OlgaGorelik

Hurting other people's feelings is what the characters in this film are trying their darnest to avoid. It seems like the right thing to do. Spouses are supposed to be supportive of each other's endeavors, especially the creative ones. Parents are supposed to be their kids' biggest cheerleaders to help them build confidence. Right? Giving an honest opinion, to anyone, seems rude and offensive.

Original thought is a rare thing in Hollywood. Well, here it is - shockingly obvious and relatable. The writing seems simple, yet it's dead on. Just about every word, action, reaction is perfectly understandable. And as the characters found themselves in a conundrum of white lies and hurt feelings, I realized that this really is a legitimate problem in our lives. Towards the end of the movie my husband and I were expecting every compliment to turn out to be a lie. That's sad. In the meantime he told me that I look like Julia Louis-Dreyfus, but better, and I didn't believe him! Ok, that was actually funny.

There is another theme running through the film that is also very relatable. You are a working writer, like Beth (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), actor, like her brother-in-law Mark (Arian Moayed), interior designer, like her sister Sarah (Michaela Watkins), therapist, like her husband Don (Tobias Menzies). But what if you are actually not good at it? You are no longer young, maybe you should quit before you've invested even more of your life into something that doesn't seem to give you joy anymore? Your loved ones are always telling you how good you are, but what if they are lying? And when someone does criticize your work, it really hurts your feelings and makes you doubt yourself, but what if they are actually wrong? The movie doesn't provide answers. Just leaves you pondering. About life.

Much has been said about how The Brutalist needs to be seen in a theater, preferably in 70mm format. Well, I happened to watch it at home. For a moment I considered whether that disqualified me from reviewing it. But the reality is that in the long run most people who see it will do what I did, so it needs to work on the small screen too. For me it almost didn't. Not because big things weren't impressive enough. It's the small things I had a problem with. I hate when that happens. I could see the makings of a masterpiece, but couldn't stop getting distracted, particularly by this one thought - they should have cast Hungarian actors. It's not that I am a purist that way, it's not that I don't believe in the power of great acting, I just know that immigrants don't speak English to each other. Definitely not fresh of the boat. They might do it in the presence of other people, but not when it's just them and definitely not in bed. So, every time Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones as Laszlo and Erzsebet switched from Hungarian to accented English a few words into a conversation, I rolled my eyes - this wouldn't be necessary if they could speak fluent, unaccented Hungarian. And then, because I was already distracted, I couldn't help noticing how inconsistent the accent was. Laszlo is talking to his cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola) and I am thinking "How is his English so good?" And suddenly in another scene he talks like a shoeshiner, to paraphrase his American employer Harrison Van Buren (Guy Pierce). But then, well into the second half, just as I resigned myself to the movie not working for me, I suddenly realized that unbeknownst to me it made its way into my heart. My brain was still picking up things like dropped threads, particularly pertaining to Zsofia (Raffey Cassidy), and moments where the director's strive for the artsyness was a bit too obvious, but they were no longer distracting. My heart didn't care. I understood what the film is really about. Not architecture. It's about the the trauma that the people who survived the Holocaust carried within them.

At 3 and a half hours The Brutalist didn't really feel long. In fact I thought it wasn't long enough. I wouldn't be surprised if some of those dropped threads happened because the movie just couldn't be any longer. For example, they clearly meant to say that something happened between Zsofia and Harry Lee (does Joe Alwin ever not play an a-hole?) and then it was never mentioned again. Most importantly the film touched on some great topics that deserved deeper exploration. Like a gentile woman (Eazsebet) converting to Judaism and nearly dying in the concentration camp vs a Jewish man (Attila) marrying a Catholic, changing his name, and really not wanting his Jewish cousin around. And the Holocaust trauma. The movies about the survivors don't usually go beyond the end of the war. But what about after? What does it take to learn to live with the unspeakable trauma? The Brutalist could have made a great series, well worth losing the giant screen experience. But then again, I didn't see it in the theater, so what do I know.

Early in the movie a young woman named Sylvie (Elle Fanning) complains to very young Bob Dylan (Timothy Chalamet), with whom she is living at that time, that she doesn't know anything about him, that he doesn't tell her anything about himself. He mumbles something about how what matters is a persona you create and what's real is basically none of anybody's business. Not hers and apparently not ours. The movie takes that idea and runs with it, hence the title. Now, being able to write that kind of songs is definitely sexy, so it's understandable that an impressionable young woman, like Sylvie, would stick around in spite of never being able to get emotionally close to Dylan. And even a more sophisticated one, like Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) cannot resist. But for me as a viewer it wasn't enough. Musician biopics tend to rely heavily on their subjects' creations. The songs prop up the movies, but they alone cannot carry them. From the recent examples Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman come to mind. But at least in those films the musicians were multi-dimentional characters. A Complete Unknown at times seemed like it was just going through the motions, like a reenactment of the Wikipedia article. And Dylan is shown as someone lacking not only the backstory, but any emotions, really. The only emotion I've seen him express in the film is annoyance. He comes across as not just an arrogant jerk, but basically a sociopath. Timothy Chalamet is a very talented actor. But after the first half an hour all I saw him do was an impression. Including when he sang. I guess that music is really not my cup of tea. I watched people in the movie going crazy for Dylan and was baffled a little. I mean, the lyrics are insanely good, but I found the voice grating. Did Bob Dylan really sound that bad? After the movie I listened to the real thing from that time and maybe I am imagining things or being biased, but I thought I heard a little velvety undertone. Just enough to not be grating.

Maybe if I were a fan or at least had significant knowledge of the music and the events, I would have enjoyed this film more. But I went in cold. And left that way.