-Zionists will have some issues with Brady's film.