The Brutalist

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.

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.

By all rights, The Brutalists should have been a triumph of contemporary cinema. It had all the necessary accouterments: a sprawling runtime (three-plus hours, no less), a cast of pedigreed thespians frowning meaningfully into the middle distance, and a grandiose self-awareness that all but guarantees critical accolades from the usual dreary pamphleteers of moral instruction. Instead, what we receive is a lumbering, self-indulgent exercise in ideological exhibitionism-an advertisement, really, for a laundry list of progressive orthodoxies, stitched together with the unearned gravity of a film convinced of its own greatness.

It is, at its core, an excruciatingly obvious sermon on the virtues of mass immigration, the tragic poetry of opioid smuggling, and the intersectional ballet of class struggle. One gets the distinct impression that the director, overcome with the giddy self-righteousness of a trust fund revolutionary, decided that any opposition to these themes-however slight, however nuanced-should be discarded as brutish and retrograde. The result is a film that does not argue, but dictates; it does not question, but demands obedience.

A particularly egregious example of this is the film's treatment of sexuality, which, rather than being a natural element of character or plot, is wielded like a cudgel, as if the director has mistaken provocation for profundity. This is, of course, the age-old trick of the modern auteur: to linger uncomfortably on scenes of grotesque degradation and then feign astonishment when audiences express revulsion. "Ah, but you are merely revealing your own prejudices," the filmmakers sneer, mistaking their own self-indulgence for bravery.

Then there is the matter of style-or, more accurately, the utter absence of it. The Brutalists operates in the now all-too-familiar mode of arthouse monotony, stretching its scenes to insufferable lengths in an attempt to pass off inertia as profundity. The cinematography, full of languid tracking shots and barren industrial landscapes, serves as a backdrop for dialogue so contrived, so consciously weighty, that one is left yearning for the honesty of silence.

But perhaps the film's greatest failure is its utter lack of humanity. Beneath its posturing, its po-faced political hectoring, and its parade of suffering, there is no genuine curiosity about human nature-only a tedious reaffirmation of fashionable narratives. It is a work of cynical calculation, designed not to challenge or illuminate but to reinforce the self-congratulatory smugness of its intended audience.

In the end, The Brutalists is not so much a film as it is a performance of righteousness, an expensively produced hymn to contemporary pieties. It is a cinematic endurance test, wherein those who survive its oppressive runtime are rewarded not with insight or catharsis, but merely the hollow satisfaction of having borne witness to its turgid self-importance. If this is the new standard of "bold" filmmaking, then one must ask: Is there anything left to rebel against, other than the tedium of the sermon itself?

It is ambitious and has some beautiful sequences, especially the opening sequence with the Statue of Liberty shot. Brody, as usual, is strong. The score is also strong. The movie has an epic sweep to it but also, I would say, some unnecessary scenes here and there. I didn't think all the sex scenes were necessary, or at least I thought they were too drawn out, and various other interstitial shots that felt excessive. I didn't like Pearce's performance so much. Although he's playing an unlikable character, true, there's just an artificiality about his delivery and mannerisms that I didn't like here.

The epilogue of the movie ends a little flat and on an odd note. It's just one of those "weird" endings, imo, but that's pretty typical for an a24 movie. I cared about Brody's character, but where did he REALLY go, in the end? Ask yourself that. He gets lost a bit, for me, with all the other side narratives and architectural explorations going on, and then it just kind of ends.

Thematically, the movie reflects the tension between artistry and capitalism well. Is it overlong? Yes, but the intermission dampens the impact of that. Would I want to see it again? No.

This ambitious post-war American epic begins with a mesmerising long-take sequence which will surely stick longer than the 3:35 hours of running time. The 70mm format fits the setting while making the movie visually stunning alongside with audacious camera works and stunning photography. Blumberg's music adds on that so the theatre would definitely be its perfect habitat. The script delivers interesting characters - albeit the secondary ones are purely cosmetic - valorised by great performances from Brody and Pearce. The issue here is in the last hour, as the writers decided to insert unexplored subplots which will prevent the movie from having a proper conclusion thus leaving a bitter feeling of incompleteness and preventing this monumental project to achieve what was intended for.