Der Brutalist

'The Brutalist' never lets you breathe. The director builds it with such purpose that you see the care in every frame. He's a talented craftsman, no question, but also so crushingly serious. And that chokes out any real feeling. You watch the artistry turn into artifice. And, after a while, all that weight just presses down.

The film is so obsessed with being Art that it forgets to let you in. It's so heavy with its own importance that it starts to close in on itself so much so that eventually all you see is this polished facade, reflecting its own seriousness back at you.

It doesn't stay with you. It stands there, sealed off by its own sense of importance, and you're left outside.

The first half of "The Brutalist" slowly and beautifully unfolds in a way that feels like it's going to be the next "Godfather."

As the second half of the film came after intermission, I was hoping it would continue down that same trajectory, but instead the second half goes down a strange, confusing and puzzling path, which some viewers might find brilliant. When the end did come, I found myself laughing as I shook my head walking the razors edge in my mind, saying to myself, "Why did Corbet go down this path?" and at the same time saying, "that was actually kind of brilliant."

Art is subjective and some people might really like this strange and bizarre second half of the film. Perhaps it was even Corbet's middle finger to the audience saying, "You didn't see that coming, did you?" Whatever the case may be, I give the second half a 4 because the first half was so brilliant, and I really wanted the film to continue going down that same trajectory the entire way through.

In the end, the acting is terrific, the cinematography is absolutely beautiful, and the film is strange. But I give it to Corbet for the effort, making films are hard, and he went for something different with his artistic vision.

It's hard to know how to describe this movie. Perhaps the title is apt. It's meant to describe the style of architecture its main protagonist employs - harsh, massive, cold concrete monstrosities of buildings. But it also speaks to the brutality of class-divided America, and perhaps of humankind itself.

Some think it's an epic drama of immigration to America by WWII refugees, and part one attests to that and promises much. The we have part 2 where the main character, Hungarian immigrant Laszlo Toth, finds a mentor in the rich but empty-hearted and ultimately cruel businessman Harrison Van Buren and his caricature family. A major architectural project for the local town alternatively promises much then falls apart, much like Toth's relationship with .. just about everyone. The movie falls apart here as it leaps blindingly from confused and often totally unnecessary scene to scene, wasting another couple of hours.

Then we have the epilogue, 20 years later, which is bizarre. It explains little and leaves a lot of unanswered questions. When the final credits roll (at a jarring 30 degree angle), the numbness and frank shock in the cinema audience was palpable.

Adrien Brody gives a fabulous performance in the lead role, although you are never quite sure whether you are supposed to be on his side or not. Felicity Jones seems miscast to me as his refugee wife, physically weak but mentally strong, to me she just doesn't look right for the role. Then there is Guy Pearce, one of my favourite actors, who is very good in the Van Buren role but not Oscar material as has been touted - his performance is just slightly too affected for that.

I'll give it 6 stars for the grandeur of vision, even if unrealised, as well as Brody's performance and the great musical score. But it will go down in my memory as yet another if these grand artistic Hollywood visions that don't really work, and descend into confusion and outright stupidity at times. Many will praise it and score it highly, like those who view a pretentious painting as a visionary masterpiece. You will have to make up your own mind after 3 and a half hours if this movie - thank goodness for the intermission!

This has a very nice cast and a great underdog premise, but feels a bit over the top with cheap emotional manipulation that detracts from what could have been an epic cinematic achievement.

It really started feeling forced after the halfway point with more and more implausibilities that just shook me out of the story.

The mark of a weak writer is melodrama and excessive salacious story elements, but then it could just be the producers that dictated the addition of the nonsensical scenarios that just had no basis in the reality they established.

The production value is there, the cast is there, the soundtrack is there, but then they had to trot out as many tropes as possible, and by then, the weak resolution is just background noise.

It is the kind of movie that is so hard to rate. Is it a masterpiece? Is it great or is it just another movie that just look at itself? He has all the elements of a great story of a great film and yet to me it does not deliver.

For three and half hours long there's only one question in my mind I couldn't shake : what is it about. And I could never answer that question not even at the end if ever there was one. The whole thing left me septic.

But in all honesty, there isn't much to say about it all. To me it's like I've been handed over a homework. If watching « this kind of movie », I want to feel an experience, be engulfed in the ambiance of a whole, I want to be caught in the prospect of what the delivery will be, I want to feel like I've been outsmarted in some ways. None of it here.

Brody is magnificent, so is Pearce. Jones too, surely. Cinematography is mastered without a doubt, editing is smooth, and for three and a half hours it is enjoyable if you're able to glean the little sparks that here and there will keep you hungry for more.

If it was trying to lead me into an underlying experience, meaning or point of view, well I didn't find the path, or maybe was it just too obscure to even grasp a fragment of what the purpose of it all was.

Yes, it works whatever it is about or whatever it thinks it is about. I doubt it will be a movie that's remembered. It not particularly bold. It makes an attempt at being powerful but it never strikes. It too clean, it's too plain. It makes you believe straight from the opening shot that it will be grandiose. But it doesn't hold it promise.

I feel a bit duped by what I've watched. Just because you write a movie about an « unusual » subject, just because you try an unorthodox approach at something that's already been said before, well it seems sufficient to make praise.

That is not enough for me. This didn't prove me anything. I think it is possible and achievable and somewhat too easy to make beautiful movies that will pass for profound when it is just a very well made movie without substance.